dangb93

Regarding pictures of my leg - I will try and get some in the right format to upload (and probably put a warning in the thread title as well). Can't promise when!

No worries! The machine was quite clean, because i was only in contcat with it for a second - all the bits of leg tissue, flesh and bone were strewn over the garden, and the blood was a great pool around me - so no mess really on the machine. I was told that the pfanner type c trousers took some work to extract them from the cutter wheel on the machine. Not surprising. My boots were so soaked in blood that they were binned. In the days following that horrific day, I said I never wanted to see the machine again, and that I wanted to sell it. So my family tried to sell it multiple times for me, each person seemed really interested but let us down at the last minute, after this had happened, I thought perhaps there's a voice in this...by this time I had turned my thoughts round the correct way, and I was then taking full responsibility for my actions, and that the machine hadn't done anything wrong - after all, it was only doing what I told it to do!!! so I have kept it along with all my other kit - and who knows I could be grinding again in a year or two time! I recently started it up, engaged cutter wheel and ran full throttle for a minute or two, to reconcile my traumatised mind with the machine again. As soon as I am able, perhaps late 2024, I intend to take it out and grind a stump or two to complete the reconciliation and healing process in my mind... Even if I never do stump grinding again, I feel very strongly that embracing it again is part of a mental healing process - a bit like if a swimmer is caught in a rip tide and has traumatic experience of nearly drowning, gets rescued by lifeboat, and then faces up to it and gets back in the sea the next day - or motorbike crash, recover, get back on motorbike again.

You're 100% correct. One second of destruction and years of recovery.

Thanks for sharing that is inspirational - hopefully I will exceed that with a re-constructed leg!

Thanks Stephen - i'm putting 100% into it - everyone tells me how strong minded I am, but I'm not like that all the time! Sometimes the darkness just comes over me but I have amazing wife and family around me and they soon cheer me up. Not least me little boy

Thanks for your story mate, I appreciate the time you spent to type it up.

thanks mate, it is always interesting and helpful to hear other peoples journeys 👍

So there is nothing much to update for some time now, as we wait to see if the tibia bone will knit to the knee and ankle, and whether the new section of bone successfully calcifies and sets. I am not entirely decided myself on this, but thought I would test the water and see what people on here think - who would be up for some pictures of my leg, from the horror day to so far now?

A few years ago I was brushcutting a load of bramble with a shredder blade. Came to an area of nettle, saw an old white football in the long grass/nettle. Knocked it out the way with the brush cutter head and carried on. Something shot me in the hand, and then again in the side, I thought I must have caught a stone. Then my eyes focused on what was directly in front of my visor as opposed to what was down at the brushcutter head - hornets!! Loads of them. I've been stung by wasps and bees before, but these hornet stings were something else. Clearly the 'old white football' was not such, but rather a hornets nest.

The longer you go without an accident the more your confidence builds. It doesn't mean that the confidence you hold is always a wise confidence. It is possible to become a confident fool. We regularly hear "I am building my confidence" . Take care that you are not building your foolishness. Confidence is vital in our work. So is safety. That's my contribution 🙂 Re working at height - I loved it most of the time, but when my son was born 16months ago I wasn't half as comfortable with a lot of stuff I was previously doing. And now that I have had my terrible accident, I can't say that such dangerous work is quite so appealing now (even though my accident was nothing to do with working at height)

