stupidity stories

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What did the new guy do? Id be one hot cookie if someone did me that way. . .

sounds like the union boy attitude...i couldnt imagine someone taking my freshly sharpened saw and plunging it into dirt and thinking it was funny.. doesnt matter how long they have had the job, it still makes them a ####in ********** that needs their saw thrown down the hill into the river
 
45 min drive up a mountain gaining about 2000'. Unload everything, short hike in to start cutting and need to tighten chain... scrench is at the other end of the drive.
 
45 min drive up a mountain gaining about 2000'. Unload everything, short hike in to start cutting and need to tighten chain... scrench is at the other end of the drive.

This is the exact reason I have screnches, plugs and other tools in the truck box! That would suck and be frusterating!?:bang:
 
amen

... it still makes them a ####in ********** that needs their saw thrown down the hill into the river

I'm with you banshee. That's a toolbag maneuver. The spark plug gag is sorta funny, once you assume a sawyer should be a competent diagnostics man (and no harm comes to his equipment), but the wrecked chain? Down here in the South, I've seen eyes dotted for a lot less. Sounds like something a rich kid might do for fun...willful destruction of something perfectly good. That story belongs in this thread, for sure.
 
dumbest thing I ever did was try to cut a year's worth of wood with a Poulan 3416. :p

Seriously though, I dont think ive done anything too dumb - at least nothing Ive blocked from my brain! - with a chainsaw. Dont plenty of dumb things with other tools, mind you.

That said, I've certainly spilled my share of mix, oil etc.
 
Stories about doing something stupid...Which one? :laugh:

I have plenty of stupid stories...the one here I have posted before, here it is again for those who missed it the first time...

Ever had a day where you had good intentions, but the whole thing just went to heck in a hand basket anyway? Well, after a days’ work at our “other” job, there was still plenty of daylight left…so why not pack up and go get some more wood? Only thing is, too late for the help…it was going to be just me and Mrs. Bounty Hunter. Undaunted, we loaded up the big wood trailer and hitched it to the ’77 1-ton Chevy utility truck, and the splitter to Mrs. Bounty Hunter’s ’79 Chevy 4 x 4 shortbed.
Up we went to the Los Padres Forest, with 4 saws bouncing around in the trailer: ms220T, for limb’in and trim’in, ms260 Pro for small to medium wood, ms044 for medium to large, and ms660MAG for large to “darn that’s really BIG!”
The fire roads through the forest are rough and sometimes steep, but decent. Near the top of the pass we see a group of downed trees that looked good…except I had already passed them with the lead truck, and on a fairly steep downhill grade. “I’ll just back up” I said (First mistake…unless you count going out that afternoon, in general).
I was watching the trailer back up, and didn’t realize how close the truck itself was to the embankment…a vertical ledge of dirt and rock about 2 feet high. I steered the trailer away from the embankment, and the right rear tire of the truck went right into the ledge (mistake number two).
I was greeted by a load Whoosh and HISSING…A tire losing air FAST! and plenty of shouting by Mrs. Bounty Hunter.
Flat tire…Ah nuts…and this beast wears 36” x 15.5” x 16.5” tires…no room for a spare with the utility body (mistake number three).
But the Bounty Hunter has a backup plan, right? I have tire tools and a tube, plus an on-board compressor…”we will fix this right away!” I say, as I dig out the recycled ammo boxes that store the tools and tube. Guess what…the tube is gone…it’s not in the ammo box labeled “tube” (mistake number four).
“Remember the trip to the Kern river? Didn’t the Kimberly take a tube?” Oh great…now we’re in a fix. “Let’s get the trucks down somewhere level, and see what we can do” I say, while attempting to seem totally confident (while thinking: we’re screwed…)
I look at the tire…the valve stems broken off! “We Have spares!” I happily exclaim, and break out the tools. I exchange the stem, but the big tire is now totally pulled away from the bead of the rim, and needs to be inflated. I try all the tricks…ratcheting tie-downs around the tire, both of us pulling and pushing, but that heavy 10-ply just won’t mount with the wimpy compressor (mistakes five, six and seven).
“Okay…this isn’t working. We gotta take the tire down to the Flying J truck stop…the mechanics there can mount it”
So, we load up the tire and wheel in the ’79…but I don’t want to leave the saws, the trailer, and certainly not the splitter. There’s no one up on these mountains, but who knows? Solution? We loaded the splitter in the trailer with the saws and the rest of the gear, and took off down the mountain.
An hour later, at the Flying J, the mechanic said “Having a bad day? Well it’s about to get worse”.
“There’s a big cut in the sidewall of the tire…it can’t be patched” (mistake number eight, sort of. This actually fits better in the “We’re screwed” part of mistake number four).
Now its 8:00 at night…there’s nothing open…no where to get a replacement tire, especially one that size. “How are we going to get that stupid truck off the mountain?” I snarl, I thought for sure there was a spare tire and wheel at the ranch… (Mistake number nine).
Plus, no one we know has a 1-ton we could swap a wheel, even temporarily, to get the truck back.
Then, like the proverbial light bulb, an idea comes to me…”I know where there’s a wreaked truck off the road…been there for months…I think it’s a one-ton!”
Off we speed, and sure enough, one tire on the wreak is seemingly okay…at least it had some air, which was better that what we had. I get it off, and speed back up the mountain.
The bottle jack is too short to jack up the truck (ten mistakes!!????).
We still had the saws, so I fire up the 200T and cut an 8” round about a foot long to act as a jackstand to support the truck while the jack is reset.
Then realize we can’t put the “loaner” spare in the back axel…it’s got a Detroit Locker differential and different size tires would be a PROBLEM (mistake number…Shoot! Darn! I'm not counting these mistakes no more!)
So it’s like “Musical Chairs” switching wheels around to wind up with the spare in the front.
Air it up, and off we go. Down the mountain, it’s now almost midnight.
The next day, it was INSULT to INJURY…our son walks by the trucks, sees the single 8” round lying there, where I tossed it in after finishing with it as a jackstand, and says “You guys went out for wood and that’s all you got?”
 
