The statement that presumes that only a professional should cut
trees is offensive.
Steve,
Was that statement made? I would find it offensive too.
Working with a chain saw can be relaxing in the manner of providing
focus in work and the satisfaction of a job well done, or not so well
done. I have several and I like to use them.
One needs to keep their wits about them, that is for sure.
One needs to also keep their wits about them wandering around with a
shotgun in a field.
The chainsaw topic reminds me of a less common but equally hazardous
activity of using diamond blades to play with masonry.
It also reminds me of working with diamond chain saw to cut stone. I
have not yet heard of any fatalities with use of that tool. Combine
that with being up 100' or so on the side of a building on a hanging
rig over 51st Street.
I put together a short video on cutting a piece of granite with a
worm-drive diamond blade... what intrigued me most was the connection
of brain to motion to time. Second was how many times I swore and had
to put in a beep.
Something that has been irritating me in the back-brain is that for
folks who do not have experience or talent with use of tools how so
many of them seem to imagine that a person picks up tools and uses them
for long periods of time without stop. I suspect one reason that there
are injuries and fatalities, unsafe practice, is this irrational idea
that humans can keep up with the machines that they use to build with.
The model for building, the model the economics is driven by, is not
from the human scale outward, it is gaged from the machine applied back
onto the human scale, or totally ignoring of the human element in the
process. Human fatigue in repetitive machine-driven process... spending
all day, day after day, cutting out mortar joints with a 4" diamond
blade... there comes a taxing of the human endurance, a vacuity of the
human experience of work as well, and the overriding economics is that
once a human is used up in the process there is another one in wait to
be employed (usually not legal in residence). I have had customers say,
"Why don't you just go out and get more morons?" My conclusion in all
this is that unsafe work practice in construction is driven by a rather
seedy economic pressure applied to pay less than the worth of a human
life. When it really begins to eat at me is when this pressure
blatantly emanates from a religious institution.
There is zero tolerance for error with all of these tools.
The issue with cutting out of trees is not solely the saw, it is the
need for the operator to understand what they are doing in the work
environment.
One could fell a tree with a hatchet and just as well do themselves in
though it may seem to take longer. It can be equally important to have
one's boots tied.
A friend of mine told me how as a child he was afraid to grow up. His
relatives worked for the railroad. When as a child they would go to
visit he readily noticed that the adults were missing various limbs and
that prosthetics hung on the walls.
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-- Orgrease-Crankbait
Video, audio, writings, words, spoken word, dialogs, graphic collage
and the
art of fiction in language and literature.