On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:18:41 -0400, "Wild_Bill"
wrote:

A while back, a friend gave me a blood sugar test kit, and a box of lances.
The lances are similar to a hypodermic needle point, mounted in a plastic
holder.
Using them under a magnifier lamp makes easy work of extracting fine metal
shards for me.

Since these things are really sharp, they work much better at getting fine
metallic splinters out when a little cutting is required.

These things are so sharp that you don't want to have an uncontrolled or
unanticipated movement of the hand that you're holding the lance with.
I don't know how much they cost, because I haven't used up the full box that
was in the kit.

My old standby used to be the tip of a new, cleaned utility knife blade. The
small Exacto knife blades have worked sometimes, too, if they're really
sharp.
Some times, ya just gotta excavate some flesh to get to the shard.

Both of these methods work much better for me than an ordinary sewing
needle.

WB
.........


There _are_ some advantages to being a diabetic :-)

Couple of months ago I used part of the collection of used up disposable
syringes and needles to repair a crack in the house wall by injecting PVA glue
into the crack at 1/8" intervals. Used 40 syringes up by blocking up/wrecking
the needles. There was a plentiful supply since I save them up to melt them
down to avoid getting lethal bits of stainless steel into land-fill.

Used to run my Mamod steam engines on industrial methylated spirits provided
by the British NHS. Kept the syringes in boiled water to give me more steam
engine fuel G


Mark Rand
RTFM