Not Faster Than a Speeding Bullet

I know that Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, but I seem to think I am faster than an obvious bar pinching log. I can't tell you the number of times I know the log geometry screams pinched bar, but I think I am fast enough to pull out a microsecond before the bar pinches as the saw kerf closes to a paper thin slot. It's a good thing trees don't get pregnant.

Oh, and I've never owned a skil saw that didn't have its own power cord sawed off and taped back together.
 
I'm still not very happy about this. A couple years ago when I was starting out up in the tree, my brother had a freind who needed a big oak with horizontal leads out over the house.
I end up getting all of the 10 or so branches roped down nicely. Get down and eat lunch. I'm looking up at the tree that I should be done with, but there was a branch hanging within about 10' of the chimney, I had asked him about it and he said he doesn't care if I take it off or not.
Well I just have to go back up and take it off....
For some reason I thought it was far enough away from the house,about 30ft, but not far enough away from a window. I was supposed to jump it off the tree, but instead it peeled off, the branch went tip down, teetered back to the house, and a tree butt in the window... lesson learned
made $20 that day by the end of it all
 
The next day, it was INSULT to INJURY…our son walks by the trucks, sees the single 8” round lying there, where I tossed it in after finishing with it as a jackstand, and says “You guys went out for wood and that’s all you got?”



Why does that remind me of the line from the commercial? "... and all you brought was LIGHT BEER?"

:D
 
The vets on the crew just hated braggarts especially ones that come on the crew thinking they just the #### with a saw when in reality they could not cut their way out of a paper bag. Ditch Witching their chain was more of a humbling thing what we did the shut them up. Most that had that issue were the ones that cut firewood on the weekends and thought that was how to run a saw. PCT was a rude wake up call for them since they had to actually work all day and keep up with the rest of the crew. It took them a couple of weeks but reality finally hit and they got the hand of it.
Oh forgot to throw my dumb ass move in as well. I was falling some hazard trees in one of our campgrounds and leaned my brand new falling axe against the tree (offside) I was cutting on and while putting in the backcut I go and cut the handle in 1/2. Well this tree was a backleaner and I needed to get it lifted up with wedges so I beat like hell with my now shortened axe. Well squidword what did we learn today. Buy a axe holder for your belt so you don't cut your axe handle again.
 
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The vets on the crew just hated braggarts especially ones that come on the crew thinking they just the #### with a saw when in reality they could not cut their way out of a paper bag. Ditch Witching their chain was more of a humbling thing what we did the shut them up. Most that had that issue were the ones that cut firewood on the weekends and thought that was how to run a saw. PCT was a rude wake up call for them since they had to actually work all day and keep up with the rest of the crew. It took them a couple of weeks but reality finally hit and they got the hand of it.
Oh forgot to throw my dumb ass move in as well. I was falling some hazard trees in one of our campgrounds and leaned my brand new falling axe against the tree (offside) I was cutting on and while putting in the backcut I go and cut the handle in 1/2. Well this tree was a backleaner and I needed to get it lifted up with wedges so I beat like hell with my now shortened axe. Well squidword what did we learn today. Buy a axe holder for your belt so you don't cut your axe handle again.

:cheers: A fellow member of the "short handle club". There's probably a bunch of us in that. Also, the squashed lunch pail club and the smashed gas cans club.
 
