Share your close calls!

[Sprig]

Holey Carp!!! Nipples grow back???? Are they, like um, callus's (callusi?)? I never knew, silly me! Mindja, I haven't tried it out either and will probably not, sounds frikken painful.......
:monkey: :monkey:

Will do Smokin' when I gets it together, it was a pretty cool job, but very loud (when the boat was runnin' full bore, little teeny mufler about 6ft from your head, most time just idling along tho), and about as hairy as work gets (seriously no room for big errors on that one), you learn a lot about weights and momentum very quickly, and live 'light on your feet' (anyone who has run across sticks will know what I mean).

& off to da hay bales!

 

[TimberMcPherson]

I was cutting brush down on the back of a high sided trailer, the guy I was working with who was ex forestry hand just sharpened the 039 and handed it to me running. Unusually I put my hand through the chainsaw mitt before cutting down on the brush. The saw lept up in a heck of a kickback which was so hard it tapped my helmet brim (brake had stopped the chain), chain inches from my nose.

I looked at the chain and could see the rakers were gone, my good buddy had filed them off. He didnt know that the 039 as a brush cutter had to be tame, didnt stop me from throwing the saw in his direction. (didnt really want to hit him, hes an ex para and hard bastard.) I love those chainsaw mitts now!

 

[logbutcher]

Nipple Cutting !!!???

First we have the Piles sickies over in Firewood ---"I Loves My Woodpile" addiction, 12 Step sagas.
Now, the nipple cutters. " And, boys and girls, IT GREW BACK !!! Can you believe !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!opcorn: opcorn:
Will it never end...............................:spam: .

 

[chainsawchick67]

I was taking down some large oaks around my own yard 4 years ago when I built my house. One bad leaner was too tall, and for sure would hit the house.
As I thought about climbing it to top it out I did some "Kentucky Windage" measurement from the ground and declared it was far enough away. My wife disagreed. I cut it anyway. As it dropped I became religious in a big hurry, for sure I had messed up. The very tip of the tree came down and put a scratch in the end cap of the gutter! Six more inches would have smashed a hole in my new house. Of course I told the wife I planned it that way, You saw me measure!

. . . . .I know of 2 good close call stories. one, just like this. The boyfreind it out back, dropping a tree, I go out to watch. He is doing his 'measurments', gets down to the tree, it starts to fall, and all i hear is "HOLY $h!T!!! That could have been BAD!!" :bang: Yea, it lands 10 freekin inches from our house that we nearly just moved into. I was almost an UN-happy camper!!


Story 2: A buncha guys GTG. The people who were supposed to supply the wood didnt show, so we decide to cut down some trees outta the woods and use them to ct cookies. . . . to make a long story short. One of them ended up catching his JEANS and ripped a hole in them, still not sure how he missed his leg!!??

 

[ehgauss]

Close Calls

I had two close calls that are more memorable among many. In the first, I was skiing on the Olympic slalom trail at Whiteface Mountain while watching my kids who were racing in an NCAA Division 1 giant slalom on the next trail. I had my bindings set light and skied out of the skis at the top of the icy trail. I skidded/slid/tumbled down that trail for about 1/3 of a mile by the map. In trying to stop myself, I tried to dig my boot into a rut, and was going too fast and blew my left knee. Drove a standard shift Chev pickup 125 miles home without using the clutch. (When stopped, put it in low and hit the starter (had disabled the clutch starter interlock long before), and then shift carefully between gears by easing off on the accelerator until the gear lash goes from positive to negative, then as the engine slows, slip it into the next gear, etc.) By the way all of the racers had a good laugh when this big old blue bomb tumbled down the trail.

The other was a chainsaw story. I had a three-trunk red oak I wanted to take down in my woodlot. Each trunk was 12"-14" dbh. Dropped the first one ok, but the other two had branches that crossed and would have caused a twist when either was felled. I could reach one of them by standing on the fresh stump, so reaching up with my old XL12 cut it off, and kept my concentration on the saw as it was coming down to idle. Well, the branch (about 4" diameter) hit the ground and bounced back and hit me square in the mouth. I thought I had been tagged by Mike Tyson in his heyday. I remember throwing the saw away from me as my peripheral vision closed down. Came around on all fours on the ground. Went to see a dentist, and ever since, for the first time in my life, my (new) teeth were all the same color, all the same length, all pointed in the same direction, and when they bother me I take them out and put them on the window sill. Gene Gauss

 

[shawn.m]

OK I just remembered another one from growing up on the farm.

Not so much close call as a funny brush story.

we were cleaning out our 1/2 mile long lane of all the overhanging brush.

