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I must've been almost twenty years ago but this vision still sticks in my minds eye.
I was roofing one and watched the lead carpenter cutting off rafter tails nearby. He was holding the blade gaurd up on his sidewinder and after he finished a cut while the scrap was falling he was mentally intent on studying the cut instead of paying attention to wherre he was resting the saw. He brought it absent mindedly down to his right thigh with the blade still spinning in open air. He was wakened up when it hit the dungarees though. It seemed like there was a hand grenade explosion because it grabbed a pocketfull of small change and a pocket knife and threw them at the nearby window.
Other than a nick the size of a mosquito bite he didn't get hurt.
*Here's another-I was working on a roofing crew in Telluride putting on a steel roof (COR-TEN on John Nasbitts place) It was deep winter and deep snow and I was cutting the pieces over sawhorses around back and handing them up to the guys installing on the roof. The off-cut pieces I was standing in the snow as a sorting method so they'd be handy for other use. They were directly under the fall line of the roof but it was a roof section that had no one working on it and hadn't even been shoveled off so I didn't anticipate anyone walking above it. At some point during the day I heard a voice call, "Hey P____" and as I turned I heard a soft thud sound and saw a pillar of snow dust. He had run across the unshoveled roof to correct a measurement he'd given me and caused a smal avalanche which brought him down into the snow drift that was storing the off-cuts. Landed in a horizontal position immediately between two pieces. He could've been decapitated or disemboweled.I've learned over the years to apply Murphy's law and try to keep systems idiot proof but some idiots are hard to proof. This same guy fell off four roofs in about fourteen months that I worked with him. I was considered an "attitude problem" because I wouldn't do some of the same things he did.When I was a cop I took a street survival course wherer I learned that the first piece of equiptment to put on in the morning is the attitude "I'm coming home in one piece tonight"I think that applies to this indusry!
*Here's one- raising a timber frame for a house with a tuck under garage on a steep site. The crane was parked out in front of the garage- we had the compressor and generator in the garage (with the overhead door not yet installed). Generator ran out of gas. Let it cool down for 5-10 minutes and went down to re-fuel. Apparently that wasn't long enough, as the fumes from the gas can (plastic 5 gallon) immediately ignited from the heat of the muffler. Holding what I perceived as a bomb, with flames shooting out of the top, I threw the gas can- unfortunately it hit the block side wall of the garage, split open, and caused a dandy fire up the block wall and licking the TJI joists above. The crane operator sees all this and starts honking his horn to get the rest of the crew's attention. I was busily emptying my gallon water jug on to the fire (with little effect). Someone went after the fire extinguisher but the crane operator got his out first and put the fire out. The soot is still on the block wall (this was 1995). Moral of the story: re-fuel in the morning and AFTER lunch & break, keep a fire extinguisher next to your gas powered stuff, and don't throw 5 gallons of ignited gas across a garage, no matter how good of an idea it seems at the time..
*Our house is bermed 18' in the back. During excavation it was cut pretty straight, but that was before the record spring rains. Five times part of the dirt collapsed, once on a backhoe operator, covering the backhoe up to his shoelaces. Another mudslide was after a footer was poured and there were pieces of rebar projecting up a coupla feet. After that last slide I had to go up top and fix the silt fence. As I was driving the stake into the bank, it gave way. I slid right under the fence and dropped 15' into the mud around the footer, up to my ankles in mud, and with a piece of rebar just inches from...oh, never mind.
*I attended the funeral of a good man who was buried in similar mud flow!Reminds me of the time I was on a Roof braket plank. One braket pulled loose and let the plank go from under me. I slid off the roof (12/12) and landed with my feet centered on a twelve x twelve plank sticking out the window. While balancing diving board fashion, I was watching my tools, watch, hat, etc tumble 26 feet to rocks and rebar below. I decided that fall protection is a pretty good idea sometimes!