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I was using my truck to pull 4x4 fence posts out of the ground with an army strap that's used to transport 105mm Howitzers via helicopter.
That strap would stretch a lot when you got a run at it, that made it great for getting stuck vehicles out of the mud but not so great for pulling fence posts out of the ground.
After pulling about 10 or so out I started having a little trouble with the last one, it just wouldn't pop out.
After getting about a 50' run at it, the post decided to let go. It went airborne from the end of the 100' strap to about 30' in front of my truck.
I jerked back into the truck when I saw it coming and felt the breeze along with getting hit on the arm with some dirt as it flew by.
I didn't pull any more out with my truck after that.

Another one is a recurring stupidity story: So I was grinding some metal Saturday and I got some of the grinding dust embedded in the lense of my eye, again. Gotta go get it dug out tomorrow.
Every time I go to the eye doctor is from something hitting my cheek, then bouncing off, hitting the inside of the glasses and hitting me square in the eye.
But it isn't all bad, my eye doctor is smoking hot.

I think I'm going to get some goggles for when I need to use that grinder.
 
Have to share this with you--on a church mission trip, a fellow adult sponsor (attorney) had the store guys stack 1,000# ready-mix concrete on the very back of a utility trailer. On the way back, trailer came off in a sharp curve and center-punched a car at a stop sign. Upon return, he asked what the weight of the trailer and load was, I said at least a ton. His response was, "gee, a ton doesn't seem like much 'till it gets away from ya!" What a proverb there!
 
A friend in town was drunk one night and ran out of wood in the house so he and his dogs go outside to split some and take in. His last trip to the house he noticed a lot of blood on the floor leading from outside to the wood stove. He finally started to feel something warm down his arm and saw two fingers missing. He ran into the kitchen to wrap a towel around his hand then went outside to find his dogs eating his fingers. He couldn't get them back so he's two fingers short. True story.
 
A friend in town was drunk one night and ran out of wood in the house so he and his dogs go outside to split some and take in. His last trip to the house he noticed a lot of blood on the floor leading from outside to the wood stove. He finally started to feel something warm down his arm and saw two fingers missing. He ran into the kitchen to wrap a towel around his hand then went outside to find his dogs eating his fingers. He couldn't get them back so he's two fingers short. True story.

I'd probably also be two dogs short.
 
A friend in town was drunk one night and ran out of wood in the house so he and his dogs go outside to split some and take in. His last trip to the house he noticed a lot of blood on the floor leading from outside to the wood stove. He finally started to feel something warm down his arm and saw two fingers missing. He ran into the kitchen to wrap a towel around his hand then went outside to find his dogs eating his fingers. He couldn't get them back so he's two fingers short. True story.

I guess John Bobbitt was lucky he didn't own dogs....
 
weird and stupid

Back in the day when all I had was an XL-12 I spent 20 minutes cranking on it with no start. I finally got tired of that and decided to check the spark plug. Somehow it had backed nearly all the way out.

Tightened the plug and it was back to cutting wood.

Funny you should write this. Just this morning I was seeing if the new plastic oiler drive on the 371 would correct the lack of oil (seems not to have fixed it) , but the saw would not start. I had it all apart last 2 weeks and had the parts stored in my tool box. Put it together last nite, but too late to start. So I pull the plug to see if somehow I shorted the mag, and the plug has no gap. Yes NO gap. HOw it got bent in the tool box is a mystery to me. I must have dropped it right on the electrode, I guess.
Pried it open and it started, but alas, no oil yet.
 
Well here is one from today. I go and try and adjust the high screw on my new Govt saw (Dolmar 7900) I caved and want to try somthing other than a stihl or a husky since I have ran those for the past 22 yrs. Well I cannot get the screwdriver to turn or grab any screw it just spins so I go tearing into the saw and what to I find a plastic plug on the outside and a metal pin on the inside blocking access to the high screw. WTF Dolmar if I spend $850 on a saw I would hope I could at least have access to adjust the thing damn. Sucks though I still have not got to run the thing yet. Sounds good though. :)
 
Well I did a doozy and it was just today! I shot a rifle in the house. I have been handling guns safely for 40 years and a chain of events led to me blasting the thing in the kitchen. The bullet went into the top of the bathroom door, shattered the hinge and sent a screw through a window and shrapnel marks on all the walls and ceiling. Part of the debris came out through another wall and blew a few holes in an oil painting. I am glad I was home alone. What a dumb thing. When I came in from the shop wife says so how did your day go? I said not very good... She said she was glad I was ok and was wondering what happened. I then said, "how did your day go?" She said, "I dropped a computer tower at the school and now it doesn't work." double bummer....
 
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