In fact, he only remembers one incident - probably because it was a good learning experience about keeping digits out of the way.
"Ooh, there was that time I shot a nail through my finger with a nail gun and ended up in A&E. I remember that - that was a wee bit embarrassing.
"It’s lucky my brain is not in my thumb."
The 65-year-old Cook Brothers Construction site manager said if that was the case, he may struggle to remember anything about his five decades-long building career.
Mr Jory said he still had vivid memories of his first day as an apprentice carpenter on a construction site in Dunedin.
"I was 15 years old, nearly turning 16. We were building state houses up in Concord.
"We’d put the foundations in, put the floors down, put the frames up, pitch the roof, put the windows in, and we’d get contracts of half a dozen houses at a time.
"It was pretty daunting, to be honest. You know, a young 15-year-old, you’re pretty green when you walk on to a building site with guys that have been working for many years.
"There was definitely a bit of a hierarchy system and I had to learn my place in it pretty quickly."
And he was surprisingly quick to work his way up that ladder.
Part of it had to do with a crisis of confidence, just a few years into his career.
He had some self-doubts about his abilities in construction and started dabbling with the idea of becoming a police officer instead.
"That never panned out though, because I was doing some work for a guy and I built his house more or less by myself when I was still very young.
"And then when I had finished it, I sort of thought, ‘Well, if I can do this by myself, I can make a go of it."’
He said it helped him realise he was good at what he was doing, and it gave him the confidence to go out into business on his own at the age of 23.
He ran the business for 30 years and won several Master Builders House of the Year awards, and was president of Registered Master Builders Otago.
Then, in 2017, he started a new chapter when he took up an offer from Cook Brothers Construction to become a site manager.
Some of the more recent highlights of his job have been working on the redevelopment and earthquake strengthening of the University of Otago Consumer and Applied Science Building, and the Pathway and English Language Centre on the corner of Clyde and Union Sts.
"They were really quite fun jobs, and it’s nice to be able to say I worked on those buildings.
"The Pathway and English Learning building is where some foreign kids come to upgrade their English skills, and when you go in there and see all those kids coming in to do their learning in this new environment, it’s quite rewarding."
These days, his job is a little bit more office-orientated, which was allowing him to continue work, despite reaching retirement age, he said.
"I’m more or less managing construction sites.
"My role has changed from swinging a hammer 24/7, to telling people where to swing their hammer, really.
"I still really enjoy the environment that I’m working in with Cook Brothers, so I’m going to box on for a few more years."
Mr Jory was delighted when Cook Brothers staff gathered recently to hold a celebration of his remarkable milestone.