*Many years ago,I was re-nailing some aluminum barn roofing and started to slowly slide off the roof,my feet catching the nail heads as I slid.Since I wasn't tied off(not too bright), I had to decide quickly what to do, to prevent a 30 foot fall to a concrete slab below. I took my hammer and bashed a hole through the sheeting with the claw end,stopping me 2 inches from the edge. I figured the price of a sheet was cheaper than the price of my life.
*I saw an old fellow carry a ladder across the shop and then I heard pounding on a star drill.I looked up and saw the fellow 15' off the ground, drilling a hole in a cement block wall. The ladder was resting on a concrete floor.Before I could do much, the ladder slipped across the floor and the fellow landed on the concrete and ladder. He was unhurt.While I am concerned about safety, it appears it is hard to kill people.
*The ladder riding championships: I had a ladder sitting on a pile of roof trash (Thought it was pretty well dug in.) and I carried a fiftyu pound bucket of roof cement up to the top. I hoisted it off my shoulder onto the roof plank and as I did the push the ladder slipped out from under me. I rode it down as it passed by a plate glass picture window ands came to a rest with the top of the ladder setting on the exterior window sill about four or five feeet above the ground. I was still balanced on the ladder rung and just fixin to say "Whew!" when a fifty pound bucket of tar skinned my nose and landed on the aluminum ladder at my toes. As I was picking myself up off the ground, I noticed that the ladder was now shaped like a "J" from the impact. Another guy I once worked with rode one down fourty feet on a condo job. His most vivid recolection was of the expression on the face of a girl washing windows from the inside as he went by on the way to a broken collar bone! Ok it was a fourty foot ladder and he was only up about 32'. That one was due to a failed dog on the ladder. Three other guys had just preceded him onto the roof and he was last. rode the ladder 'till it bottomed at twenty feet and then pitched off to land on his shoulder.Make sure your ladder dogs are working and locked.
*You cannot be too safe. When I get back I'll tell you about the nice gas explosion I caused after a 14 hour day with 3 more to go.It hurt like hell. And i don't use that word lightly. Thank God for Dremoral!
*Installing oak trim around the perimeter of a drop ceiling in a bank. Three bucks high on a bakers scafold, shooting trim screws in metal studs. I didn't clear my path of all debris on the floor, but managed to bump the scafold over the small stuff by pulling real hard on the grid. I got to a corner and pushed off the wall to swing the scafold around. It hung on something so I just pushed harder. The scafold tipped over in one of the slow motion moves you see on instant replays. There wasn't any tile in the grid yet and my only salvation was catching the bottom cord of the bar joist. I did and hung there forever while my crew scrambled to re- erect enough of the scafold for me to drop down on. The drywall repair cost me two hundred bucks.I think the pucker factor nearly reached 10 on that one.Now I always clear the floor.Dave
*Ever go back to work for an old boss who hasn't progressed as much as you have? This guy was the brother-in-law of my first roofing boss and my second roofing guru. I was 20 and he was 25. Taught me production w/some quality that could of been better, but I was young. Learned framing basics from him and the surrounding subs he was buddies with, by the seat of our pants. He was sure of himself and USUALLY PULLED IT OFF! Another valuble tidbit I learned, being sure of yourself-don't them them see you sweat! We parted on good terms and after relocating many times I called him one winter for work, 15 years later. I had been out of the loop for 6 years due to some cervical surgeries. I had done many projects on my own earlier, but winter in Northeast NJ, I had to eat some crow. He takes on a framing job-fire plus addition. I try to tell him when we set the hips that afternoon, that the framing square needs to be set on 17. WHAT? I don't think that's it! O.K. Next morning, "Let's pull apart these Hips and ridge!! Get on that 8' setladder and measure how far off I am! 3/4", I say. Are you sure? I step to that danger rung and reach over the Hip/ridge. He lets go to make sure I'm doing it right(Duhh). His high school buddy "helper lets go too(Double duhhhh). Guess he had to make sure I was doing it right! These laminated pieces push me off the stepladder in the attic, 16' into a 3' hallway on the 2nd floor, in between a wall brace. My knee pushed a hole thru 3/4" T&G plywood. It hurt like hell but the x-rays said my 4 cervical fusions had held: it took 3 days to get over the aches and pains. No work after that, oh well I saw it coming. Moral? Never let your respect for some one else out weigh your safety or fear trigger, especially for some one else. If I run a project, I do the dangerous shit, not my lead, especially if the calibrations are critical. And remember, you can't idiot proof everything! Peace Out, Jeff
