Stupid mistakes you've made doing tree work

[Al Cormack]

Did a job a while ago reducing and tidying up a storm damaged cedar. Finished the job, packed up and hitched the chipper back on.
Driving back to the yard the phone was ringing a few times but ignored it like a good boy.
Started reversing the chipper towards the barn door and realised something was missing.
Yep, chipper hadn't been hitched on properly and was still outside the customers house! [emoji15]

[dig-dug-dan]

Worst thing for me was climbing in a mewp in a rush on a big conifer cutting job at a school, on a deadline and mewp booked for a week turned up at 11am first day. Got up to start cutting, forgot to wear chainsaw trousers, and noticed as I was cutting my trousers going round the chain. Had cut into my shin, removing a section of bone. Never felt a thing till about 6 hours later. 1 week in hospital, and was released the night before I moved house.

[Joe Newton]

Literally?

Wouldn't surprise me. "Neanderthal" doesn't even do@treeman justice.

[Joe Newton]

Literally?

Wouldn't surprise me. "Neanderthal" doesn't even do@treeman justice.

[diervek]

1) deciding I want to get into the industry at 33

2) Spending 3 years and £thousands getting tickets.

4) spending week 4 of the career change in A&E with a 201t 14 stich "booboo" to my hand

5) still thinking I made the right choice...

 

 

 

[Gary Prentice]

18 minutes ago, diervek said:

1) deciding I want to get into the industry at 33 I thought that & started at 18

2) Spending 3 years and £thousands getting tickets. And then you have to actually start learning the job

4) spending week 4 of the career change in A&E with a 201t 14 stitch "booboo" to my hand It's a steep learning curve, better to learn the negative sides early! Could have been worse, it could have been a Silky kiss.

5) still thinking I made the right choice...  If it's what you want to do, it's what you want to do. And if you still think you've made the right choice, you have..

When you're cold, wet, tired and fed up, everyone thinks they've made a mistake. But as long as the good days outweigh the bad most of us just keep doing it.

18 minutes ago, diervek said:

 

 

 

 

[treeman]

Wouldn't surprise me. "Neanderthal" doesn't even do[mention=25600]treeman[/mention] justice.

I’d say somewhere in between

[Billhook]

Couple of moments with the 17.5 ton D7 Caterpillar.

 

First one I was scraping out a lake and pushing soil up to form a bank.  Running up the bank until the machine pivoted and the blade came down to the ground.  The bank was quite steep and going up all I could see was sky, going down past the pivot point all I could see was the stream below.

No worries just slam it into reverse (lever goes forward for reverse) and head back for another scrape.  

Been doing this all day on a hot sunny day and one time at the top became confused and put the gear lever back instead of forwards.

I was now pointing down at about 45 degrees to the stream and I managed to shut the throttle and stalled the engine.

I now had my right foot firmly on the brake but I could not reach over to the left to operate the decompression lever and donkey engine to restart it.  Every time I leant over my pressure on the brake pedal slackened and the dozer inched forward towards the stream.

I felt like Michael Caine in the last scene of the Italian Job with the bus perched on the cliff top.

I managed to wedge a shovel from the seat to the brake lever.  Started the engines and only just scrabbled back up the bank in reverse.

 

Second one you would have thought that caution would have been the order of the day after the last incident but again I was scraping the lake but the water started coming up through an old land drain and because it was clay it did not take much to make the dozer stuck.  Not badly stuck just stuck.

No mobile phone, miles from anywhere all there was was the 15 ton JCB swing shovel.

I put a chain on the swing shovel and stalled the track motors in reverse at moderately low revs.

Then jumped off and back onto the dozer and it worked a treat, the JCB just pulling me out no problem.

The real problem became apparent when I tried to stop as the clay was so slippery that the JCB still had enough traction to keep pulling even with the dozer blade down

WE were both now heading back towards the main body of water in the lake.

Luckily I the whole outfit was not moving very fast and I was able to reach the JCB  just in time and stop the drive before we were really sunk!

[oldwoodcutter]

Some familiar ones there alright. I’ve noticed now and again the habit of putting a gob in on the same stem-below your anchor point, iv shouted up my concern, only for a climber to say he did realise that, and was going to reposition before doing his back cut.
As said above, this can happen at the end of a long day, but I imagine the worst so still shout up to make sure.
Talk about old age, just the other week I quickly reversed my transit at a rather sharp angle up at my main yard, the guys were all busy until I’d finished the manoeuvre, when I noticed they’d stopped and were all laughing at something behind me.
Timberwolf sent a new side panel out quite quickly but it will be about 10 years before they let me forget it.

[tony_t3d]

This guy is making quite a lot... Very lucky.

I do however like his ingenuity of using a dog lead as a chainsaw lanyard [emoji23]