Did something dumb today.

[firefighter ontheside]

Good shot.  Did you scare the groundhog?

[Don P]

Probably couldn't have hit it if you were aiming, sounds like my luck  :D.

They are going through the "deer fence" we have around the garden like it was made out of recycled shopping bags. I have some tensar geotex grid over one area, that seems to work, no idea what it costs now though.

[APope]

I put a two string electric fence around my garden to end whistle pigs eating more than we do...

[dougtrr2]

I had to replace my old Stihl saw and after 2 years I am still getting used to the new one.  I put a new chain on and went to saw some ash logs for firewood.  The saw started fine, but while warming up had a rattly noise I hadn't heard before.  I didn't think too much about it a tried to saw.  The chain seemed to come up to speed but had absolutely no power to cut.  ???   I tried a couple times and nothing.  I thought for sure the clutch was bad, but how could that be on such a new saw? I pulled the cover and quickly realized I had managed to put the chain in the narrow gap between the drive sprocket and its retainer.  Put the chain on right and I was good to go.  ;D


In my defense, this is the first saw I have had that had with a drive sprocket that can be replaced independent of the clutch housing.

Doug in SW Ia

[Big_eddy]

My turn this weekend.
Washed my chainsaw pants. That wasn't dumb - they almost stood up by themselves.
Also washed my work pants. That wasn't dumb either. They were not much better.
Checked all the pockets. That certainly wasn't dumb. One set of keys, 2 sockets, a scrench and my Swiss Army knife were saved from (another) trip through the washer. Oh, and 2lbs of wood chips from the chainsaw pants.

Slight detour while we are on that topic - and I'm sure many of you are the same - but throughout the cutting season from September through April, our back entrance (dark tile) usually  looks like someone spilled a bag of oatmeal. There are always wood chips on the floor. No matter how often you brush off, they just come in with us. No avoiding them. But they are clean dirt, so we vacuum them up every day or two and life goes on.

Anyway - tossed in all my work shirts and tossed in the cleaning rags, and ran the wash.

Opened the washer and OMG! Those micro-fibre cleaning rags? Do the EVER like wood chips. Each rag was jam packed with chips. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get them off. Wood fibre embedded in the micro-fibres with an attraction more tenacious than gravity. Turns out I had not emptied a side pocket on the chainsaw pants. I never use it so never checked it for tools. It was full of chips :(. Until the micro fibre clothes got hold of them...

[SawyerTed]

At least all those wood chips were "collected " and didn't go through the rest of the washer.  

[Resonator]

I've heard if you pour the detergent directly on a stained shirt, it will come out with kind of a spotty cow hide pattern of clean and stained fabric. 

I always do a quick check of the bottom of the washing machine tub (around the base of the agitator), for anything that fell out in the wash cycle. Gravel, woodchips, guitar picks, and of course money. (I think that's where the term "money laundering" came from). ;D

[Southside]

You should see what happens when you miss a lumber crayon in a pocket.   :

[Chuck White]

Ya, especially if the crayon makes it to the DRYER!   

[Nebraska]

Lumber crayon that's just kids stuff, try a hot pink 1 inch diameter livestock paint stick.....  or Orange or red, or green.... large animal Veterinary coats have many pockets, as do the bib overalls underneath... Sometimes they smell bad enough you want them in the wash asap and it's the wee hours of the morning or someone is asking you fourteen questions. Then you find out later  when you now have dark green/ brown duck coveralls with paint stick highlights. Oh yes and the ladies associated with whatever wash machine are very cheerful afterwards.    
Those micro fiber rags like to pick up pet hair and recycled bits of plant material in the wash machine too..

[Southside]

As well as they work on cattle and clothing those livestock sticks don't work worth a darn on lumber. Tried it once thinking I wouldn't need lumber crayons. 

[aigheadish]

I did something dumb by not listening to you guys to try to hog out more material on the cutting board I'm still making for my sister. 

I showed pictures somewhere of this router table breaking and the router trying to kill me, and I beefed it all up and tried again, again, not listening to the sage wisdom here and blind routing the underside of this piece. Well, I was taking very minor swipes and it was going fine (I've got stops built in so the piece wouldn't ever come out of the hole I was making, other than a line I drew on the front of the table to say "stop here") until I was moving the thing around and to shut the router off to readjust and the bit grabbed a side of the cutting board (I probably was lifting it a bit, maybe?) and spun the whole piece around a bit, like a pinball it bounced from side to side and stopped. I quickly stopped the router, set the piece aside after finding minimal unfixable damage, and made myself a stiff cocktail. This table is probably 4' x 3' and much too big. I've decided, at this point, I'll cut it in half and use it as a normal router table, rather than this death trap that I'm trying to use it as. The real dumb part is my router sled was 2 steps up a ladder away. That is the correct method. 