*Piffin;There's no school like the school of hard knocks, and this is one of the lessons I learned at that particular school in Ladder Safety 101. I was building a new garage and was at the top of my extension ladder placing the very last piece of siding at the top of the gable. I thought that the ladder was reasonable well-placed, but against a slippery aluminum siding, the top of the ladder slid off the wall before I even knew what was happening. I came down about 14 feet, missed a concrete retaining wall, and landed right smack on a pile of concrete boulders left-over from the old garages foundation. The adjacent tree also ripped a pocket off my blue jeans on the way down. I didn't get knocked out cold or suffer much beyond a bit of bleeding here and there, but I was shaking like a leaf! I could have busted my head open, cracked my back on the rock pile, or had any number of other nasty injuries. I consider myself damn lucky and now ALWAYS tie off the ladder at the top as well as secure the base somehow. What impressed me was the speed of the whole thing. I never even really had time to react of counter it in any way. I'll play it safe from now on, I'm not interested in spending the rest of my days in a wheel chair...
*Here's a beut! Sometimes my own stupidity amazes me. We were doing a frame for a decent, yet shady all cash builder. One afternoon he came up to us to tell us that his other framing crew had walked on a half completed, royally screwed up frame. Could we help out? The cash talked. The next morning we went over to have a look. Six am and no coffee yet and my partner is pushing up a sixteen foot two by twelve up over a balcony up to me on the third deck. I'm backing up while pulling up the stock. Well don't I back up right into the stair hole which carries all the way down to the basement. Incidently the house had all 10 foot ceilings in the living space and twelve foot ceilings in the basement due to the grade on the lot. Do the math. I get very luck and the end of the board catches on a make shift railing over the balcony and I'm left hanging on the end of a two by twelve diving board with one hand over a nasty little drop. Just because I cover all my stair holes until the stairs are installed in a timely fashion doesn't necessarily mean others will do it for me. Since that day I don't even get out of the truck until I finish my coffee! Word of advice... familirize yourself with layout before clamboring all over someone else's frame!
*Several years ago, in the days of my youth I was working as a laborer. We were doing a large addition on one of the high schools. The bricklayers had staging scaffolding erected around two sides of the building at a height of about 40'. As it was wintertime we had wrapped the scaffolding with poly to create a working shelter. One day the wind was blowing really wickedly and tossing that shelter around pretty good. I was up on the top level trying (in vain) to reattatch where the scaffold was anchored to the building, and getting tossed around like a sailor in a swail. At one point I was standing in the center of a 2x12 plank when I looked over at the end and realized that it had scooted over to the point where the very end of the plank was sitting on the very center of that round cross member of the scaffold!!!!!I still don't know how I ever made it to the other end of that plank before it dropped out from under me. but I did, and it did, a second later. I matured an awful lot in those few seconds. A very shaky and much wiser, more safety conscious Mark crawled down off of that structure that morning. To parrot what several of you have already said, one should always apply murphy's law when looking over any situation. and
*Notice that almost all the cases mentioned here would be prevented by the new OSHA emphsis on fall protection and railings?