It is now 8 months since I almost lost my leg to my Bandit ZT. 1 solid month starting in intensive care, high dependancy, lower dependancy and then the ward. 14 bags of blood. 7 operations. More operations to come. And 7 months now either sitting in a chair or lying on my back. If this is new to anyone reading this, please go back to the beginning of the thread and read through. Anyway, some great news - I have now regrown all the tibia bone that was missing in my leg - 71mm total. Now for the next long stage, which is for the new bone to calcify and both ends to knit to the knee and ankle. We recently visited the people who first came to my aid that dark day, and called 999 for me and put the dog lead round my leg, which saved my life. It was a lovely occasion, and so good to see everyone and thank them in person. One of the people, named Rob, lives opposite but one on the same road, and said he heard the machine working and then a sound like a bomb and he thought oops, that machine has just hit something hard - it was of course the sound that I described as a canon going off - my bones being shattered and ripped out of my leg. He then commented on hearing the machine instantly changing tone - my type C trousers getting pulled into the cutter wheel bearings and flapping round the cutter wheel guard which placed extra load on the machine. He then told me he realised the belts where squealing badly, and assumed it was all related to this hard object I had hit with my machine - it was in fact all related, but not to a hard object, but to me - what he thought was belts squealing was my desperate screams. I have to wait four months then have a CT scan to see how things are healing. In the meantime I am having private osteopathy and I am going to get started with a personal trainer. Take care folks and stay safe out there.

This is an excellent topic, and one that won't hurt for us to consider. I have thought for a long time that having a climber up a tree and a groundsman below who holds aerial rescue but never usually climbs is somewhat lacking in common sense, unless that groundsman can climb as well as the climber themselves. If something happens to a climber on the end of a limb how is a poorly experienced groundsman going to have a hope of skilfully limb walking out to that climber and bringing him back in? The ideal answer I believe is to have two evenly skilled climbers on the job, one working in the tree and one below on the ground, swapping daily/weekly to keep fresh. Yes and that's why I say ideal. Because for one finding the staff is an issue, and then the cost as well. I think the root of this problem is the overwhelming problem in tree surgery - underpaid industry. Until people place more importance and value on their trees the money is simply not coming out of their pockets so that smaller firms especially can have that level of skill in their staff, and that chance to regularly practice it as the OP says.

Empty case after emerging

So I am sitting here thinking, what next? I have nearly grown all the new tibia bone - done over 60mm now! But I have still got over a year before I will walk unaided again - if the plan works. The nurses and consultants, doctors etc all say it's a miracle where I have got to so far. But I am still a prisoner on one good leg. I have got all my kit and machinery still - the currently unanswerable question is, will I be able to use it again? I loved what I was doing, and I do have a MEWP amongst other things... So I am getting my L4 Diploma in arboriculture done. Like many people on here, I am self employed and the thought of becoming employed is rather off putting at times (the self employed who enjoy being so, will understand). Perhaps anyone who has got experience of moving away from the manual graft but stayed self employed can share their story? I know very little about surveying and consultancy, and one gets dreamy ideas about having ones own surveying and consulting company perhaps with some ecological work in the mix too as I love all things nature not just trees...is this realistic? Common sense dictates that one doesn't just sink themselves into offering a service which they have no experience in, even if one does have a L4 or L6.... Just be interested in peoples POV. Thanks.

Security tag everything and set up sensors at the entrance to the marquee. Just like a shop. Although there must be a reason why such a simple idea hasn’t been instigated at a show.

I’m fairly young in years and in this game, but I would hazard a shot at the reason being behind improved technology available, good finance packages on ever improved machinery and people wanting to offer a full service. Take the Bandit ZT for instance. When it came out, they were selling them like hot cakes. Global couldn’t get them into the country quick enough. How many tree companies are there now who don’t have a capable grinder in their armoury? Even the pedestrian ones are miles better than they used to be. They drive themselves, pivot etc I personally cannot understand how companies like Stumpbusters can even still exist. Hats off to anyone who can make a living just out of stumps. Good money, albeit a little boring… (until you step backwards into your own grinder…) I was doing all my own stumps, doing them for another contractor who didn’t have time and then various old stumps for domestic clients etc. I found most landscapers would rather give the tree removal job away not just the stump.

