One handing the climbin saw.

Many climbers were taught to one hand the saw...it is something that Jeff was taught also and he reminds himself daily to use the two handed method! Good luck to you! And thank you for sharing your story - that took much guts to come clean with it! Wishing you a speedy and full recovery!!!!!!!!
 
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now THAT'S support! THAT'S the peergroup I belong to.

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This is what TreeBuzz, and specifically, Awakenings, is all about. The safe place to share so that bad examples can lead to good examples.

Get out your copy of Th Tree Climbers Companion and read about Jeff Jepson's close call.

This bag of salt water and calcium that w e walk around in is pretty fragile.

I hope that you have a full and speedy recovery.
 
I agree thanks for sharing and i hope it all works out . Sucks getting hurt on a job . I got a couple things though that are just eating me , do you mind if I ask you a few questions ? No ? cool !
you said ....
"The next cut was to be a small one. With two hands I began the cut into the wood which was about three inches diameter and not more than a few feet long. Halfway through i took my left hand off of the handle and began to reach over to grab the limb. As my hand crossed over the bar and spinning chain the tip reached a water sprout coming out of the far side. It jumped. What happened next is hard to describe. It happened within a flash."
now here is my question .

Why would you place your arm over top of the spinning chain ? You said you have been one handing for years . You nevEr Place your arm over your chain . Hold with the left throw with the right , hold with the right throw with the Left , never crossover , stupid , you 'll cut your self ( found that out , HUH? )

my next question ?

why all the panic ? first time you've been hurt ? If you are in a tree and get hurt and your reaction is to say f everybody on the ground , I'm hurt , than you need to deal with that . Sure you cut yourself with your chainsaw , but it wasn't because you were cutting one hand it was because you chose to place you opposite arm above the running chain , you got cut , tossed your saw , and recklessly bailed out of a tree .

You cut your hand , hang up your six hundred dollar saw , take your shirt off and wrap your hand up , slowly descend and go to the doctor . Whats the big deal ?

As soon as you heal do it again , don't cut yourself , don't throw the saw , stay in the tree and one hand your saw till you retire .

Any good one hander knows don't criss cross your hands . WTF

no more questions , but some advice , don't panic when your hurt , just makes things worse . relax , breathe ,.
 
Riggs thanks for the commentary, but u have to understand not everyone does everything just like u do.

I made the decision like i have many times previous. Im not sayin it was a good one, but it was a decision.

Ive worked on line clearance crews where we took the buckets THROUGH the power lines. Ive notched whole tops over power lines.

Ive done alot of stuff that one could call stupid, but for u to call me stupid... out of line. U dont know me, and u werent there.

Another thing... I didnt panic. My subconcious told me exactly where to throw that saw. If it werent for our training and experience that could have been alot worse. Keeping my cool quite possibly saved my life and possibly my buddy's.

Seems like ur a decent guy riggs but man... work on the delivery of ur message and maybe it will be received better.
 
Don't take it personal, If you read through the awakenings Riggs rips on just about everyone who posts their accident. He does have a point in that it is stupid to get hurt, I think you know that though.

My sincerest Thanks for posting, I hope your hand recovers fully, and you get through these hard times. I know that when I was recovering from my knee injury it was amazingly hard not to be depressed.

My dad, who had an awful fall from a ladder few years ago and is pushing 70 enjoys the fact that because he is recovering from a fall that had him in a wheelchair for 6 months, he now has the unique and exhilarating experience of growing younger.
The recovery process itself can be in a way rewarding and challenging. good luck.
 
treescaler,
Like bing says, don't take it too personally, riggs has an abrasive quality to him to be sure....If you take a step back, and consider all the other 'younger' folks that'll read his posts, it'll give them that gruff older mentor guidance that we probably all had.

I've never met him in person, but I've wanted to call him a 'virtual axxhole' several times.... but that was in the beginning, and now, I've begun to understand that he's just as unique an individual as I am... or any of us... I look forward to his posts, and consider what he has to say without getting caught up in the emotion of it. (always easier when it's not pointed at you!)

