Post your injury while using a saw.

[spreaderman]

Since most of us use chainsaws I thought it would be good to share stories of our injuries while using a saw so that others can learn of what can happen and what not to do. Also include your age with years of saw experience so that readers can learn that no matter how old or how much experience you have that things can happen. The bull riders say ''Its not IF you get hurt it is when and how bad.'' Can this also be said about running a chainsaw.
I had this happen to me. I was 40 years old with 26 years of saw experience
I was called to cut up a huge fallen Oak about 10 years back. I was limbing it. As I cut one of the limbs the tree rolled, pushing my foot into the hard ground with one of the limbs that I had just cut pinning my foot. The pain was excruciating. I tried to pull it out with no avail. Then twisting and pulling hard it gave a little. With more twisting and pulling it pulled free. I took my shoe off and had scraped the hide off the 4 smaller toes. I didn't get it checked but walked with a limp for about a month.
The lesson I got renstated was look at what can happen during and after the cut, and wear a good protective gear.
I do know that this story will pale in comparing with others stories on here... This thread isn't meant to be a bragging or a ''One Up'' someone elses story type thread. It is to share with others that we must be careful at all times when running a chainsaw saw as we risk injury to ourselves and others each time we make a cut. So is it true ''It is not IF you get hurt it is when and how bad.''

 

[RandyMac]

I have never been cut by a moving chain. The worst was catching a piece of flying McCulloch gear-drive that launched out of a binding cut, pistolgrip broke collarbone and rearranged shoulder.

 

[Gologit]

I've been on the saw for about fifty years and I've never been seriously hurt by one. Minor cuts and scrapes but nothing to go home early for.

Now, if you count widow-makers, having logs roll on me, wrecking pickups, tripping over my own feet, turning over Cats, choker jaggers, chains breaking, cable breaking, ax handles breaking, hydraulic hoses coming apart, wedges busting off, snags shedding big slabs of bark straight down, a side split barber chair, a falling partner who closed the gap and cut the corner off and bounced a top down on me, getting my thumb under a tire chain right when my helper cranked down on it, bee stings, hornet stings, ant bites, and running out of snoose three hours before quitting time...yeah I've been busted up a time or two.

 

[RandyMac]

been shocked, burnt, cut, stabbed, knocked down all before my third beer at the old tavern.


and some of this

"Now, if you count widow-makers, having logs roll on me, wrecking pickups, tripping over my own feet, turning over Cats, choker jaggers, chains breaking, cable breaking, ax handles breaking, hydraulic hoses coming apart, wedges busting off, snags shedding big slabs of bark straight down, a side split barber chair, a falling partner who closed the gap and cut the corner off and bounced a top down on me, getting my thumb under a tire chain right when my helper cranked down on it, bee stings, hornet stings, ant bites, and running out of snoose three hours before quitting time...yeah I've been busted up a time or two."

 

[treeclimber101]

I got the scar underneath the scratch on my hand with a Fanno pole saw , opened my hand from the nail on my thumb to just about 2" up , and the best was it was just a graze , those things are so underrated in ability to injure someone

and it was a nasty dirty cut that the Intern took great pleasure cleaning thoroughly almost lost my lunch a few times right on her shoulder

 

[derwoodii]

Not been cut by a movin chain and i been hanging off the back of saws and up trees with em for 30 plus years. This does mean chance is stacking up against me so higher care is exercised. Been hit in forehead by a kickin saw bar pinched scafing a hinge up a tree but pheeew auto chain brake saved the day so just a small nic above the eye. I got collection of nasty cut pictures that I show during saw training, it really focus the class.


best try to be smarter than the bit of wood yer cuttin aye

 

[russhd1997]

These happened years ago. Had my saw kick back and catch me under my chin. Took a couple of stitches on that one and barely missed my jugular vein. The next day I went to the chainsaw dealer and bought a chain brake for my saw.

A couple of years later I was cutting a pecker pole that was bent over and held down by a larger tree and when it let go the force pushed the saw across the front of my leg. That one took 4 stitches with stainless steel wire and I spent a few days in the hospital. The cut had nicked the bone and they had to give me antibiotics by IV because they didn't want me to get a bone infection.

