My First Video

What I really really did not like was the brush and wood falling close to your ground guy who had his back turned feeding the chipper.
That is b.s. I would quit working for someone if they did that more than 1 time by accident. But there was no visual communication between you and your worker. To me that shows the true colors of your operation. You can one hand all day if you want. Cos its your body. But you cannot expose your employees to unsafe worksite conditions.

My 2 cents. I wasn't there. Maybe the helmet cam takes it out of perspective. But if I was feeding that chipper. I would have been pissed.
Thanks for making videos
 
I appreciate your input Chep. Believe me, I would never do anything to endanger my crew; one of them is my son and the other has been working for me for 10+ years. We do this all day every day, it's a rhythym thing. Even though it may not look that way in the video, each person is acutely aware of what the others are doing, especially me. If you were feeding the chipper, you would not be pissed, you would be pleased that you don't have to move the brush very far and that it comes down in regular intervals and manageable pieces that are mostly facing the right way. Most of all, you would quickly learn to trust me and know that I'm always watching out for you.
 
I thought the same thing as chep at first when I watched the video. However, after a couple minutes, it looked like the groundies were super vigilant and aware of what was going on and were constantly watching the climber/cutter. Looked like a smooth operation. Instead of sitting there yelling at each other back and forth, visual contact was made and pieces went down and gone.
 
Exactly! The three of us have been working together as a crew for nearly 7 years now. We're like a fine watch, no wasted motion and all the parts work together precisely.
 
That's the kind of thing that is very easy to misinterpret from a video..

On a little tangent, a bigger chipper and skid loader with grapple takes the issue of "piling on" out of the equation..
I'll make a mess, fill the drive with brush 8' high, and no one on the ground has to worry... the machine pulls it apart and stuffs it into the chipper with little or no help..

Even more fun is making the monster pile on purpose, then dropping the log right across it...

Still would like to know the reasoning behind the belief that one handing is "dangerous" from the bucket.. Makes sense that repetitive motion injury could be a problem. Other than that what could it be... kickback?? .. DOES ANYONE KNOW???

I do know one guy that took a 200t to the face from the bucket, said the saw wasn't cutting right... He must have been one handing... big strong guy... I think they tend to suffer from the illusion that they are strong enough to control the saw one handed.. I felt a saw start to kick back once, and realized no way anyone could control it with one hand, no matter how strong..
 
Danny,

You felt a saw kick back ONCE? Maybe its cause I am green as grass and all but I think I have felt kickback a few more times than once...

LOL
 
Ginko:

Hate to admit it, you just described my situation exactly. Finishing up a medium sized silver maple back in 2006. Just a few limbs near the gutter to go. Too big to let fall on the gutter, but not big enough to rope. From the bucket, I grabbed the limb with my right hand, started to cut with left hand. The saw wasn't sharp, and the branch sloped down toward my right hand. Saw skipped when it touched wood, and got my right thumb. Didn't hurt immediately, but I knew it was bad.

Cut to the bone and severed my EPL- the tendon that's visible when you place your palm flat on a desk and raise just your thumb. They actually had to make another incision in my wrist to find the tendon (which had retracted up my arm) to fish it back down and sew it back together. As I think about it, it kinda sucked.

Six weeks off, physical therapy, etc. Thumb still doesn't work like it should, but I'm lucky it works well enough.

Point is, it can and does happen. No excuses from me. But most who run buckets have made thousands of cuts. We know the risks, and we know how to avoid them. Sometimes we get stupid, cocky, lazy, tired, whatever. Human nature. I know this much: complacency will come to collect. (Especially if your saw is dull.)
 
Whatever your doing with trees it's good to have a thought cross your mind, is this safe? Like we double check a connection we also double check our positioning prior to a cut even in that bucket. You know the bucket got slippery with oil and you forgot or the sawdust and leaves got too deep. I spent my first season in a bucket and had some surprises up there. Those may go away with time. Biggest surprises were on the truck deck with oil spills, some hard landings.

Maybe I've become immune but I can't remember a one-hander smackdown here for the last 3 or more years. One person can really influence the group on something like that. We need to find the source.

With pratice a person could get good at one handed golfing but how good would you be? Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
 
Thanks for sharing, Bucknut. I've had a saw skip on a smooth bark, so I knew it was possible. Sorry to hear about your loss of thumb function. It could have been much worse.

Complacency is exactly the problem. When you get in a rhythm piecing out a tree, like you're "in the zone", that's when this kinda stuff happens, especially if you are taking shortcuts, no matter how "good" you are. One minute everything is happening like clockwork, the next there's blood everywhere.
 
once when one handing.. it was only the slightest bit of kickback, just enough to teach me how impossible any control would be with only one hand... I think big strong men have a false sense of control, cause its easier for them to handle the saw, and there is a greater tendency for them to one hand from awkward positions etc...
 
so true daniel i often have to violently supress the ideas that i am strong enough to stop kick back, or catch that piece, or move that log, etc, etc. with the kick back thing i always flash on a picture i saw in an old tcia newsletter. this guy was one handing a 200t and it kicked back while winding down and caught him in the eyesocket. looked awful. looked like a big guy, and he was smiling for the camera.
 
[ QUOTE ]
With practice a person could get good at one handed golfing but how good would you be? Put that in your pipe and smoke it.


[/ QUOTE ]

Funny you mention that, as a kid I caddied at a local golf course where a member actually did golf one handed. He wasn't a pro but still did alright. But that's tangential...


We have to look at the industry as a whole and consider what the implications are. One person's 30 yrs experience works out to about 60,000 man hours. Compare that to a Asplundh's yearly total of 60,000,000 man hours. One accident in that one person's 30 yr career is multiplied 100x in one year. That is costly.
 
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