Saturday, February 6, 2016

Up On My Chainsaw Soapbox

I am constantly preaching proper chainsaw techniques at work and at play.  This week I saw the remains of a walnut tree that was wrecked by a logger who did not know how to aim a tree properly, and a few days later I stopped a landowner by a stump that I am sure he made and discussed what he had done, and then what he should have done.  Between those two cases there was a filing lesson for a chap who was throwing dust instead of chips, and that's important because a dull saw wears out both the operator and the chain.

Here is an important video by WorkSafeBC that shows the consequences of improper cutting.  The operator in this video was not qualified to be cutting any trees that required hinging or borecutting to prevent barberchairs, and he kept at it until it killed him.

4 comments:

John in Philly said...

When we bought our chainsaws, we bought a book on chainsaw safety and tried to be as safe as we could. (the author's name escapes me)

We knew that chainsaw work was a high skill job, but we thought wrongly that we could still do some of it.

After the unfortunate incident of the shed flattening, we did not drop any trees that were near anything. And later when we got a good bit smarter, we stopped dropping trees totally.

You are one hundred percent right in everything you say, we were lucky we did not hurt or kill somebody when we were in our stupid phase.

Thank you.

David aka True Blue Sam said...

Learn to do the bore cut and you can cut darn near any tree you want. I wish you could come out to IL and spend some time in our woods.

jon spencer said...

I have dropped many trees, most went where they were supposed to go.
Only a very few did not, but they landed safely. Just took a few extra steps to get to the log.
Had a 40+ foot blue spruce in my front yard that needed to come down.
Called a tree service and had them drop it.
They laid it right were it was supposed to go.
I might have.


David aka True Blue Sam said...

We recently hired a tree service to work on five trees around our home. It's important to say no on trees that might get you or a house, powerline, etc.