*About a month ago, I'm insulating at the loint between ceiling and wall, 12 foot ceiling height. The room had a dropped ceiling at 9 feet, so I have the tiles out, and I push my 20 foot extension ladder, all closed up, thru each opening, and climb up to work. I'm moving along pretty good, working my way down from opening to opening down the wall. I get to the end of one room and move on to the next, no problem. Then I go to the next room and notice the ceiling seems a little lower, but don't think much of it. I set the ladder against the wall, and its on a slightly shallower angle than the previous rooms (couln't make it steeper since the ladder was already all the way closed up), but seems like it should be okay. Famous last words. As you can expect, the ladder slips out, but not immediately, only after I've been woking up there for about 10 minutes developing a false sense of security.As it starts to slide, slowly at first, I reach up and grab hold of a steam pipe overhead, fortunately not hot since it was in the summer, and am now hanging by the pipe. No one is around to help, so I have to look down and decide what I want to fall down on to. I pick the direction which seems to have the least amount of debris below, and won't land me on the ladder to break an ankle, push off from the wall with both feet as I let go. I landed on my feet, shakingbut unhurt. Telling my wife about it later, she asks, "After that happened, you went up again, didn't you?" She knnws me well enough to know that I just had to finish the job, a good one to be behind me now.
*I just had a roll bar put on my tractor to be "safer". I was mowing near a tree on the edge of the meadow- trying to be carefull in first gear with the throttle pretty slow. I did not yet have a feel for the height of the roll bar. I clipped a cherry tree (about 12-18 inches at the base about twenty feet long). It slowed the tracror down for a second, that triggered the govenor which gunned the carburator. The tree broke off at the base and fell across the tractor giving me a dope slap on the top of the head. If the roll bar hadn't slowed the tree down it would have pulpped my skull and broke my neck. I had to cut the tree off the tractor with a chain saw: had a stiff neck for a day.It only takes a second to kill yourself. By the way, I read somewhere that 1/3 of all falls greater than 12 feet are fatal. Is that true?Be safeFrank
*If it's true then I'm a dead man!
*No, yer only 33 and a third percent dead.
*Feels like it sometimes;>)
*dead man walking! Last December we were cleaning up a home that had been stopped when framing was almost complete. No windows or doors so lots of birds and leaves had gotten the inside dirty. We had been in there about 3 days (50,000 SF) when I decided it was taking too long and went to help out. This contractor is very safe. After working for a while we go down to the main level to start sweeping. I lift up a piece of plywood to sweep under it. As I lift it my foot goes under to where the plywood had been to lift onto my right side. Well guess what. That plywood was covering a hole. The only thing that slowed my fall was the steel TJI under the deck. About 12 feet onto a concrete basement. Only now recovering after swimming every am for therapy. I could be very lucky if I was in a wheelchair. As it was just bruised discs. Someone was looking out for me that day. Be carefulll out there.
*Everyone knows that most carpenters don't have the guard on their power miter and table saws. Well I learned the hard way to make sure the saw stops before making a move. I was finished a cut on a 10" miter saw, and while I was lifting the blade up someone was saying something to me, and I turned towards the direction they where standing. I swung my body around, and unfortunitly my arm was in line with blade of the saw. I heard a clunk, and felt the thud as the blade stopped in my right arm. Luckily the blade was almost finished it final rotation and only three of the teeth caught me. Minner flesh wounds. Another one I've seen was a guy was making a rip on a 2 by with a circular saw while another guy was holding the other end. The saw kicked forward and ran right over the guys hand holding the piece. Lucky for him the guard must have went right back in place a split second before it hit his hand. It's nice to look back at this stuff and get a laugh out of it.
