Tie in Twice Stupid

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yep but I got tossed off a spar the other day and the flip line wrenched my back pretty good. Quite uncomfortable!

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Use your front Ds or Bridge to attach the flipline to, and you will dissipate the weight evenly between the back support and leg loops/batten seat/butt strap.

Having a locked system at your Side Ds is a throwback to the days of the old lumberjacks. Be adaptable, when distmantling a spar I am tied into my front sliding Ds with both climbing line and flipline. This allows me to get higher above my cutting zone enough so that I am not cuttin in line with my face, and have better control of the saw.

It also means I am not straining my back. It takes time to get used to.

There is also a major safety issue with having you flipline locked onto your side Ds. When you take a top out the stem could split, pulling you into the stem and crushing your insides and spine, this has happened before to climbers. Not just on spar either but on large horizontal branches. i think people should stop this idea of a locked mecanical device on one of your side Ds as it forces you to always use it that way instead of moving to your front Ds in dangerous situations.

When you are tied into your front Ds or the bridge you have moved your self outside the loop. When you are tied to your side Ds with your Flipline you are part of the loop.
 
In right ranges i like dropping bodyweight back to impact to opposing side at same time as load is impacting; to give more inline force balance delivery to spar with the ballast of bodyweight impact to counter load impact.
 
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This allows me to get higher above my cutting zone enough so that I am not cuttin in line with my face, and have better control of the saw.



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important point, it's common to see a lot of guys make a face and back cut that's a foot over their head, they're reaching up onehanded to make the cut and get the crap beat out of em, much safer to be cutting at your mid section between chest and navel, IMO.

jp
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really, how many people have died cutting their rope? If the number is significant, then I'd change my opinion.

And if you say even one death is too many. Yeah I agree we don't want to lose a single person, but come on...

Kickback? Never seen my 020 or 200T kickback yet, 14yrs+ - years climbing. It could happen if I tried really hard though.

Really, lets take 200 climbers and 200 homeowners. And if we could examine their life for like 30 years.

Do you think it is more likely one of the climbers will cut their climbing line in those 30 yrs. or is it more likely one of the homeowners will fall in their bathtub or say down their stairs?

I think it is more likely a homeowner will fall.

If you agree, then should we all have a harness in our showers to protect us from falling?

Or should we have one of those "old-people" stair glide chairs that we can seatbelt ourselves in and ride up and down the stairs safely.

I tried to look up statistics on tree care accidents. And didn't find exactly what I wanted.

here's three to compare:

(on the next post)
 
Tree Care--Landscapers---Construction trade

event:

Total fatal--60 -------109 ------- 890
transporta --3 ------- 57------- 197
assult acts--0 ------- 9 ------- 17
cont. w/ obj-22 -------18 ------- 185
falls --19 ------10 ------ 342
Ex harm sub--16 ------13 -------126
fire/exp. --0 ------0 ------- 23

The catagories where: Total all fatalities, transportation incidents, Assults and violent acts, contact with objects and equipment, Falls, Exposure to harmful substances or environments, fires and explosions.

This was for the year of 2005.

Would be nice to see the details of Falls for the tree care incidents.
 
In my analysis of the OSHA data, it was just over 6% that died because of cutting their single tie in point with a chain saw.

According to Dr. John Ball, we had 174 fatalities for 2005. I don't have the complete breakdown yet, but the rate is a little less than 50/100,000.
 
i think of it as kinda wilde & crazy enough to hang up thar by a 1/2" thread. Running powerized cutting equipemnt around the thread, while dangling by the thread as somewhat worse. Tying in Twice, forming a failsafe protocal; that is to take clean, professional command of the situation.

2nd tie in also giving much more stability if not from same diretion as primary tie in; and that as a backup shouldn't be on same route to you or support for broadest coverage. Especially noticeable when you can sit back secured and stabilized in a kinda "V" seat. IMLHO; we have just neutralized 2 major force in the equations of possibilities: Direction & Stability(and thereby it's opposite instability).

So to me the 2nd tie in gives me a FailSafe strategy; and Stabilized, single direction hang that reduces chance of having to use the FailSafe part of the strategy. So the lack of a lanyard etc. in most situations; makes it more likely to need the 2nd tie in you don't have!
 
The rate of fatalities is more like ~35/100,000 tree workers. The difficulty in this ratio is not the number of fatalities, it's knowing the number of tree workers (tree workers have been subsumed into landscape services in the census).
 
