Did something dumb today.

[doc henderson]

I cringe a little to say this , but Howard, that is brilliant!  Doc.

[TimW]

If you step up on the frame often, in the field, put some stick on antiskid where you step.

Yes, I have it in several places but this is where the leg/foot on the swinging bed rail travels.  I needed to use that stool there anyway. 

I was thinking about the swing bunk.  It is right there where I put the step stool to work on the engine.

[TimW]

I cringe a little to say this , but Howard, that is brilliant!  Doc.

I cringe also, thinking about all that concentrated weight bearing down on the trailer's rollers.  I would worry about the rollers pushing up thru the hull

But I would take that chance and fill the boat also.

[WV Sawmiller]

Tim,

   Since my 18' Lowes Aluminum Johnboat just slides up on the trailer on runners and no rollers involved I should be okay - right?

[SawyerTed]

I have to disagree. 

Don't allow your boat to fill with water.  The problems outweigh the advantages.  Think mildew, algae, wet electrical components, submerged batteries and stress of water inside pressing out (not how boats are designed) all are not worth the problems. 

A small boat, let's say 12' long and 4' wide, of 48 square feet will catch .6 gallons of water per square foot for every inch of rain. 

48 x .6 = 28.8 gallons per inch of rain

If Debby dropped 6" of rain in the boat (what we got from Debby), that's 172.8 gallons of water. 

Every gallon of water weighs a little more than 8 pounds.  That's close to 1,400 pounds of water inside the boat, pressing out and down on the trailer.  Think about the rated capacity of that boat, even at 600 or 800 pounds capacity, the weight of the water has exceeded the rated capacity of the boat.

Let the water drain into a container or let the bilge pump work to pump water into a separate container if you have to catch water.

[doc henderson]

I was assuming a single wall hull.  I had my smaller sailboats full of water but for the seats filled with foam.  that was while in the lake.  capsized x 1, and big rainstorm at night one time.  no electrical and not on trailer.  

[Hilltop366]

Full of water while in the water would be little to no weight on the hull.....unless it is your canoe wrapped around a rock.

[TimW]

Tim,

  Since my 18' Lowes Aluminum Johnboat just slides up on the trailer on runners and no rollers involved I should be okay - right?

Howard,
    I would think you are fine.  I was thinking about 22 foot bass boats that are decked out to the gunwales with fish catching gadgets.  Just don't forget to throw out the anchor.

I'm laughing sitting here typing, thinking about an Aggie who would try to fill his deck boat with water, only to have it go over the sides.

Or the Aggie who took the air out of his air boat.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Which of course reminds me of the 2 Irish men (Or was it 2 Aggies) stranded in a lifeboat after the ship they were on sank. Sean spotted something floating and paddled over to check it out and found an ancient bottle. He pulled it in and said "Michael, I've saved us. I bet there's a Genie in it." 

    Sean replied "You're daft man."

    Sean rubbed the bottle and a puff of smoke appeared then a Genie. Sean said "I want my 3 wishes." The genie responded "I'm not that kind of Genie, I only grant one wish." 

    Sean said "Okay, I want this whole ocean to be good cold Guinness beer." Whoosh. The ocean turned into beer and the Genie and the bottle disappeared. 

     Sean smiled and said "See, we're saved!"

     Michael shook his head and responded "All I see is that from now on we're going to have to pee in the boat."

[Old Greenhorn]

Ok, my turn. I did this all by myself and it was dumb. Back story: I smoke, I run a wood stove in the shop, and I sweep regularly. In the winter months the sweepings, mostly sawdust, goes in the woodstove each morning. My stove has an ember shelf on the front, below the door. I use this shelf as an ash tray and throw any butts in the stove when I open the door to fill it. In the summer I sweep a pile of sawdust and leave it for the next fire in front of the stove. I leave butts on that shelf and once a week or so I drop them in a paper coffee cup for the next fire.

 So I am working on a tractor in the shop this morning and at some point I dropped a hot butt on that shelf. Apparently it rolled off the shelf and landed in the sawdust. Nothing happened, I walked past it a dozen times. Got the tractor running, opened the garage door to get the tractor out and air out the shop. I mowed the front and back lawns, about 2 hours work.
 I drove the tractor into the storage shed and shut it down. I heard a loud beep from 'somewhere' and thought it sounded a LOT like a smoke alarm, but it was only one beep.
 So I came in the shop and smelled heavy wood smoke and thought the brush pile out front had flared up but it was 'done'. Then I realized even with the garage door wide open, there was a lot of smoke in the shop. I searched around and was about to grab the PW can and head upstairs when I spotted the smouldering pile of sawdust by the wood stove. I put it out with a half empty bottle of drinking water.
 Took an hour to clear the air in the shop. Dumb.

[Nebraska]

Ooops!

[aigheadish]

Eek, Tom, I've certainly been in shops where that could've been real bad! I'm glad it wasn't!

[SawyerTed]

Um, let them cool before touching!

A photo= mbft of words.  

[aigheadish]

Ted, that's a lesson I seem to need to relearn every time I use one.

[jpassardi]

Yeah, I've been guilty of that number...