 

[Unit44]

Well been stacking and moving fire wood since I was 6 and using a chain saw since I was 12 and I'm 44 now so I have a few years under the belt, have been very lucky so far as I just started using chaps about 15 years ago and no injuries until last year. The way I got cut on the lower leg was in a way I never expected, last fall I see a good buy on a MS460 on craigslist that was only 8 months old and so I go to look at it. Well I always start saws by the book, you know as in the Stihl manual (at least my old ones) - on the ground or locked between the leg while you hold the top handle, I ask the guy if it has anything wrong with it and he says no "it will start right up!" and he was right. I lock it between my back and front leg and am holding the top handle in a death grip since I have never had a saw with "elastostart" so I didn't know what to expect, well I give her a mighty pull and it fires to fast idle right away however there is a slight problem - you see they guy didn't tell me that this abused saw had the starter rope cut to like 10 inches (when it broke sometime in it's abused past) and when I pulled on it so hard and it started it pivoted right down to my right leg and cut through my pants sock and leg in a 4 inch long cut..... Lucky it was not deep and the saw shut off on it's own when it hit the ground due to me tossing it, so I'm standing there with blood slowly oozing through my pants that this guy is looking at in surprise I ask him what the heck is wrong with the start rope and he says "nothing"..... I laugh and say I don't think the start rope is supposed to be that short and then he "remembers" that it broke and he just knotted up the end to repair it and I was starting the saw "wrong anyways" as he then tell me I'm supposed to throw it away from my body to start it, I think he was trying to tell me about drop starting but think about it now that would have also have been a surprise with a 10 inch starter rope - :msp_sad: - Anyway I got him down $100 and walked away with what turned out to be a good saw with a few repairs, just thought it was odd to get injured by one and not even cutting wood. :msp_biggrin:

 

[Mowingman]

Way back in 92, I had a landscape business. One of my commercial customers wanted a tree removed. I was out at the site, a factory, on a Sat., by myself, with nobody else around the place. Had the tree on the ground and was cutting it up into smaller pieces that I could load. I had rented a large Stihl chainsaw, as all I had was a little 12 inch bar Echo. Somehow, I swung the saw around in front of me and cut my leg, right at the knee. Felt nothing, but noticed my jeans were cut, and thought, boy, that was close. Well, it sure was close. After a closer look, I noticed i could see my kneecap. OOPS!!!
Had a first aid kit, so cut off my jeans, wrapped a large bandage around it, and drove myself to the emergency room a few miles away. After a good scrub with antisceptic, it took 14 stitches to close the wound. Luckily, the saw did not go through my kneecap.
After this, I went out and bought safety clothing, and never worked alone again with a chainsaw.
Jeff

 

[sgreanbeans]

I have never been cut buy a moving chain, unless this kinda counts, many, MANY! moons ago, I had just put on a new chain on my 066, it was a brand new, out of the box, 36" Stihl chain. Put it on, fired it up, gunned it a couple times and the chain came apart, bounced of the log I was standing in front of, came back and smacked me right on top of the hand. 1 tooth went thru my leather glove and took a chunk of meat out. Not really sure what exactly happened, as it was over and done with in seconds. We looked at the chain and it looked as if a rivet came out? Thru a bandage with some HP on it, went back to work!

 

[Unchained]

I am a new member and not a professional tree care expert. I have been using a chainsaw for around 10-15 years on an as needed basis. I have read about the many pitfalls of using a chainsaw and by no means am I an expert. I give the saw every ounce of respect it deserves and work with it in a slow and methodic fashion. I always look over what I am going to cut before cutting and try to see if there is any inherent danger in what I am about to do before proceeding. I have been injury free so far and will try and keep it that way. My story happened about a week ago to my neighbors brother in law. He had come over to help the old folks clean up after Storm Sandy had moved through our area. They had several large branches come down one of which was leaning on their car and lawn tractor. He proceeded to cut the branch and once cut it fell and bounced back up catching him right in the teeth and causing him to fall. The result was 7 lost teeth and a broken hip. So I guess it isn't always the chainsaw that will hurt you just using it can get you pretty banged up if you don't think first before cutting.

 

[Martin_ca]

I had a little accident..

1st year of climbing after coming out of school; i was removing a norway maple. Half way done I was cutting above my head and decided to hold the chainsaw (200t sthil) from underneath and my middle finger caught the chain and fortunatly it only chipped the top end of it; it probably could have gotten stuck and dragged my hand in there.. I definatly dont do that anynore

In my first year again I had a big take down day and was starting to get tired because i was about to send flying a 40 feet high limb of silver maple while still being tied in to it.. fortunatly my boss got there right as I was starting my back cut! could have been messy!