A fantastic machine (now replaced by the SG40) but a massive design fault - most grinders apparently have a system that means if you let go of the control lever, or move away from the controls the cutter wheel stops...not so the bandit - you can have the cutter wheel running at full throttle and walk away and leave it going. If you see my thread "to all stump grinder operators" you will see what happened when I walked away from my controls round the front of the machine to briefly stand up the debris guard that the wind had blown over.... Yes I shouldn't have left it running when I left the controls, yes I shouldn't have walked round the front of it, and yes Bandit would say that I shouldn't have done it, there's nothing wrong with the machine but the fact is there's loads of us idiots out there that do stuff like that and you would expect the machine to have a 'dead mans handle' or similar... I take full responsibility for my actions that day, but why on earth wouldn't the manufacturer fit that basic safety feature!!

Imo not worth the hassle. Price them into the job

Sorry just seen Mark has said he wants the bags to be full. Agreeably you can’t grab a bag that’s full to the gunnels. That’s why we used to fill them half full if we were grabbing them.

It’s interesting that no one has really commented on this method of just grabbing the bag. As previously stated I have regularly done this. Why all this head scratching and time consuming designing of ideas when all you have to do is grab the bag?!

I had the same until recently. It had to go due to needing funds for a new family car, but it has been the best and most versatile bike I’ve ever owned. Hopefully when I recover from my accident I’ll be able to buy another and ride again. How I miss it!

That’s exactly what we do Dan. One makes sure that the bag isn’t rammed full, so it’s got some “squashiness” in it, fold the top over a bit, then just grab the thing with the Klou timber grab. You’ve also got a much more compact load to put onto the truck especially if you’ve got ladder bars across the top or a roof.

You can’t really ask which is better, 4x4 tipper or van tipper! Every situation is different, different people have different types and areas of work and therefore have different needs. Perhaps someone is purely domestic tree work- and a van tipper is ideal. Rough terrain access not needed, extra load capacity for the van tipper because all the chip has to be removed each time… Or perhaps someone is mainly rural work, and most of the time they chip and spray, maybe sometimes needing to chip into the back of a 4x4 tipper. They’re 4x4 helps them to get where they need to be. Or maybe someone is a mixture of both - like me! I have been running a cabstar tipper as our main vehicle and then also a Ford ranger tipper with winch as a secondary chip truck/vehicle for off road jobs. Unless you’re going to have both, or unless you are purely doing one type of work - one truck does not cover all bases.

I went for several years using only subbies. It was great from the perspective that I knew what they were going to cost me, and I didn’t have to pay anything else out on them (no training, no ppe, no sick pay, no holiday etc) but it was extremely stressful when they messed me about, didn’t turn up, cancelled days they’d agreed to do, or sulked when they couldn’t run away to the pub at 2.30pm… But I wanted to stay the right side of the law so eventually I offered one promising subbie who worked with me most, a full time job. This brought me security in that unless he was unwell or holiday he would always turn up and work a set amount of hours a day. And he would wear the company branded clothing, and I could train him in areas where he needed to the benefit of my business. I was previously an employee and got treated like trash despite working so hard, and I thought I would look after this employee. We worked 7.30 till 4.30 Monday to Thursday. On Fridays we worked 7.30 till 11.30 and then went and found something to eat which I would pay for, then we spent 12.30 till 3.30 back at the yard, “tidy friday” checking kit over, cleaning, sharpening etc. Saturday was only ever worked in an emergency or if we were really busy. If he worked longer than 4.30 overtime was duly paid. I put him through several courses. I paid him a decent wage. He had been with me about three years, and when I had my accident last November and made him redundant I had ended up with someone who had refused to come in more than three days a week, who was lazy, spent ages on there phone, moaned at working in the rain, moaned at the task each day, yet all the time telling me he needed paying more. He started off really well, but went downhill from there. He took advantage of all my decent behaviour towards him and thought he should have an easy ride. I spoilt him basically. What I’m trying to say is that there was no easy option for me. Subbies were unreliable and stressful. The employee route is like finding a needle in a haystack. It’s worse than the subbie route if you don’t get it right….