[Hilltop366]

Yesterday while I was sitting on a milk crate mig welding a lamp post my stomach started to get kind of hot, so thinking it was just a spark and would cool off I kept going but things were getting worse so I stopped and looked and sure enough my shirt (first layer) was burning, it left a 2"hole in the shirt and scorched the tee shirt underneath, no hole in he tee or me.

[SawyerTed]

Ted, that's a lesson I seem to need to relearn every time I use one.

Me too!  In a hurry and nearly blistered my index finger and thumb.  It was painful enough...

The other thing I need to relearn about sawsall blades is when they are dull, they are trash, don't put them back in the case.  

It must be the nature of the tool...

[rusticretreater]

The other thing I need to relearn about sawsall blades is when they are dull, they are trash, don't put them back in the case.

But also remember to let them cool down before you throw them in the trash.  Avoid the "Did something dumb today" Hall of Fame!

[SawyerTed]

A masonry bit that drills into rebar has a funny way of getting hot enough to set a scrap pile and sawdust ablaze.     Don't ask how I know but I KNOW! 

It wasn't a big fire but a fire nonetheless.  

[aigheadish]

Wait- They make new sawzall blades? 

[doc henderson]

Yes, but the new ones cost more.  

[SawyerTed]

The new ones can cut surprisingly fast!  

[WV Sawmiller]

  Not so much dumb as just lacking in mechanical expertise. I returned to yesterdays sawing site 19 miles away. Sawed 2 decent oak logs then had the 3rd, a large RO, on the loading arms and the mill would not start. I suspected the starter switch but could not ID the problem. I called my small engine guy (who is also a sawmill owner) and packed up and hooked and drove 20 miles or so to his shop. He walked out and looked and said "I see the problem already." Turns out the hot wire to the starter had pulled off. He squeezed the clip and pushed it right back on and I was back in business. I stopped and got some more oil and a few screws for the cover and will go ahead and do the 1500 hour service which is due in about 3 more hours but this customer will have me busy a week or more between 2 sites he has. We're scheduled to start back up in the morning again.

[TreefarmerNN]

OK, my turn I guess. Nice day today and I have cabin fever. I haven't cut in a couple of months now and there is this 65' snag I have to look at each time I leave my driveway. It's been there 15 years. A rotten EWP locked into a leaning 75' maple. It's a 'little' tricky and last March I did a much more dangerous complex 4 way tie-up right next to it (all hurricane Irene damage).
Anyway, before diving in, I wanted to get my sea legs back and had all these pines and one oak that had been down nearly as long. They needed to be bucked into something drag able, and some were a little hung up at head height. Lots of little forces involved with the twists and crotch jams. Well, you guessed it, I mis-judged the loading on one and got the saw pinched good in the oak. I didn't have another saw handy and didn't want to walk back, tried the wedge thing (as you can see in the photo), but wound up cutting it out with an ax. NO, I did not hit the bar or the chain with the ax. It was like surgery (OK Doc, maybe not quite surgery, but it worked fine, allow me the metaphor). I got it out. Still feel stupid though. The photographic evidence provided shows the saw just prior to removal after I had freed it up.
I did get the big snag down, but it took most of the day with trying to plan the way it shifted with each 4' chunk I took off the bottom. I did a LOT of wedge pounding, more than I have ever done on a single tree, let alone in a single day. Used every wedge I had in my pouch. My dumbest move of the day was around 3:30 when I realized I could not longer control either ax or saw above my shoulder height. I should have quit for the day, but I wanted that DanG tree on the ground and kept going. Now I feel pretty darn sore (I did get it down and bucked). Not using those muscles for several months sure has put a hurtin' on me. I could crawl into bed right now, but I am expected at the neighbors to shoot pool and be jovial in a little while. Time for more Advil.

A friend of mine who is a retired logger suggested always having a spare bar and chain with you as those are easier to carry than a second saw. 

I hate cutting lodged trees, particularly ones that are close to vertical.  I bought a tractor 3ph logging winch and was really happy to use that on a couple of ones that I didn't want to cut.  One of them required using a block and doubling the pull but it came down.  I think that little 8,000 lb winch on a 30 hp tractor has almost as much pull as our 100 hp tractor, maybe more.  Another plus is it has 160' of cable on the spool which beats the heck out of me loading that much cable on a truck. 

[aigheadish]

@WV Sawmiller -

I should have entered my backhoe starter problem here along with a quiet mention on the What are you cuttin' thread. 

My backhoe decided, months ago, to not start. Lights on the dashboard, "it fired up yesterday, no problem" kind of stuff. I thought maybe it was a neutral safety switch issue, since I'd bump the F-N-R lever around and got it to work a time or two. I went off and asked some heavy equipment guys who gave some great advice that I either didn't listen to or didn't understand, and the backhoe continued to sit through most of the working season, this year, not working. I finally got frustrated with being an incompetent mechanic and called a pro out. Within literally one minute he said "Yup, got a bad starter, try turning the key when I tell you." He tapped on it with a crowbar, quite gently, told me to turn the key and it fired up like it'd run 10 minutes ago. Now, I know about the tapping-the-starter trick, but for some reason didn't try it and I've wasted the summer of decent work on the backhoe. Oh well, I guess, but wicked dumb.