LodgedTree you really surprise me. You are attempting to live your dream and life keeps throwing curve balls at you. Still, I have to wonder if perhaps all this is taking a heavy toll on you and perhaps at times you are not keeping your attention where it needs to be. In your years of experience with the logging you had to know what was happening there and what could happen. I have to wonder why you would not attempt to relieve the tension before you cut anything? Of course I nor anyone else was there so it is difficult to picture totally but again, I caution you to really think strongly about this and make certain your attention is where it needs to be when you are doing work like this. It is bad enough putting yourself and your family through any of this so don't make it any worse on you or them. Okay. I'm done.
I sort of agree with Backwoods Savage in a way; and realise it is because we have concerns. I know what you mean about having bills to pay. However, we know you have a lot going on with your health and I know you have worries there. Sometimes we get to thinking about things, our worries, etc while working and thus we are not always as careful. I know that is when things happen with me. I was driving one day and got caught up in thinking about some worries I had and I drove through a red light without even thinking. I was lucky, it was at a time with no traffic; and luckily no police officers, and the end result was that nothing happened. However, some really bad things could have happened, I could have hurt innocent people. It made me realise that there are times when we need to really concentrate on the things at hand. Now when I am driving I don't let distractions happen, I won't answer my mobile, I keep both hands on the wheel at all times, and I watch the road both in front and behind constantly. The incident happened back when Mum was still here and me worrying about her as her health started to deteriorate. I relate this because if your mind can not be focused when you are out doing dangerous work, please take the day off. Your family would rather do without things than to do without you. Big Hugs;
LodgedTree I have to respectfully disagree with your "It happens, so be careful" conclusion. Are you saying that you have gotten logs wedged under tension before on what can only be called a horizontal catapult by doing the same thing? I have to think that the problem is your skid road. Why did you lay it out such that you can't pull logs through without levering them off a bumper tree? By your post you understand that what you are doing is very bad for your equipment, the very equipment that you are making a living from, why are you risking it? Let alone your safety which is paramount. You pulled the twitch of logs into the mess. You created this situation. It doesn't need to 'happen a lot'. Cut down those bumper trees and get a better turn radius on your skid roads so this NEVER happens again. Rebuild or reroute if need be. You could have prevented this. And if a situation like this does happen again, please get your dozer or some other machine and push the logs back or whatever you need to do you you aren't disarming the business end of a catapult with a chainsaw. If an accident happens its a golden opportunity to figure out what could have been done different to prevent it from ever happening again.
Yup . Real glad your still typing . I'm familiar with the situation you had going on. And while I agree with PB . I wouldn't get after you about it. Kimberly made THE point. Keep your brain functioning on the situation at hand. Everyone I know that has got bad hurt in the brush. Baring helicopter crashes. Got hurt because they got to thinking about something other than what they were doing. Or, they got mad and stopped thinking . I've been in both boats but Thank God !!! I lived to cut another day. Just keep easin into er !
I sort of did. I released the winch which normally takes the tension off the tree, but this was the culmination of a full twitch...7 trees, or a full cord of wood, so the weight of the twitch held tension on the tree.
No, no problem, I never took it as a rant. This was one of those things where you do it 1000 times and the trees have always been predictable. If you re-read my firs post you will see that I did take tension off the tree by cutting the inside first, kind of a v-cut several times like you do when you take the tension off a spring pole. I did that, about a 1/3 way through before cutting the backside. Even when I cut the tree through, it acted predictable, the main stem snapped off and swung away from me through the brush as predicted, it was the end of the tree that didn't. Normally that just falls down, but in this case it snapped, then ricocheted off the live tree that held it and pinwheeled back at me, taking my feet out from under me. It was only a few feet long: 3-4 feet, but 6" in diameter or so? I only have 3 days to get loads of woodout this week so I am not sure if I will have time to recreate this scene or not, but a picture would be worth 10,000 words.
Oh yeah you are 100% correct: this was 100% preventable, hard on equipment and not my normal twitch road. I am picking up "tops" from previously logged hardwood trees where I was going after hardwood logs. Since these are massive sized hardwoods, I just cut the logs off, then take the "tops" later...that is, in a second twitch for firewood. Hardwood log logging is a pain because unlike logging firewood or pulp, you can't just park the skidder in a spot, drop 7 trees, limb them, and then go out to the wood yard; you have to meander through the woodlot to find the trees that qualify as a hardwood log. This means the "tops" are thus scattered throughout the wood lot too. If this was June, it would not be an issue, but being November, I like to go through and pick up my tops in case we get snow and my wood gets buried. So in this case, I picked up 5 previous tops, but rather then go up through my normal logging road, there was 2 more just beyond the turn. Since "tops" are so short, and naturally with long haul twitches you want to get every pound behind the skidder that you can, I figured I would just drive on the other side of a grove of trees, pick those 2 additional tops up for a full 7 choker twitch, and head out. With the "tops" being shorter than full length trees I thought I could make the 90 degree turn. In that respect I was not far off, if I could have swung out another 3 feet I would have made it. There are a lot of "tricks" to operating a skidder too, especially a cable one. Most of the time you can release your winch and let out some cable, and so when you pull on it with the load way out, it slides along bumper trees until it can make the swing. That did not work in this case, or sometimes you can suck the twitch up tight against the arch, back up away from the bumper tree and pull the twitch around that way too, but that did not work either. And sometimes you can just winch and drive and uproot the bumper tree by sheer traction, winch and horsepower. None of that worked...darn yellow birch bumper tree! Climbing up and down off that skidder is what wears me out, so I do try and avoid it, but I have cut the ends of stuck trees 1000's of times and never once been hit by a pinwheeling end of it.
