My 1st fret-hand injury was to the tip of my ring finger. A four-band bill, where we were 3rd & good friends of ours were 4th. During set-up, the tech realised there was no clip on the kick drum mic stand, so he duct-taped the mic to it [cuz if you can't fix it with duct tape, it's broke!. So we were helping tear down at the end of the show & the drummer comes up to me & asks if I have a pocket knife to cut the tape with. At the time, I was working in a newspaper printer's darkroom as my dayjob & I always had an exacto-knife in my pocket. I took it out, unsheathed the blade, took the mic from him &, with one swift motion, put the blade thru both the tape AND the end of my finger. The cut was 1/8" deep, parallel with string-direction. A trip to the local ER & three stitches later I wondered how I was going to play. I found a plastic sheath that I used for about two weeks, then a regular band-aid over the tip for another two weeks before I saw how messed up it was going to be to try & build a callous on the scar. To this day [& we're talking 11 years since] I still get a weird oval divet in the middle of the tip where a chunk of scar callous chips off from time to time.

My 2nd fret-hand injury occured at my current dayjob at a corrugated paper manufacturer. The end of my middle finger got pinched between an irresistable force & an immoveable object. You're familiar with how you begin to peel a banana, right? the 1st snap of the top puts the stem over to the side like a hinge & you see the tip of the raw fruit poking out the top? That's the way my finger looked with the bone peeking out from within. I still thank God that the way it was pinched made the end stay attached to me with the underside of the finger, not the top, meaning I have retained most of the sensation. So, another trip to the ER & five stitches [none under the nailbed] later & I couldn't play at all for a week & a half [moving the fingers independently caused excruciating pain] then I was playing three-fingered guitar & bass for another month or so before my Dr told me it had fully healed & there was no chance of the tip popping off. The end of my middle finger looks a little crooked, ditto the nail, & it builds a weird callous, but it works like a charm. I get compliments for my lead guitar playing all the time [pats self on the back ].

Please be more careful than I have been. Unless you have a horseshoe permanently installed up your...

I played my last (ever?.. maybe.) gig in May and haven't played since..... until last Friday that is. My son persuaded me to join him in a jam. This lasted several hours and we gave it some stick. The following day, all my fingertips hurt like hell, and the ring finger actually bled! As I type this, I have a callouse the size of Yorkshire on the end of it.

Let this be a lesson to all you young guns from this old codger. Don't stop playing your guitars. You have to go through the fingertip thing EVERY time!!!!

Dave.

Hey guys, I just found this thread while doing a Google search. It's great! I've been trying to learn guitar for a few years now, but recently (5-6 months ago) decided to do it right. I put my $79 eBay special to sleep, and picked up a spiffy new geetar. I've been going at it ever since. My callouses are very interesting creatures. I've built them up and lost them several times over the years of "trying" to learn. My most recent weirdness is that the callouses on my pointer and middle fingers started detaching, so I have these skin pockets. Very interesting indeed. I've been cleaning out the pockets carefully each night, since crud has been finding their way in there. I fear the only thing to do here is to carefully trim them and allow them to grow back correctly. Luckily I've managed to associate pain with pleasure in the case of this six-string, so I don't mind the skin rebuild periods. Just keep on playing, and the skin will keep on growing...

Sorry to revive a dead thread, but I've been having a problem as of late with my callouses. I looked through the rest of the posts, but I couldn't find anyone posting about the same probelm that I was having.

So, I've been playing for over nine years now and I've never really experienced any major problems with my callouses other then when I was first learning much like everyone else. Lately though I've been playing much more then usual, and sometimes I can play in upwards of 6 hours in a day causing my fingers great pain, but it's not on my actual callouses. Rather, where my finger and nail connect they start to rip apart from each other leaving me with fingers that won't stop bleeding. It's not so much the aspect of pain, I just can't get over getting blood all over my precious guitars.

What I was wondering though is if anyone else suffers from this problem, or if anyone could offer up a remedy for this annoyance.

My question is not so much about callouses, but it has to do with the tips of my fingers.
I have been playing (mainly electric) guitar for almost 40 years.
Since about a year I have a problem with the 'imprints' of the strings staying in my fingers for quite a long time.
Also, when I put some pressure on the tip of my fingers the imprint remains longers than before.
During a gig the tip of my index finger is starting to get sore.
It's just as if there's not enough 'meat' or moisture under the skin.
The doctor told me he knew nothing that could be done.
I have been applying different kinds of lotions and 'grease' to keep the skin smooth, but I was wondering wheter I'm not creating a very soft skin which won't be helpful for playing guitar as well.

Anyone have the same symptoms. Any advise on what can be done?

Thanks,

Dutch have you got cold hands too, and are you a smoker?

i have been playing bass for a good year or so now constantly, about 1-3 hours a day. So i have good callauses on my left hand (fretboard). I just learned slap-bass recently and after playing for a while i developed quite good calauses on my right too. the only problem is ive gotten two water blisters on my thumb and middle finger. I was wondering if i should pop them, and if that would enable me to get callauses quicker. if i shouldnt pop them, how long will it take to heal?