chipped my saddle....

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Originally posted by John Paul Sanborn
WOW, that was around $500 worth of gear!

I know some guys who will make the one who screws up wear a bright yellow tshirt with "I'm the stupid guy"on the back.


Early in my military career, the one that screwed up got to wear a bathtub plug for the day ie "Plug of the Day" around his neck on a chain! And during my time with the Sky Hawks we had a particularly stupid looking sun hat that the fool of the moment had to wear (I did once). Even our Commander and Platoon Sergeant got to wear it as I recall.

I would be burned Daniel, as like parachutes, goalie gear and possibly underwear, saddles are soooooo personal, loaned to close personal friends, if at all, and to have some clown take it for starters, and destroy it for good measure is beyond my comprehension.

Hope you were able to replace everything at the other person's expense to your satisfaction.
 
OK here's the story........
This man I know from New Warrior, Tom, called me up to ask for some part time work.... I told him he would be better off finding a different job and I would make a few calls for him... over the next month he called and asked for work two or three more times. He has been in the middle of a career change... just got his teacher's certification but no job yet and his money is running out fast...
So I invited him to work on a Sunday with Big Jon doing the climbing.... He worked hard, though it was apparent that his experience was in sales... not hands on.
He ended up working his second day on Wednesday of that week... We were shorthanded and I went to pick up a stump grinder at the rental shop, while my co-worker, Nuni, got started on the job. Tom met Nuni at the job and I showed up less than an hour later. Nuni had taken the initiative to get the job started by taking the top out of a big birch which was coming down... Now that was unusual, since he hadn't been up in a tree since he worked with me a few years back.... And he did a real nice job on that birch and a sweet job of pruning another big birch very near the house.
Right after I arrived on the job Nuni and I took a moment to look at the remaining trees and that's when we heard a very nasty sound coming from the chipper.... we both stopped...... what was that????????
Turns out Nuni had used my saddle, and Tom grabbed a piece of birch trunk with attached branches, without noticing the saddle was tangled in it, until the saddle was in the mouth of the chipper.... he wasn't used to using the control bar to stop the feed wheels and vainly tried to pull the saddle free... The rest of the story is in a box with Canopy tree written on it...... (Tom D. I need your address)
I learned two important lessons from that moment.... 1) its definately time to buy a new saddle and 2) when teaching chipper operation.. always have the new operator practice repeatedly using the control bar... Stop and start and reverse the brush until they get very comfortable with using the bar.
 
Probably ti got tangled up as the brush was dragged to the chipper.

Gotta give the guy the bennefit of the doubt.

Seems like you took all this the right way Dan, lessons learned all around.

When a man takes initiative and does a good job on most every point, all you can do is ask if it will ever happen again.

You cannot blame the guy who is on hism second days work. If iot were me running the crew, I would be blambing my self for turning my back on the new guy chipping.

I would change lesson 1) New people operating dangerouse equipment should be supervised until I am very comfortable with their operation.

There was a small chance of the guy getting injured or worse trying to save some equipment. Thank God for all involved that nothing did happened besides some 2-3 days net/net proffit.
 
Back
Top