My hands and feet have been abused so much that I basically ignore pain or don't feel it at all. This has it's advantages, but also its disadvantages (for example I once held onto the bot part of a soldering iron, but I didn't know until a few seconds later when I turned my head and looked.
Much of this is due to dead skin (finger gripping side and palms) or deadened nerves (top of my fingertips). I get the latter from my dad; we have this bad habit of picking at skin and/or cuts on our fingers, making them worse and putting our fingertips into a vicious cycle. As a result, at least one of my fingers starts spontaneously bleeding at least once per day. It's kind of annoying when you're trying to do math and you've got blood smeared on your math book... :/
However, this (combined with the dead skin) is helpful in robotics. I can handle hot pieces of metal (almost up to boiling temp of water) as well as sharp ones (picking metal out of drill bits or grabbing the loose sharp shavings from the drill bit while the drill press is still on - generally not recommend though) without too much difficulty or pain. It's also a lot of fun to freak out people by handling bandsaw and hacksaw blades with my bare hands (sharp side, of course).
usually the sharper a knife is, the more painless the cut
Tell that to paper, lol.
