Most dangerous encounter with a saw?

[Dan Forsh]

no personal experiences, thankfully, but i recall this in the news about a year ago:

"I Severed My Wife's Head With A Chainsaw"
Daily Record: I severed my wife's head with a chainsaw



A distraught husband wept yesterday as he described how he plunged a chainsaw into his wife's neck in a gardening accident.

Roland Pudney, 56, told an inquest he believed their one-year-old puppy caused the tragedy.

It jumped up at his wife Pauline, 57, as she held the ladder while he cut branches off some apple trees.

She was killed instantly when Mr Pudney fell and the chainsaw he was using almost decapitated her.

 

[cord arrow]

my tale:

cutting where i should not have been, trapped in multiflora, i felled a big dead ash across a valley.
cut a hundred of 'em here. not a problem.
... in slow motion, i watched this tree get hung in the canopy across the ravine, and become a pendulum.

well, it's comin' back with a vengence. still hung in wild rose i'm i.

tossed the saw, dropped kicked my dog (pretty good i guess, wouldn't come near me for a week) , slid under the truck as the ash took off the drivers side.

really should have died for that incedible amount of stupidity.

 

[fullbore]

About six months ago, I was helping to clear a lot for our local fire company. One of our younger volunteers went up on our aerial ladder to start limbing. I was a short distance away bucking some trees when I heard a loud crash. I walked over to the aerial ladder to see the chief wiping blood above his eye. The chief was operating the ladder controls at the base when a large branch that was just cut, fell on the ladder sideways and slid eighty feet down the ladder(must have balanced itself perfectly). The chief did see it coming, jumped out of the way, but the large branch took out a spot light. The shattered glass just missed the chief's eye! :censored:

 

[16:1mix]

I do not climb into a tree with a chainsaw anymore, here is why: It was about 1988, I had taken off a few little branches off of a large Willow tree that were near a house. The final offending branch was larger than the rest, about 10” in diameter….and out of reach of the loader bucket I was using for elevation. My solution was to climb into the tree, stand in a position that would allow access to the branch, and cut it from above.

While standing in the crook, I cut the branch enough that I expected it to slowly bend down. Instead, it snapped and rolled into the vee that I was standing in. So I’m standing there in the tree with a 10” branch on my boot, the little Homelite idling, and no one around. I pulled my boot out from underneath the branch, crawled out of the tree, into the loader bucket and down to the ground.

My foot was quite sore so I had an X-ray done….only bruised but it hurt like a M()thrfkr!

By the way, anyone else ever drive a truck with a manual transmission with the full use of only one foot? (!)

Getting to the ER for the X-ray was interesting!

Moral of the story......leave it to the pros!

 

[bama]

About 10 years ago, I went out to cut with my Jonsered 920. My dad had just given me the saw and it was much bigger than what I was used to, but I thought I could handle anything back then. Well, I climbed up onto a slash pile of pine(I lived in the Black Hills at the time) and started limbing up the tops of burnable trees.

I didn't pay attention to my footing and when the saw went through the limb I was cutting, I slipped and pulled the saw into my knee while it was running. It cut a nice notch into my left kneecap and deposited some real crap underneath. Nothing educated me more about learning the proper way to cut and to wear safety equipment than watching the doctor lift off my kneecap and clean out the sawdust underneath. I still shudder when I think of how close I came to being called "limpy".