 

[Youngbuck20]

1st year of climbing after coming out of school; i was removing a norway maple. Half way done I was cutting above my head and decided to hold the chainsaw (200t sthil) from underneath and my middle finger caught the chain and fortunatly it only chipped the top end of it; it probably could have gotten stuck and dragged my hand in there.. I definatly dont do that anynore

In my first year again I had a big take down day and was starting to get tired because i was about to send flying a 40 feet high limb of silver maple while still being tied in to it.. fortunatly my boss got there right as I was starting my back cut! could have been messy!

Sounds like you have some pretty good luck, not losing your finger or life. Id be puckering up to make sure that horseshoe stays up there!

 

[Martin_ca]

Lets just say that a lot of crazy stuff happened in the first year but after that i really started to be way more concentrated and focused!

 

[TreeGuyHR]

Near misses for me:

Poked myself just over an eye jerking my pole saw free when up a tree -- I had earlier broken the rounded tip off, and kept using it anyway -- half inch lower, no eye.

Removed the skin and most of the nail off my left thumb with my MS200 -- while trimming a little round I thought was cool for my sample collection. i was afraid to look at it for a few minutes, sure that the end of my thumb was gone.

In both cases, I reflected that stupid decisions (as opposed to accidents) can hurt, even in someone like myself that has been around chain saws for nearly 40 years.

Love my fiddle block set up -- hopefully I'll never ask a ground man to get in the drop zone and pull on the haul rope. A while back I was lowering big elm chunks with a port-a-wrap, and asked him to pull down on the rope (above the cylinder) to straighten-up a 6 ft. chunk I was cutting. He got a little over eager and put his feet up on the tree, and ended up not only pulling it straight but right over, breaking it off. The other groundie had taken a wrap off, and could not slow it much on one wrap. The first groundie fell on his back directly under the falling chunk, and scrambled out of the way in the nick of time. A tag line tightened up with the fiddle block would have done the trick, with no one in the drop zone. (oh, and I could have brought some wedges up with me, or asked for them, as they were at the site somewhere).

That little incident lead to a safety meeting in which I reminded everyone that at any time, anyone could call a time out to point out something that didn't smell right -- and I added being in the drop zone at the back-cut stage as verbotten, no matter what. OSHA would have been on this (if there was an injury) like white on rice, ya think?

 

[Nickolas]

My day in the woods and the accident...

Well lets see... I'm 48 years old and been using machinery all my life. Worked on a farm years ago running saws and tractors and thrashing machines ( remember those ) and combines and all that stuff. Years later I still cut wood here and there although not for a living I cut as much as I can because I love the smell of two stroke mixture, being in the woods smelling the smell and seeing the sights and just being outdoors. I have to be in the woods one way or another it's just in my blood. Grew up hunting and fishing and boating and camping and anything outdoors grabs ahold of me.

Anyway a year or two back we had one heck of a storm blow in and it really did some destruction. Not a tornado but more like a microburst and it snapped off tree's left and right and blew roof's off and there was stuff everywhere. Over at my girlfriends other house it was bad. It looked like a war zone over there and probably on her 5 acre lot 15 tree's had been snapped in half mainly oaks. Some uprooted but most just plum snapped right in two. So I got the saw out and went to cutting as there was quite a bit of timber to clean up in the woods. I pretty much cut all day with no problem and then later on my chain got a little dull.

I went back to the garage and sharpened it, took a break and decided to go back in the woods to see how good a job I did on the chain. I was pretty tired by then. Mind you I am by myself about 5-6 miles back in the mountains where her house is and nobody around. I get to some fallen timber and cut a few branches here and there and all is good. I think I did a good job on the chain let me cut a little more then I'll call it a day. There was a big tree laying on the ground smooth as my butt. I walked over to it and stepped on to it and started the saw. Sawed off a few small limbs and walked up a bit, reached for another limb and then it happened... My right foot slipped out from beneath me and when that happened I automatically tensed up and squeezed the trigger full throttle on the saw. As I started falling over --> that way the saw spun around straight towards my face running full throttle and I fell face first into the blade.