*Re: Piffin's comments regarding OSHA fall prevention and railings.When I worked as a Safety Specialist one of the hardest comments to answer was "Safety is 99% between the ears", and I've noticed comments like that on another thread. Of course it's true, but........Well, it's not as though the thinking ones get medals and and the others get Darwin awards. It's a matter of saving lives. I say lets use OSHA to our advantage. Any one can have a distracted moment. Lose a good workman and those railings will look cheap.Sometimes I preach better than I live.BJ
*There are things that OSHA can't control too.....I was roofing one in Florida with another guy when a dark cloud came along. As soon as the first two raindrops hit he went down inside. I wanted to finish laying the eight or ten loose shingles I had laying out though so the wind wouldn't blow them around. By the time I did this, the wind was really picking up and the raindrops were the size of tablespoonfulls. I raced acrossed the roof whild getting quite wet and I nearly jumped off the ladder to the ground. WhenI landed,I turned to look at the approaching storm and saw your typical long narrow tall funnel cloud headinf right at us. We were standing at the garage entrance to this new house. None of the doors or windows were in yet. I yelled, "That's a tornado Willie, Hit the deck!" We each laid down near a wall in the garage. This was a brick home on slab. After a few minutes (it seemed like hours) of the sound of a roaring freight train going through, We got up to find mearly two inches of water standing in the floor of the house that was slowly draining out. The alumionum ladder was blown over and the line of pine trees immediately to the north of the house had lots of their branches and needles stripped off, making them look skinny and weird. We had to sweep the pine needles off the roof before getting back to work. I t had all ended as quickly as it started. I think the funnel must've skipped up into the sky and northward just as it was coming to the house. It didn't take any shingles or felt off.
*"Auntie Em ! Auntie Em!!!! "
*Here are two of my memorable close calls dealing with scaffolding (and a third one about a coworker's close call).1. I had been working for three days on a scaffold (site built) over a cement stair landing that was about 18' below. For some reason I climbed down and told a fellow worker on the ground that "something does not feel right". He called me a big XXXXX and climbed on the scaffold. No sooner did he reach the top than the whole thing collapsed. After several days in the hospital he decided to give up construction.2. I was working on an industrial project where acids and caustics were unloaded from tank cars. We were building scaffolding and had a bundle of "Aluma beams" delivered. As I cut the banding on the load of beams one of them sprung out of the pile. It hand been compressed by the banding and flew about two feet in the air and went over the top of a schedule 40 pvc line that was filled with acid. It landed between other acid carrying plastic pipes.3. We were demolishing a roof of an 1895 building that was made from structural clay tiles that were keyed together to form a flat arch for the roof. When the "key" tiles were broken the arch would loose support and a section of roof would cave in to the floor 25' below. My coworker was using a jackhammer mounted on a remote controlled arm that allowed him to stand "safely" back from the leading edge. The boss was alway telling him to wear fall protection but this guy ignored him. Finally the boss gave him an ultimatum and the guy put on the safety gear. You guessed it -- 15 minutes later the roof collapses and the guy is dangling in the air. Safe but shaken. The boss never had to remind this guy again.
*Back when I was a grunt I was tearing out an old plaster ceiling. Had about 20% of it on the floor so I decided to clean up a little. I took the first shovel load out into the hall to the trash can when WHOOOOSH!!! The entire ceiling fell in one piece. I could feel the surge of air on my back....dust everywhere. If I had still been in the room, I probably wouldn't be typing this story today. It would have crushed me like nobody's business.However, the builder was impressed I got the ceiling down so fast.Ed.
*I was running a stinger on a concrete crew pouring a spillway on a dam near Blue River Oregon. There was a delay between pours, so they sent us over to pull boulders out of the clay fill that was being dumped to seal the center of the earth dam. I was bent over pulling about a 50lb rock out of the clay when out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy running full tilt towards me. I straightened up just in time to catch a full body block as this guy threw himself into me at full speed. As I hit the ground with the wind knocked out of me, I saw an 6' Euclid truck tire roll over where I had been lifting the rock.It was really noisy and confused with Euclids going in several directions with their backup horns beeping incessently. I was more surprised than scared, but the guy who had knocked me over was white and shaken. He said that on a previous job he had seen a guy run over when a Euclid backed over him and it popped him like a grape. He said he didn't want to see it happen again.My knees were a bit wobbly for a short while after that...
*About thirty years ago when I was a grunt labor, I jumped off a porch down onto the end of what had been a wall brace. I still had three gnarly 16s sticking up out of it. Thay all went through the bottom of my boot, two between toes and one into my foot. That whole jobsite was a total mess but I didn't know any better about who to work for until my next jop down the street. It was kept clean and safe. Management set the tone.I still require my men to pull or bend nails on demo. Or put directly in the dumpster. Last winter, I suspected one guy of being responsible for a lot of nails sticking out of boards on the ground. I removed a brace while working with him and said, "Let me show you how to back nails out so no-one will get hurt" and gave him the first grade lesson in nail pulling while emphasizing saftey. That afternoon, he pulled a brace off, looked in my eye and threw it on the ground without any attempt to pull or bend nails. That was his last day of work on my job.
