Did something dumb today.

[sawguy21]

I am trying to envision his height adjustment.

[Nebraska]

Honestly  a knot headed horse moved it for me.  It was laid out to hang on a pole  between two barns. Fred had the sweetest personality, but your fence better be really  hot, and two chains on the gates oh, yeah don't leave anything within reach or he was playing with it. Like a giant Labrador.

[Don P]

My neighbors son had borrowed a 3/8 cable while he was learning to drive, bombing around the farm in one of the retired trucks. I found it while bush hogging, what a mess, that took an angle grinder and much blood letting  :D.

[Ed_K]

 End of Nov. I welded a quick release plate onto my fork frame so I could add the snow plow to it for winter. Yesterday I needed the bucket on so I pulled the release lever and backed out of the quick frame. Worked great BUT your supposed to unhook the hydro lines for the plow too. Broke the 90° right at the swing piston >:( :( .

[doc henderson]

I put my grapple bucket on and attached the hydraulic hoses, but did not latch the quick attach.  it fell off the first time I rolled it forward.

[Nebraska]

Ok I've done that with the, hay spear, pallets forks and the bucket..  .
  A week ago I ordered a quick attach brush grapple. Hmmm.. Thats probably  a good reason to make my hoses a little longer with a tear away zip tie or something. I hadn't thought about that consequence yet.

[Lostinmn]

After reading posts about chainsaw scabbards and best place to mount them on tractors and/or logging winches, I thought to myself I really should fab up something similar.  I usual put the saw in the bucket, and I haven't managed to dump it like others were talking about.

Then yesterday, I needed to nudge a log with the forks... yep dumped the saw right out onto the logs  

Fortunately there was no damage to saw. So fabricating a saw holder just became a top of the list project now that I joined the dumped it club!

[K-Guy]

That big pile of baling twine next to the barn from feeding the horses got a bit smaller when I snagged it in the snow blower.

It can't be as bad as cutting 100 ft. plus of barbed wire off the rear axle of a jeep after being up all night on exercise with the army.   

[firefighter ontheside]

How about accidentally laying out 1000 feet of 5" hose off of a firetruck.  I'm sure you know that we carry hose on the top of the truck to be laid from a hydrant to a fire.  Well, I was working about 15 years ago at one of our stations and I heard a sound outside like someone dragging a large piece of metal behind a truck.  I ran outside to see what was going on.  I got out there just in time to see a neighboring department firetruck drive by with the end of the 5" hose and coupling dragging behind.  Just as they went by the hose began laying out behind the truck.  I hurriedly called the chief of that department and said you need to tell your truck that they just laid 1000 feet of hose down the road.  He called the truck and told them what had happened.  They had no idea.  We had to close the road down for an hour or so while we loaded all the hose back on the truck.  

Another time, a hoseline that we keep accordion loaded on the front bumper of the truck and is preconnected to piping in the bumper fell off.  The nozzle fell over the side and proceeded to get wound up in one of the duals like it was spool.  200' of hose wrapped up in the dual and then when all the hose was rolled up and tight it ripped the pipe off the bumper.  The chief was none too happy, but these things happen and are the price of doing our business.  He was over it in a short order.

[WV Sawmiller]

K-Guy,

    Try that with concertina instead of barbwire! 

[Tacotodd]

Either one is bad, only, concertina is FAR worse.

[Don P]

One of my clients was a safety officer for a big trash hauling company. He got the call one morning, one of the dumpster trucks had left the industrial park with his load too high, caught a phone line and took it down. As Dave is arriving on scene he notices they haven't coned the area yet and the line is laying in the road. As he is getting out of his car a small truck drives over the line, picks it up on his wheel and is heading down the road unawares, reeling it in. The little truck gets to the end of its tether, the line snatches taught, jerks the rears off the ground and parts the line. Dave is standing there watching it all unfold. The line whips up in the air, arcs over the 3 phase line supplying the industrial park, a light show ensues, and the park goes dark. He showed up later in the day at the job just shaking his head, a few hundred dollar incident turned into a disaster right before his eyes  :D.

[firefighter ontheside]

Yeah, thats a mess.  I don't know how many calls I've gone to where a dump truck has driven away from a job with the bed all the way up.  On one, I think the truck took down about 4 power poles and wires down everywhere.  Show up with driver still sitting in truck afraid to get out.  

[sawguy21]

That has happened more than once with highway overpasses. One did that with an overheight load on 99, the Canadian side of I-5. He kept going but got stopped by the next one. He lost his cdl permanently over that, it wasn't his first violation.

[SawyerTed]

My buddy that runs a tree service has a bucket truck.  The driver was on his way to a job, the bucket, which was properly stowed, caught a cable tv cable that was hanging too low.  It took out 7 power poles, three were broken, four were pulled down.  Power went out for several thousand.  The power company filed suit against my buddy for over $100,000.  The highway patrol officer that responded to the accident had reported the cable several times so my buddy's insurance was off the hook.  The cable company had to foot the bill for the mayhem.