My dad would cut off the brush and my two brothers would grab the brush and toss it in the pickup truck. Where I would smash it down- I was the heaviest of the three boys :jester: . Anyway we get the bed filled up and decide to fill it about another foot or so before dumping it. I start crossing some of the branches to the point where i can see the bed sides.

We get to the decided point of a foot or so above the bed. As I go to smash down the last branch I step on the end of the branch where I think the bed sides are. Now remember that I said I couldn't see the bed sides? I actually stepped about a foot out from the bed side. My left foot slipped off the brush pile and down to the ground. Now this was on a 71 F250 with overloads, so my left foot went down about 3 feet while my right foot stayed up on the brush pile. Completely ripped my pants in half at the crotch from the zipper to the back side up to the pockets.

I am sitting there embarrassed while my Dad and 2 brothers are just laughing as hard as they can at the sight of me with one foot on the ground and one 4 feet in the air with my pants ripped completely open.

 

[Rudy M.]

I've had too many close calls to count on dirt bikes an bicycles. A couple of times I don't even rememeber the crash, and sometimes I saw it coming, thought "this is gonna leave a mark" and then sort of black out and wake up a half hour later. Fx clavicle, ribs, hand, ribs, blown knee. I now stay on the ground and off the MX tracks and ride single track in the woods--more fun and more relaxing for me at age 51. The older you are the longer it takes to heal! If you ride MX--there is no excuse not to wear neck protection, especially now with the Leatt neck brace and soon the Alpinestar brace. EVS may have one soon too.

So the swelling goes down in my knee but it is still tricking out, but I gotta get the winter's wood cut. I put on my right knee brace under my jeans. I was cutting up a tree top that was on the ground and got careless and must have rested the saw on my right leg as the chain was coming to a stop. Jeans were cut but not my skin and I was able to file out the mark on the aluminum of my DonJoy knee brace that went over the top of my thigh! Later that same winter I put a nick in the left thigh of my arctic Carhart bibs--but it didn't even go through the inside liner. Saw both times was a Homelite 360--no brake.

I have two new 2007 Stihl saws now and brand new Stihl chaps, a Stihl helmet, good gloves and nice boots. Life is too short to skip on full protection!

 

[DGG]

I was working on the ground with a chainsaw near an unseen yellow jacket borrow/nest. I got stung a couple dozen times turning off the saw and running away like the blazes with yellow jackets in pursuit.

I came back later and dosed the yellow jacket nest hole with Chloradane pesticide. I pumped about a gallon of mix down the hole. The nest must have been 4' square (or more), as the after some time the ground slowly settled a little where it had been. I could hear them all buzzing underground as I poured the Chloradane down the nest hole.

The way I thrashed around getting stung I'm surprised I didn't drop the saw and cause serious damage.

 

[spacemule]

Sprig, you're saying that you got off of the boat with it still pushing and ran across a bundle of logs in the water to unband them? That sounds dangerous as hell! Was that the correct procedure?

 

[RaisedByWolves]

Holey Carp!!! Nipples grow back???? Are they, like um, callus's (callusi?)? I never knew, silly me! Mindja, I haven't tried it out either and will probably not, sounds frikken painful.......

Painfull? Very!


Grow back? Like the day I were born.



Just checked, theres a lil light colored discoloration, but the shape is there.



Ill post pics for $2 per peek or $10 for a one month subscription.

 

[Jumper]

I was groundman for my boss Victor who had climbed a maple to do some pruning. Might add it was a pretty cold winter day with about 2 feet of snow on the ground, so footing was an issue to begin with.

I was pulling hangers out of the tree with the pole pruner and gave a stubborn one a pretty good tug, it fell as did another one I did not even see. The latter swung down and hit me butt on right in the forhead of my hard hat sending me flying into a snowbank. At the very least I would have had a nasty bruise had it not been for my hardhat, which I retired as it cracked. Might add it was one of those newer hats with the styrofam line for side impacts, dunno if that made a difference, but needless to say any hat I have bought since has been the best available.

Made me a believer in hard hats then and there, which is why I really dislike the POS one they issued me here with the company logo, there are better ones out there they just cost more, which is surprising as this company bend over back wards to provide us with all our PPE. Funny I just thought of this whole above story last week as I think I pissed off a couple of linemen in my layup yard who were not wearing their hardhats-to get into the mine here full PPE is required, steel toe boots, gloves, hard hat, glasses, high vis clothing, I don't mind enforcing the policy in the least.

I also had some fun times in my over 800 freefall and static line parachute jumps but only one reserve ride.

 

[Sprig]

Sprig, you're saying that you got off of the boat with it still pushing and ran across a bundle of logs in the water to unband them? That sounds dangerous as hell! Was that the correct procedure?