*over in the gallery we lost a cordless drill in a kitchen soffit and he had tpo put in an access hole for retreival. That reminded me of a time when I was installing hardware inside of a tall pantry unit. I was standing inside the unit with my corded drill and making a hole opposite my chest. As I pulled the bit out of the hole in the close quarters, the cord hooked up on something and the drill jerked out of my hands with the bit still churning. Not wanting to damage the product, I grabbed maddly at the drill and automaticly clasped it to my chest. Now the bit was still turning as the bit came up at the base of my throat - right where they do trachiotomies. Suddenly I felt sharp pains right there and felt moisture running down my chest. Stay tuned for the rest of the story.............Just kidding-here it isI held the drill to my throat with one hand and like Barney Fife I ran into the bathroom (nobody else was home to witness my distress or to render aid in my time of need) where I looked into the big old vanity mirror. It took a minute or two to untangle the mess and find out that I had twisted the bit into the hair on my chest and the neck of my T-shirt. The ball was about as big as a tennis ball and the pulled hair was causing the pain, while the moisture running down my front was nervous sweat!Hope ya'll had a good laugh! I did.
*Wow, you must be one hairy guy!
*I was working in the Site Office and saw from the window one of the Filipino mechanics wheeling an oxy-welding set around the corner. I wondered where he was going with it so, being pissed-off with paper-work, I went to see.I arrived just in time to stop him from trying to weld a crack in the 1500 gallon deisel storage tank!
*Not any more! But it is hard to decide where to stop shaving my neck and leave the chest hair alone.Like any good story it got bigger with time I guess - I just now noticed that I wrote big as a tennis ball. It was really only big as a golf ball.It was my eyes that were big as tennis balls.
*So that Filipino is deaf now? but glad he's not bald!
*At my "Real" job (Machine shop) we had a new recruit trimming skids on a radial arm saw to fit precicion parts for shipping. Its a pretty mundane job, but this kid decided that the best way to trim 1/2 inch off a piece of plywood was to hold the 1/2 inch sliver while he cut the wood. Ran the saw across his thumb and took it off below the knuckle. Of course he went straight to Compensation and asked about getting cash out of the company etc. The boss in his quest to shut the kid up offered pretty much anything the kid wanted and gave him a management position in our assembly dept. About a week after the whole incident, a memo was issued to the shop stating that only those holding Management positions were to operate the Radial arm saw in order to prevent future injuries...
*The thread on disappearing glass doors in Hawaii reminded me of the time I went out side through my sliding glass door onto the deck to take the trash out. It was a beautiful night with a big orange moon just coming up over the horizon and wanting to share the moment with my other half I dropped th bag and ran back to call her out. Somebody had closed the door after I left though and I ran smack dab square into it at a speed faster than walking. As I was bouncing back ten feet across the deck, I could see the glass boinging back and forth whump whump whumph like a trampoline surface. By golly, I've gpot so many posts in this thread that I'm lucky I'm still alive.
*Sounds pretty strange, but I feel fortunate to have fallen off ladders only 3 times. Twice off the same 10 ft. aluminum stepladder(no longer in use). I was in a hurry - didn't plant it well & it just collapsed. Would of tried to break my fall, but I was covering my head so the claw of the hammer I threw as I was falling would'nt put another hole in my head. I landed on a piece of broken concrete - had a black & blue & purple & red softball hanging off my butt after that. Could'nt sit for three weeks. The next time was at my daughter's day care. Replacing fascia when the death ladder gave way again. Landed on my feet this time & as I was rolling yelled "I'm OK, I'm OK!" to all the startled kids in the yard.I believe the lesson here is avoid stepladders if possible - especially cheap aluminum.