It happened so fast I couldn't do anything at all it was a blur pretty much. Anyway it got me from my left ear to underneath my chin and I jumped up off the ground and grabbed my face/neck and blood was squirting from between my fingers. I was thinking oh man this is it I'm going to meet my maker today I've messed up now... Told myself to take a few deep breath's and briskly walk to the house holding my neck. It was about 200 yards away so I walked briskly to the house and got a towel. Held pressure on my neck and face as I tried to remain calm. After about 5 min went by I slowly pulled the towel back to see the damage... Nothing was squirting so I said to myself thank God I think I'm going to be ok. However my face/cheek was hanging open along with part of my neck and it looked pretty gross.

I thought about calling 911 but told myself to just hop in the truck and drive myself to the emergency room. So as I'm driving down the road holding a bloody towel on my face and neck and the other on the wheel here comes my girlfriend towards the house and we run into one another on the road. She said whats wrong and I told her I had a chainsaw accident and need to get to the hospital.. well she freaked and yelled and called me a few things because she was scared and upset and mad at the same time and off I went. She said if I had gotten home and found you in the woods dead I would have freaked out and lost it. I would have never gotten over that. She calmed down and I got to the hospital ok and they took me in and looked me over. Got a plastic surgeon to stitch me up with 60 some stitches I think. He said boy are you lucky... you got this thing here and nerves there and your jugular here and you missed it all!!! It's a good thing you had a sharp chain otherwise you would have really torn your face and neck up pretty bad the Dr said.

You got someone looking out for you. I said yeah your right I think the man upstairs was watching over me and kinda gave me a nudge to push me over out of the way. If I had gone straight into the blade that saw would have went into my throat and then I would probably have died in the woods that day and bled to death. That was a hell of an ordeal to say the least. I still got a scar from my ear to my throat under my chin but after using some scar medicine for a year or so it cleared up a lot of it. So after that day I told myself to NEVER walk on a tree without any bark... When I get tired STOP... and wear the proper shoes/boots when I go cutting...

I still go cutting as much as I can to this day as I love cutting and splitting wood. You have to get your fear dealt with straight on to move on and get over what happened and I am a little more careful these days when I run a saw. That may be like why I prefer a slower running saw compared to those fast cutting saws. I'm in no hurry to cut up any wood and would rather do it safe than fast. So I know the man upstairs is watching out for me... It wasn't my time to go that day and I'm still here. It makes you think about life and a lot of things when an accident happens and I still take it slow and make sure everything is right before I cut.

So there's my story and hopefully I will not have any more...

Nick

 

[TreeGuyHR]

Good story.

Might want to buy some cork boots. Yes, they are expensive, but they would have kept you on the log.

I have a pair that I use occasionally. At the very least, you will be able to get around in an ice storm!:msp_biggrin::msp_biggrin:

 

[Gologit]

That may be like why I prefer a slower running saw compared to those fast cutting saws.

Nick

A slower running saw will cut you just as quick and just as bad as a faster running one.

Do you wear any kind of PPE? Chaps, maybe?

 

[Nickolas]

Good story.

Might want to buy some cork boots. Yes, they are expensive, but they would have kept you on the log.

I have a pair that I use occasionally. At the very least, you will be able to get around in an ice storm!:msp_biggrin::msp_biggrin:

I got good boots to wear however that day I just wasn't thinking I guess and just went over to the house and started cutting. If I had just stopped after cutting all day when I was tired it never would have happened. I just wanted to see how good a job I did sharpening the chain. Basically I was tired and not thinking when I walked along that bare tree. If it were earlier in the day I wouldn't have considered walking on that tree but around it. Tiredness and not thinking clearly is what got me...

 

[Nickolas]

A slower running saw will cut you just as quick and just as bad as a faster running one.

Do you wear any kind of PPE? Chaps, maybe?

Your right I can get cut just as bad. I just don't have any use for a saw turning those high rpm's. My saw cuts plenty fast and I have no reason to get through it twice as fast. I am in no hurry to cut up any tree. I can see if your a professional and have to cut a lot of timber to get the job done but that's not me. I prefer a slower running saw as I like to take my time in most everything I do. I always do a more complete and thorough job when I do. And 6000 rpm isn't slow mind you that's spinning along pretty good. Six thousand revolutions a min is quite a lot. I have been cutting wood for what, 30+ years and don't wear anything special. I have never had a problem or even gotten a scratch. I blame it on FATIGUE plain and simple. I know if I hadn't been tired and went back over in the woods it never would have happened and my perfect record would remain perfect for safety.