Yes, that is the procedure and I'll try and explain a bit better.
The lift system into the mill is called a jack-ladder, not many around now and the one where I worked was eventually replaced by a bundle lift (Peco I believe they're called), the straps were cut on the lift itself, then the whole schmear goes up onto a landing deck with moving chains to be untangled by a Prentice grapple and logs are fed one-by-one from there.
On the old bucket ladder there is a 70ft bridge (5ft walkway) with controls for the lift and a guy or two stands there and feeds the logs with pikepoles, low tide you are almost on top of 'em, high tide around 15-20ft. This is called 'the slip'. The logs are lined up underneath by the boat (idealy) untangled by then and the line is 'gently' pushed in. With the boat running (trust me you do not take it out of gear if you leave it or it'll leave you, swimming, not fun), I'd hop out and run across the logs and grab the 'holder', a hand cranked drum winch with about 100' of rope and a 50lb boom chain, then run it back to the boat and plop it in, the guys on the slip can then pull the line of logs in with the winch while the boatman goes for another bundle.
The boatman breaks a bundle out of the boom then you line it up sideways to the slip. With everything still moving towards the line of logs you hop onto the bundles and break the straps (one at a time, there are usuall 2-3) and hang them on the boat (everything still moving towards the slip), using an axe for chokers to break the dogs, or with a gas cutter if they are crimped cables.
When the last cable comes off everything moves very fast from there, the bundles begin to break up and you are running/dancing on rolling (often in different directions), emerging logs back to the boat before it gets pushed away and starts off down the briney, which can leave you stranded, swimming, or worse (then you have to use another boat to go get the one that got away), and yes, I've gone in a few times as well as done some flying leaps for the boat and ended up hanging off the side (boat still moving of course), also dropped more than a few cables and axes, and at least 3 cable-cutters (around 400$ a shot, no happiness there) over the years. The boatman wears chalked (pronounced 'corks', dunno why) boots, earmuffs&plugs, life-vest, hardhat (optional until the last year or so), and what ever clothing is need per the weather (the side-winders have a removable cab which is generally, um, removed). Believe me the danger keeps you sane but most of us were a bit nutty anyway and few days went by without something interesting happening (read 'close calls'). The guys feeding the slip (which I also did on and off for several years) had to be on their toes all the time too as many times logs would come tumbling down the ladder, smashing the chain buckets, knocking off other logs, wiping out the bridge (at least 4 times in as many years), we had quite a collection of bent and mangled pikepoles.
Anyway, I'm blathering a bit nostalgically here. The boats are kept in gear so they don't get pushed away, there are spikes all down the bow and the winder usually sat at about 45degrees to the raft, sometimes it'd get shoved away and with the steering turned it'd (hopefully) circle around to where you could grab it again before the logs spread out too much and it was time to run for the dock or go swimming.
Most of the guys I worked with are still good mates, we were a pretty tight bunch as few others could really understand what we did out on the chuck.
I left the mill after 10 years (almost 20 years ago now, yikes) as I didn't like the jobs I was given after losing my booming ground position to a person with higher seniority and it was time for some changes in my life anyway.
That be it fer now, and as I said, I'll get some pics up of the mill when I find them.



Serge

 

[John Ellison]

Serge is right, it is everyday practice to leave the boom boat in gear, pushing against the raft as you work on it.

:biggrinbounce2:
A boom boat has no rudder, the prop will turn a full 360 deg. A wide open full circle turn will stand the boat on end and make it act like a bucking horse. You had better hold on.

 

[stihlaficionado]

When I was in my mid 20's in Florida...wearing just shorts, no chaps, using an old poulan. After the cut I was idling the saw but allowed it to drop too far down, right onto my right thigh. Now that saw did have an agravating habit of a rotating chain at idle. You'd fix it and I quess it would vibrate out of whack and it would do it again. Another scar to add to the hundreds.

 

[Sprig]

Serge is right, it is everyday practice to leave the boom boat in gear, pushing against the raft as you work on it.

:biggrinbounce2:
A boom boat has no rudder, the prop will turn a full 360 deg. A wide open full circle turn will stand the boat on end and make it act like a bucking horse. You had better hold on.

Yup, thanks John, exactly. I've stood them up (near 80 degrees!) with the prop outta the water! I should add that these boats are actually 'pulled' as the prop is near the front in a spiked cage, basically under the driver! If you saw one on ground you'd probably wonder how the heck they float (about 8-9ft from the bottom of the cage to the rail, about 1-1/2 freeboard).
(this is a 4 tonne steel boat), piroetted them at 10 knots, swung around to a dead stop & lifted the bow outa the water to smash a tangle, good fun!
WOOOO-HOOO!!! Ride 'em donkey!!!!

:rockn: :rockn:

 

[Wood Hick]

Find those pics Sprig!

