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Splinter Removal or Sliver Removal
Splinters:-( those painful little
pieces of wood and thorn that get stabbed into us and our kids any
time we even touch a piece of wood.
When my kids were young.......I discovered that getting splinters
or slivers out with a needle was not frugal emotionally, hurt
a lot and often didn't work without major gouging and pain. Then
I discovered #11 Exacto Knife blades (blades for the thick pencil
sized hobby utility knife). These are the really sharp pointed
blades that usually come with a new small Exacto Knife and can
be bought separately. NOT a square ended razor blade. See the
picture below.
FIRST, sterilize the blade before each use by holding it in
the flame of a match or stove. LET IT COOL! The technique varies
with each splinter, but use as little cutting and prying as possible.
I still often have to cut the skin OVER the splinter. This is
"dead" (to pain) skin at the surface and doesn't hurt to cut it
to access the splinter. Then the splinter is exposed enough to
"pry or lift" it out. DON'T get carried away "playing doctor",
and really cut deep to get a splinter, don't slice into nerves.
If it's worse than you'd have used a needle for and you can't
get it out easily, SEE A DOCTOR.
When done, treat as you would any wound....antiseptic and sterile
bandage. Also re-sterilize the blade before you put it away. It
really does beat needles. Don't use the blade for anything else.
We put ours in an recycled platic pill bottle.
TIP: keep one in the medicine cabinet,
one in the kitchen and one in the garage/workshop. BTW (by the way)
Sharon and I find it easier to handle the blade only. Don't put
it in the knife handle as its added weight may cause you to go faster
than you want. This is really a precision way to remove splinters.
IN THE BEGINNING-----our kids were used to pain and removing slivers.
So we'd have them NOT watch and then touch slightly away from the
splinter and ask if that hurt. Of course since we weren't doing
anything it didn't and they'd say, "NO" Then we'd say some like,
"Ok I'm going to try harder to get it out tell me if it hurts, again
touching around and not on the wound. Does it hurt yet? NO. Let
me know if it does. Then we'd begin, slowly, in ernest to remove
the sliver. Often they said it never hurt on really big splinters
that were in deep. Child psychology lesson over.
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