TMW,

here's the information I found. Yes, it looks like your 170 number is combining Landscapers with Tree Trimmers/Pruners.

Click on this link to see it, interesting.

http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0209.pdf

Go to page 5 to see the tree trimmers and landscapers.

6% of them cut their line!!!!! If that's true, that's high and I guess a rule should be made. Where is information? Since you said 174 died in 2005 in Tree Care, maybe your 6% figure is wrong too.
 
I thought about this talk as I worked today. We had 2 good size maple removals, rigging most of them. 3 small pine removals and trimmed one large silver maple.

I paid attention to how often I tied in twice. I actually do it quite a bit on removals. 95% of those cuts I was tied in twice. If the cutting is anywhere near my climbing line, I definitely have the lanyard on too.

Rules bother me I guess, cause you can't say, "do it this way all the time". There's always too many unique senarios.

Like if I had to trim/ thin out a huge thick nasty bradford pear (callery pear). There's no freakin way I'm going to put in two climbing lines. Hard enough to work with one. PLUS, there's no way I'm going to put a lanyard on for every cut. I might make 150-200 cuts. Most of them with my arm extended way out and no where near the climbing line that is on the oposite side of my body, probaby 3 to 4 feet from the saw! Maybe my saw is so far away from my line cause I'm using ONE HAND (oh no!) when making so many little limb trimmings. If you guys really put a lanyard on and use two hands on every cut.... I can't imagine how long it takes you to trim a thick tree.

What about this thought on your two climbing line suggestion. I think you might get more people killed using that method. Here's why: I haven't known of anyone that had cut their climbing line (I know they are out there), but I have heard and known people that forgot to pull their climbing line out of a spar or leader and dropped that material with their line still in it. There are more deaths because of this right? (just going by how many times I've heard this). Now picture this, you have someone using two lines. Their mind isn't on exactly what they are doing, and they remove one line before they make the cut. This satisfies their need to remove their line and they forgot to remove the second line. Bye bye climber...

On the removals today. We had a lot of cranking on the LD and a lot of big long swings of the material to other trees. I had to really pay attention to my one climbing line. Two would have been pretty much impossible, asking for a swinging peice to grab a line and yank me good.

just my thoughts...
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TMW,

here's the information I found. Yes, it looks like your 170 number is combining Landscapers with Tree Trimmers/Pruners.

6% of them cut their line!!!!! If that's true, that's high and I guess a rule should be made. Where is information? Since you said 174 died in 2005 in Tree Care, maybe your 6% figure is wrong too.

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X,

The number, 174, came from Dr. John Ball, who is looking closely at the fatality data. He is taking a closer look at the BLS numbers and I actually trust his numbers moreso than what they report.

ANSI Z133.1 -2006
6.3.8 Arborists shall use a second point of attachment (for example, lanyard or doublecrotched climbing line) when operating a chain saw in a tree, unless the employer
demonstrates that a greater hazard is posed by using a second point of attachment while operating a chain saw in that particular situation. Using both ends of a two-in-one lanyard shall not be considered two points of attachment when using a chain saw.
 
ANSI Z133.1 -2006
6.3.8 Arborists shall use a second point of attachment (for example, lanyard or doublecrotched climbing line) when operating a chain saw in a tree, unless the employer
demonstrates that a greater hazard is posed by using a second point of attachment while operating a chain saw in that particular situation. Using both ends of a two-in-one lanyard shall not be considered two points of attachment when using a chain saw.
-------------------------------
Thought I'd post that, just in case no one has seen it posted in this thread the 100 times so far.

:)
 
I realize the importance of two tie in points and I respect ANSI Z133. However, I have been nailed by the piece that I have been cutting quite a few times. That might be because of a poor choice in cuttin, the ground guy not letting it run etc. that my instinct is to be able to fly away from where I am cutting. Like, if your ground guy doesn't let it run and it swings back into you and your tied in to your lanyard it sucks. I know this sounds bad but it has happened to me a enough times that now I often look at a limb and make a sub-concious risk calculation.
ie. this limb might hit me (most likely it wont) vs. I might cut my rope because of a freak kick back occurence. In ten years I have yet to experience kick back with my climbing saw. I am not saying it can't happen but...