He's actually got a ton of wisdom if you read between the lines. So, I'm looking forward to actually meeting him in person one day.

Regarding this post, I thought he was actually kind of mellowing...! His last 4 sentences made a good impression on me. How we react in an emergency situation usually dictates the outcome. Irrespective of his deliver, I appreciate the message.... On that topic, if you like to read, pick up a copy of 'Deep Survival- who lives, who dies and why' by Laurence Gonzales.

Heal right, heal fast, get back into the trees!
Best regards,
Yours in Trees,
Mark
 
Thanks for sharing and really appreciate all the detail.. in order for the story to be a teaching experience, it has to have that kind of detail.

I particularly like X's point about staying out of the plane of the bar.. I one hand a lot, especially from the bucket. I have no problem doing it myself, but when I watch younger stronger climbers one hand from awkward body positions, its like fingernials on the chalkboard. Or when I see a climber one hand because he has miscut a notch and now needs to push as he finishes the cut, it really bothers me. Even of the odds are 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 10,000 that it will go bad, that will translate into a significant risk over time. And the downside, if something should go wrong, especially when the saw is high on the body, is huge. You can bleed out in 60 seconds if you hit a main artery.

Its also good to look past the one handing, at the bigger picture. Why was he one handing?? Not becasue HE needed to, but he was trying to let the groundman catch up. If there had been a third man on the job, he probably would have been using the lowering line. I dropped a limb years ago, that came inches away from maiming or killing a groundman, and I KNOW that would have never happened if there was a third man on the job. Ever since then, I've always considered a three man crew to be a safety issue.

Good luck with your recovery and you can never tell about these things.. Maybe in the grand scheme of things this injury set into motion a series of events that saved a life.. i.e., suppose you had worked those storms and ended up doing a job that was instead done by someone else.. that person might have been killed or injured on another job that day if he wasn't doing your job etc... We just never know.
 
First off, I agree with Riggs point.

One-handing: dangerous enough.

Reach over the chain to one-hand: You ASKED FOR IT!

I try to be nice but this is basic Day One training.

I hope you'll be OK treescaler, and I'm sure I'd be in awe of your skills.

But this was as stunned as pushing debris into a chipper with your foot.

Get away with it 99 times, and then...

Northwind
 
Let me add to my previous post by saying that not only was I trained to one hand an 020 but specifically to reach OVER the bar...not under it. And these climbers were considered to be some of the best. I want to throw up when I think of the thousands of times they cheered me on as I pushed a top over while cutting. We wore the "bar oil racing stripe" on the underside of our left arm like a badge of honor. That was the sign of a good climber. So glad they came out with the ms200t. So much easier to one hand...especially at face level. I know someone who put one in their mouth full tilt. It further kicked back off his teeth and blew the side of his cheek out in the blink of an eye. Just astonishing that it wasn't me.
 
So you cut yourself , throw your saw , impale your groundman in the chest , he drops dead, the other ground guy runs to help the, just thrown out of the tree chainsaw implaled groundman . He can’t help him , while in shock of what just happened , he hears this screaming and turns to look up and ol cut his hand lands on him , breaking his neck . The homeowner comes out of the house , and looks at the scene , sees two dead ground people and asks the guy with the saddle what his problem is , where as he replies , I cut my hand . It hurts ! how’s that for mellow ? need a band aid ?
- Hope you feel better . I didn’t grow up like you , your crew should have some toy key chain chainsaws and throw them at you everytime you get hurt . I do hope you heal well though …
 
thx for ur advice riggs, abrasive as it may be..

Thx for all the support and commentary! A great discussion that hopefully advances the industry.

And thank God for my training. If it weren't for the excellent arborists who preceded me, that accident would have been a lot worse. It wasnt just luck that got me out of the tree and to the hospital without anyone else being hurt... It was training.

Long live the safety meeting!!!
 
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