Have to see to believe it. Yet to all his own. Coming from you I give it more merit. (Foot in the chipper)
The story go's
two climbers hear the chipper not being loaded as its running. They find Jose has been precessed. A car drove by and noticed him, I believe, standing on the loading chute and kicking brush in.:msp_ohmy:
Foot in the chipper?? 12" chuck and duck man eater will get that habit cured. Still the fastest thing out there
There's been some good points made about safety, thats for sure. Especially feeding from the side. Feeding from the side can really torque your back because you have to twist to get the branch in, but we often feed in pairs which works out good. From the stack, one guy is on the left and one on the right, you pick up a bundle together and drag to the chipper. Two guys together can carry more than the sum of their individual efforts. As you get to the machine you are both feeding from the outside, and you don't have to twist so much because the guy opposite is balancing your input.
We always have one guy on the controls, the truck driver. He's operating the lift/crush, keeping an eye out for pedestrians (we put cones and signs out, but people love to get close), shutting the machine down as needed for people walking by and stops or reverses the rollers should anything go wrong. If we've got 6 guys feeding, that's 3 'pairs' and usually 2 pairs are on branches while 1 pair is on logs. We stack logs on the road and logs to the side on the nature strip, so they're all getting fed at the same time. Often times you can throw a few branches in, let the rollers take them up then the driver stops the rollers. The log guys throw a log on top, and the log gets a free ride into the rollers. We use the same trick for raked leaves, twigs etc that we pile onto a tarp at cleanup. Put a branch in first, stop the rollers and pile all the crap on top. Goes through real easy.
Log duty rotates in an unspoken way. It's hard work. When the log pair have had enough, they start grabbing branches and the next pair will start grabbing logs without any communication needed. We keep our logs over 3', because they're safer to feed and short sections won't go through the chipper 'end on'. Rounds roll side ways and splinter instead of chipping. People complain about the resulting 18" splinters (we call them surf boards) and we have a hard time getting rid of splintered chip so we try to do the longer logs.
If the logs don't want to 'ride' on the branches, we try to feed them one after the other. There's some advantages to this. The first one is that you can use them to push each other, keeping you further from the rollers. Secondly, if you just feed one log, as the roller gets to the end of the log and starts to close.... the autofeed cant really stop. Even if the roller isnt rolling, the automatic 'crush' keeps pushing the last of the stub in which occasionally stalls the chipper on hard woods if the blades are getting to sharpening time. Feeding them end to end means that the rollers never close, they take up the next log before the first one gets crushed. This is a great trick on chippers without lift/crush like vermeer BC1000XL's. The last benefit is that if you were feeding the logs one by one, you have to lift the rollers, and there will be a big chunk of unchipped log sitting between the roller and the drum/disk just waiting to spit out at you if vibration nudges it onto the blades. By feeding end to end you reduce your exposure to that risk. I really hate having to feed a log into the chute while there's a chuck sitting there and the rollers are lifted! If we get to the end of the log before the next one is ready, the driver stops the rollers while there's still 6" of log sticking out.
I still do give things a kick sometimes, only logs though. And I still do push logs with my foot sometimes too. When I'm doing this, someone is on the controls, and my foot never gets closer than 4' away from the rollers. My hands are gripping the top bar ready to shift it. I feel more stable in this position than if my hands had nothing to grab. I guess the real truth about it though is that it's not the right thing to do. I don't let any of my workers do it. But as the business owner I feel if there's anything that's going to be a risk I'll be the one taking it. There are some risky things in every part of this job... someone above mentioned about cutting one handed with a climbing saw etc... Using your foot isn't allowed by OHS in australia (which may well be enough reason not to do it) but neither is using a climbing saw on the ground, cutting without chaps, drop starting, one handing, cutting in a tree without 2 tie in points, not wearing eye protection, cutting above shoulder height, didnt have signage, didn't have a written induction/training process for your chipper & stump grinder, didn't have a written hazard assesment before starting the job or any of the other hundred things we all do every day. Informal risk assesment is an ongoing process for me... Every second of the day you're looking out for danger and asking yourself how much safety you need, and making the decision to go ahead or do it different.
There was one guy who lost both his legs in a chipper in aus last year. I didn't know him, but I know the guy who owns the company. The guy was chipping with a BC1000XL, and was alone. The chipper jammed, and the guy climbed into the chute with the machine running. With both legs standing in the chute, he started kicking the log. The log went, he slipped and landed on his ass which took the wind out of him. By the time he grabbed the nudge bar, he was gone up to the knees.
Shaun