It is not uncommon at all that I really value the ability to fly away. Maybe this is a bad subliminal side affect of having been smacked by poorly controlled or miscalculated limbs a whole lot more than I have come close to cutting my rope with my saw. Maybe I have an irrational fear of being bucked in sometimes. Maybe its not irrational. Honestly, I am not sure if i am making the correct risk calculations in these situations. A good thing about treebuzz is that it causes me to think about these issues a little harder

I have cut a suprising amount of rope, at least 1/3, with my handsaw. I was not bucked in twice, trying to cut my way through a cluster fcuk, moving haphazardly with my saw out of the scabbard and switching hands. Very scary, very sad as well for it was a fairly new line.
A climber here in Detroit, William Carter, did cut his line over the summer and was killed, so I know that it is something that happens. I am not sure of the details.
 
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Like if I had to trim/ thin out a huge thick nasty bradford pear (callery pear). There's no freakin way I'm going to put in two climbing lines. Hard enough to work with one. PLUS, there's no way I'm going to put a lanyard on for every cut. I might make 150-200 cuts. Most of them with my arm extended way out and no where near the climbing line that is on the oposite side of my body, probaby 3 to 4 feet from the saw! Maybe my saw is so far away from my line cause I'm using ONE HAND (oh no!) when making so many little limb trimmings. If you guys really put a lanyard on and use two hands on every cut.... I can't imagine how long it takes you to trim a thick tree.

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Personally that is what my hand saw is for. Specially for a bradford pear where most of my cuts are 2 inches and under, I usually don't even bring a saw up them. For thick trees like neglected pin oaks, I use my hand saw to clear a good portion on the way up then do the full pruning on the way down.
I really isn't all that hard to follow the rules most of the time. But I guess that I have been doing it since I started climbing so it has just become a habit. I was told the 3 most important tips when I first started climbing, always tie in twice, always use 2 hands on a saw, and only make a cut with a chainsaw when you are stable and comfortable enough to do so.
 
ANSI Z133.1 -2006

Just read through this thread and I would like to share a recent experiance on 'following the rules' and common sense safety;

Sam, my main climber was chunking out a tree. He had his flip line and his climb line attached around the trunk.
Both lines were in the same area. In other words ideally his climb line should have been BELOW his flip line. But he had both intertwined. So if he cut his flip line, the climb line would have been cut as well.
When I brought it to his attention (some yelling from the ground 50' below him)
He said, that he was following the ANSI guidlines and what was the big deal?


My point is, the entire concept of the ANSI Z133.1 -2006 is to attempt to provide a set of guidlines to help ensure that treeworkes encounter less death and injury in the workplace.
An awesome task in and of itself. But worthless without one critical component:
Self awareness and common sense.
Frans
 
Rules are made because somebody paid a heavy price to learn a lesson.

The idea of following a rule is so that we don't repeat the same mistake that lead to the rule.

Sounds like Sam just follows a rule because it is there. Without common sense or trying to understand what the rule is really for, it won't do Sam much good. Wish him luck for me...sounds like that is what he counts on to take care of him.
 
Thanks for the thoughtfull words, Gary.
Sam is a great climber, he has been climbing almost as long as I have, and is truly great at his job.
Makes it all the harder to get him to change his ways.
 
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Sam ......is truly great at his job.
Makes it all the harder to get him to change his ways.

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I hear ya...some folks have that knack and can do it their way with no problems...I remember a thread where some folks were questioning Graeme McMahon (sp?) about some of his techniques (not Tied in Twice, I think) and he is one of THE top dogs of climbers.

Here's a question for y'all. Steve Bullman posted a cool video of wrecking a big beech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0uvLSLdPtY

In the first scenes, his climbing line leads down and away from him back to another main trunk...looks like he probably worked his way up the lead he was cutting in the opening scenes. I am sure he had his lanyard on as he cut the limbs out. Here is the question:

(Steve...not ragging on you...your video just gives a great example of a situation for us to consider).

Does his climbing line count as his second tie in? (I am assuming it was anchored to the lead on the left of the screen). If he did cut his lanyard and fell, the climbing line isn't going to be doing much good for him...maybe keep him from hitting the ground, but the drop and swing would be possibly deadly.

Technically, he is T'd in Twice...but, to be true to the intent of the Z, wouldn't he be using 2 lanyards up there...or another climbing line in the lead he is cutting?

Make sense?
 
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The number, 174, came from Dr. John Ball, who is looking closely at the fatality data. He is taking a closer look at the BLS numbers and I actually trust his numbers moreso than what they report.

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I'm sure Dr Ball got his total from BLS. They are responsible for collecting all work-related fatality data in the US.
 

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