I don't like routers much.

[SawyerTed]

The router and its big sister, the shaper, are fickle mistresses!  When they work good it's all sunshine, when they go wrong  it can be really wrong!

Using a 1/2 hp Porter Cable router, I hit a knot that shattered on a piece of pine.  The shards when every direction.  When I shut it off, a hissing sound caught my attention.  A piece of the knot stuck in a plastic pipe in my compressed air piping.   I'm just glad none of it hit me.  

[aigheadish]

When I was in 8th grade shop class we were making clocks, and cutting the circular trim, for the face, out with some crazy attachment for a drill press, if I recall properly. The attachment came out of drill press, then took a 90 degree turn, parallel to the drill press stage, then it took another 90 degree turn down, where it had some cutting/shaping/knifey thing, so I think you could adjust the horizontal piece to vary the distance from center on the piece you were cutting. Anyway, we weren't allowed to use that attachment, so I'm standing about 5 feet away, watching the shop teacher when a chunk of wood the size of a roll of quarters came flying off and hit me square in the forehead.

[Jim_Rogers]

You should see what happens when you miss a lumber crayon in a pocket.   :

Been there done that.

Ya, especially if the crayon makes it to the DRYER!    

Been there done that too.

[SawyerTed]

When I was in 8th grade shop class we were making clocks, and cutting the circular trim, for the face, out with some crazy attachment for a drill press, if I recall properly. The attachment came out of drill press, then took a 90 degree turn, parallel to the drill press stage, then it took another 90 degree turn down, where it had some cutting/shaping/knifey thing, so I think you could adjust the horizontal piece to vary the distance from center on the piece you were cutting. Anyway, we weren't allowed to use that attachment, so I'm standing about 5 feet away, watching the shop teacher when a chunk of wood the size of a roll of quarters came flying off and hit me square in the forehead.

It just wrong to "Like" a post like that but what's a guy to do?  :D
That's a circle cutter and it too is an evil contrivance.   I used to teach industrial arts/Tech Ed.  We made clocks as well.  
IIRC we used a circle cutter like that for a time.  Then we switched to a circle jig on the bandsaw then sanded the circles with circle jig on the disc sander instead.   We were using the round piece in our clocks.
To cut one circle the circle cutter is fine.  It's not something want to tempt often. It will bite.  


 

[Resonator]

Our high school shop teacher was always cautious about using wood lathe. He had a student the previous year turning a large diameter piece (maybe a tabletop) and things went bad. Even at a low rpm, the piece was still traveling many feet per minute at the outer edge. While he was gouging it, the tool dug in and cracked the wood, and it exploded. He was able to walk away, but walked away bruised... slowly.

[TimW]

That's a circle cutter and it too is an evil contrivance. 

Yep, used them all the time rebuilding wrecked helicopters and making new instrument panels.  Extremely wicked in a hand drill.  I do not recommend it in a hand drill.  I lost one, then someone returned it after I bought another one.  So I reground the cutter on it so it would cut perfect circles and not holes.
hugs,  Brandi

[aigheadish]

That's exactly it Ted! It's ok to like that post, I survived!

[TimW]

Well, it's my turn.  I crushed my Stihl 461 chain saw with my Excavator.  Not a pretty sight.  I was trying to set the White Oak log on some 4x6s, to cut to length later.  I had the Stihl on the far side of another tree, until I moved around the log to lift the big end.  I backed in and over it and didn't feel a thing.

 

I should have just moved the long (32 feet) with my Lull, but I was lazy in changing machines.  The Lull, after all, lifted the log with no problem.  The log is in the background.

 

Does anyone offer chainsaw insurance???
hugs,  Brandi

[Resonator]

I think every logger I know has smashed at least 1 chainsaw. It's not if, it's when it will happen if you work around tree's a lot.
(I've still got the cracked shell of my MS390 still sitting in my garage after it tangled with a nasty tree years ago.) :

[Bert]

Yep. I have one in the shop now on life support.  : Thats 2 in 20 couple years in this line of work.

[SawyerTed]

A ton of log makes short work of smashing a chainsaw if it gets caught on the downhill side of the log.... Don't ask how I know but it happened about 10 years ago or so. The saw shop put it back together and it still works great.  

Work in the woods or around logs long enough and something will get smashed.  Murphy's Law Corollary #7. 

[TimW]

The shop I use doesn't have any donor 461s.  My crankcase is cracked anyway.  Looks like a new Stihl 462 for me. Or maybe a new 500.
Sadness prevail.
   hugs,   Brandi

[firefighter ontheside]

Ouch.  Sorry about the 461 Brandi, but a new 462 or 500 will be nice.