I am loving your posts about that boat, I gotta see the pics! Sounds like you loved the job, and who wouldn't? Logging in the PNW and Canada has always
intrigued me. So much bigger scale and different. I remember flying out of Seattle in 1991 headed for Alaska and looking down on huge blocks of clearcut. It looked like perfectly square bombs went off, not a twig standing!

 

[DGG]

Yes, that is the procedure and I'll try and explain a bit


Serge

Great post! Thanks.

I read it three times and think I'm just now starting to understand it. I think this ranks up there with King Crab fishing as the most dangerous job.

 

[KMB]

Yup, thanks John, exactly. I've stood them up (near 80 degrees!) with the prop outta the water! I should add that these boats are actually 'pulled' as the prop is near the front in a spiked cage, basically under the driver! If you saw one on ground you'd probably wonder how the heck they float (about 8-9ft from the bottom of the cage to the rail, about 1-1/2 freeboard).
(this is a 4 tonne steel boat), piroetted them at 10 knots, swung around to a dead stop & lifted the bow outa the water to smash a tangle, good fun!
WOOOO-HOOO!!! Ride 'em donkey!!!!

:rockn: :rockn:

That job sounds like something I would like to try... . As others have already mentioned...thanks for the stories and info of your past job.

Kevin

 

[turnkey4099]

15 or so years ago....
Ya ever drive a vehicle with a manual transmission with the use of ONE (left) foot?
QUOTE]

Back in '86 a big crash while racing motocross left me with a broken left arm, with a cast that went above my elbow and my arm bent in an "L". I drove my 4-speed Z-28 with just one useable arm for 6 weeks. I'd say driving a stick with just one foot would be a little more difficult than one handed though !

Matt

IMO anyone using a stick shift should learn how to shift without the clutch. Same a double clutching a non-synchro tranny. It isn't hard but it does take some practice and a good understanding of the double-clutch procedure.

Last year I was on the way out to the wood patch in the F150, came up to stop sign out in the boonies (why not a yeild there, basically two gravel roads). Heard a bang as I came out of gear and clutch went to the floor with no resistance. A bit of checking showed that there was no connection between the peddle and clutch any more. Shut off motor, into granny, starter and moving. Back to the house over back roads sss(15 miles) to stay off the highway with no problem other than planning how to do it with no stops. Only near mishap was as I pulled up to the garage and habit took over, Forgot I needed to turn off the engine to stop. Almost went through the door.

Of course I learned to drive in a 34 chev 1 1/2 ton crash box. I still practice regularly on any stick I drive. It is a nice emergency fall back.

Only close call with a saw...well I did put a knick in the toe of my boot way back when and didn't know until I took it off...was with a pole pruner (non-power). Standing in the bed of the PU, reaching way up, cut finished and branch came down like a spear instead of falling over. Butt caught me on my right cheek just under the eye. One really bloody mess but no stitches somehow.

Now close calls with no damage? Lots of them, most due to stupidity while falling trees, things that make you say, "hmmm that could have gone bad" later

Harry K

 

[sILlogger]

a few close calls of mine

lets see....

laid a wide open 395 husky across my left knee cap on a brand new pair of chaps when it was raining one day and i slip down the hill as i was turning loose a big beach tree....

ive had several trees chase me when they fell and landed on a ledge and kicked backwards as they slid down hill, have actually hoisted my self up and then and road the but of them before, dumb thing to do but just sorta do it out of instinct.

was cutting a white oak prolly about a 4' tree. and it had stump rot ( was hollow for the first few feet of the butt) side bore hinge cut it(left 2 ears on the corner of the notch) and turned it loose....but since the tree was hollow one of the hinges started to split the tree.....as it was splitting the mini-barberchair picked the butt of the tree up 6-8 feet and then the hinge broke, lunging the 4' white oak right back at me, once again i turned tail, put one hand on the butt of the tree and road up on it....never fun

just yesterday i threaded the needle on a red oak in between a high line transfer power line, had about 6"s to spare, the line moved from the wind of the tree falling

got in a hurry one time tryin to stay ahead of the skidder(really short drag) and cut a 3' red oak that another top had been laid down around it, the tree caught the top and rolled the whole thing over on top of my head, right down on top of my hard had, went down the back on my neck and right shoulder, slammed me to the ground and just about pinned me down, still got some of the scars

had several limbs fall down out of trees or bust tops out of trees(grape vines are great for this-do everything u can to cut them before u turn the tree loose) and have then brush me or limbs hit me pretty good, have had my hard had knocked off a few times because of this.

these are just a few of the things i can think of right away that ive had happen in the woods....many others from loggin and other dumb things ive done between racing and riding motorcycles, 4 wheelers and just being stupid. alcohol was never involved, i promise