[thecfarm]

 My turn!!
I cut a small dead pine, maybe 8 inches at the stump. It did not have the weight to come to the ground, got hung up in some other branches, kinda like cedar does. So I winched it down with my 3 pt winch on my tractor. It bounced when it hit the ground and I got a lot of slack in the cable, which is normal. Note the a lot of slack. I kept on winching it in, which I know better. Brought it up to the so called wood yard up by the house and all is fine.
Yesterday I went into the woods to use it, had some more dead wood to get out before we went for Christmas, I grabbed onto the cable and got about 8 feet out and that was it. I pulled on by hand, did nothing, closet tree was 10 feet away. Should of known than it would not turn out good. I backed the tractor up some and hooked a chain on to that tree and drove forward. The winch stopped the tractor. Oh well just have to give it some more throttle.  :  Front wheels comes off the ground that time.    I looked inside the winch to see the problem, hard to see in there and does look bad, so I try it again. Same thing with the front wheels. Not good. So I unhook and head it for the garage. Than I remembered the last time I used it. I know better, all that slack must of got wrapped up wrong. I get to the garage and get my head lamp to see inside the winch better. I turn the drum and can see it, it is wrapped around itself. I try to get it out, but with only a 8 inch hole, and off to the side of the drum, I can't really get at it. So off comes the mast, top part of the winch. I've had it off many years ago, 20 years ago. When I take it off I am looking right at the problem. When the cable got slack it somehow wrapped around itself. At first I thought I was going to have to cut the slides off and feed it through that wrapped up place. But I took a bar and kept rotating the drum and get some slack and got it unraveled. And what a mess I had!!! It's no longer straight in 2-3 places, and one bad kink. Had quite a mess of cable in about a foot square area inside the winch. But I kept pushing and pulling and got it. Than I put it all back together and headed for the woods again. I knew where there was a good size pine that broke off and headed for that. I knew I needed some hard pulling to get the cable straight again, if I could. I Had a little bit of a hard time getting the cable through the pulley, it was twisted real bad. With it laying on the ground it did not look good at all, it was more coiled than straight. I winched in one length of that pine, kept it a good 40 feet away and than went back for the top of it, kept that about 40 feet away and than went back for a smaller tree that was there. Than I brought it all up to the tractor. Did not lock it in, pulled the tractor the full length of the cable, and the cable did not look bad. Even the place that kinked real bad looked good. Would not want to handle the cable with no gloves. I did that about 3 times and all looks good. Did not do the cable much good. :(    But that cable has been on there for years, maybe 5 years?? Maybe I need to buy another one as a spare.  Not really, at probably more than $200 I doubt it. Only doing this for my own use. But the mess only cost me about a hour and a half of time. Lucky. But saying that, I still might have to buy one because it may not wind on the drum right when I have a light load.

[firefighter ontheside]

Well, at least you got it figured out before worse damage was done, like flipping the tractor or breaking the winch.  Here at the FD we have big breathing air compressors.  They have a hose reel that you pull out to fill large air bottles that are mounted in the trucks.  The reel is spring rewind, so guys are constantly letting it rewind too fast which causes the hose to get wrapped around the spool like you had happen.  Its a major undertaking to get that fixed.  We used to have to call in the service company to fix, but finally one day I had him show me how to fix it.  

[SawyerTed]

 

 

Some winches backlash worse than others!  My ATV winch does the same thing sometimes, it's a might bit easier to get the over wraps pulled loose.  A shot of silicone spray helps considerably.  

[thecfarm]

I know better on winching a tree down. It happens almost every time. 

[Silverfoxfintry]

Just be very careful with a cable that has been kinked.  
It may have lost up to 50% of its strength.
Better to replace the cable soonest. Before it fails!

Take care 
Silverfox 

[Dragline]

Ran over my Christmas present new chainsaw with my tractor  :-\, fortunately the ground was moderately muddy,  so the chainsaw kinda buried up. Only broke the chain brake. It was end of the day of cutting and stacking firewood,  and wasn't paying attention. ... lesson learned  :D

[Nebraska]

Ouch, good it's repairable and not a few salvage parts, welcome btw.

[firefighter ontheside]

So your second post on this forum is the Did Something Dumb thread.  I hope for you that's not a trend.  What chainsaw was it?  Don't feel too bad though.  I started this thread when I knocked the blade off of my mill.  Now there's over 1200 posts.  Welcome aboard.

[SawyerTed]

Welcome we are glad you are on the Forestry Forum but joining this thread so soon might not be good!  :D  

Glad it was just a chainsaw and no doctors were involved in this incident!

[Dragline]

Thanks for the welcome.  I had just bought the chainsaw,  a huskavarna 545, as an upgrade from the 450. Not normally boneheaded,  but had a long day and just forgot I set it there. Even my wife felt bad for me. It did start right up afterwards,  but I gotta clean it up and fix the chain brake handle.  Hopefully my last entry in the "Did something dumb today"; at least for awhile  :D