Tom, hows that old song go, "Your right, I'm wrong, and she's gone". It's a good thing my climin days are over because I'm a bad influence. I preach safety to new guys, but it's one of those do as I say, not as I do things. When I started climbing we would free climb with our skinnin line hanging from one set of D rings and the safety line hanging from the other. We hardly ever used a flip line or safety till after we were tied in at the top. I've never used a saddle with leg straps, and I have had it slide off my butt and leave me hanging upside down by my knees. I'm deaf as a door nail from years of feeding that old Asplundh 16 drum chipper and running those old Homelites with gutted mufflers. I used to use a snap on my climbing line till I threw it through a crotch and it smacked me in the face. Then I started tieing my climbing line to my D rings with 2 half hitches and using a taughtline hitch to ascend and desend. Have no idea how a figure 8 works. I do switch ends of my climbing line every time I use it to cut down on wear on one end. I do have a hard hat , but it's a big round one that came from an old "Oil Well Rigger".
Now after all that you can say Joe don't know beans about safety. But, that's how it was 30 plus years ago. And we did stress safety. I think we worked safer than a lot of crews I see now a days because we new our limits. I'm 4th generation in the business and the whole time my Dad was in business we had 1 comp claim, and that guy directly disobeyed me. He was a fairly good climber. We had just taken a big limb off a Silver Maple over a house. We roped out the top, and he blocked down most of the lead. He stopped for a smoke while I cleaned up some trash under the tree. Next thing I new he had come down, pulled his rope out and coiled it up. Then he looked up and said darn I forgot to flush off that stub. I told him I'd get a ladder and he said no I can reach it. He reached up on his tip toes and the tip of the bar barely went through the block. When it came off the block sat right on top of the saw and pushed it down, running wide open, across his calf. Bad cut, my fault, I could have stopped him. I could have thrown him off the job, but I let him do something stupid. I learned a big lesson. I also caused our only comp claim ever.
I'd like to work with you though. You pay attention and see what's going on around you. That's a very big part of being safe and very hard to teach, Joe.