*Now you've gone and reminded me of the time I was roofing a two story as a rain storm approached but I was almost done so I kept on going. I raised my Estwing just as I heard arcing in the air over my head. I let go of that steel handled hammer and hit the deck before it could fall. I could smell ozone and sulphur burning in the air and see steam. A lightning bolt had passed me by.Don't know how close and I surely wasn't faster than it. It must've had a more likely target that day. Hair still raises on my arms just thinking about it.
*Piffin,Great stories! Friend, if I had you luck I would buy a hockey uniform with an attachment for a tool belt.Frank
*Ever notice how the handle of that Estwing near the head resembles a cleaver? Perhaps that's why most framers prefer a nice, round wooden handle?
*Casey's Euclid story reminded me of my cousin's close call, even though he lost his new PU. Cousin is geologist/CE and does big earth dams and railroad fill, etc. Parked his truck on top of dam near end of day to review bore hole logs, gets out to check rig about 50 yds away, hears the BIG TRUCK (think it was a big CAT, 10 ft tires)in time to turn and see his new PU flattened, but he got out of the way of the flying pieces.
*Never underestimate the ingenuity of the common idiot...did
*Mine was during my short career working for a GC. We were building a house with 2 dormers on the roof. I was on the roof with a circular say, and the Gc asked me to cut the plywood out under the dormers so they would have ventilation under them. I cut along the sides and bottom, but couldn't quite reach up to cut across the top. So I squeezed part way through the window, put one foot on the truss that the dormer straddled, and finished the cut. I did the same on the next dormer. The problem came when I squeezed through the window and tried to put my foot on the truss to do the last cut. Seems the 2nd dormer was i centeredon 2 trusses instead of straddling one. I went through the plywood and ended up hanging upside-down by one leg from a web brace that crossed the trusses. Never did let go of the saw. Climbed back up on the roof and went back to work. (A little shaky, though)The guys started calling me "Wile E. Cyote" - they said he always cut off the cliff he was standing on and then fell.
*I think the card read - "Wyle E. Coyote - Super Genius". I know because some 'friends' gave me some after I fell out of my garage attic while laying the attic floor.
*Ron, Suprises you doesn't it? I was shingling a roof near the start of my long career as a close call tester. Somebody else had put the felt paper on the roof and stocked the shingles. I was doing it as a side job on a saturday all alone. I was half done when I picked up a bundle of shingles near the roof and turned towards my work when I discovered (the hard way) that roof vents had been cut into the plywood. They had been papered right over and I stepped backwards into one. I went home with blood running from embarassing places. Just fine a couple days later though.
*And speaking of embarassing places - I was building a log building for a church with volunteers for help. These inverted 'C' Swedish logs got glued together with Liquid nails and spiked too. After the wall got up about 5-6 feet I sat on it and was scooting along backwards while dragging my glue gun along the top of the log. Two volunteers would set the log and would spike it, then I go to gluing the next, calling out measurements as needed for lenghth. Eventually, somebody decided to help me glue and squeezed some out ahead of me so I ended up backing into it. That's what you get for sitting down on the job. Well I scraped what all I could off the seat of my brtiches and went back to work. I didn't realize until that night that it had oozed thru the fabric and done its duty. Not to the skin but there was a lot of um, ah, fur that needed separation to get my pants down that night.Maybe this one belongs in the tavern.....Lotsa laughs alland rememberNever trust a man who can't laugh at himself.
*piffin - My friend, you may want to write all these down and make a "best of/worst of" book. Your experiences, although sometimes painful, are funny as hell in retrospect.Thanks and work safely.
*One more scaffold story. I was working on a scaffold and felt the scaffold sway a bit and so I climbed down to investigate. As I stepped off the scaffold it collapsed. It seems that a laborer was told to "go get some more braces" for another part of the project and had removed the cross-bracing from the scaffolding I was standing on.
*I was on a winter job as a carpenter at a condo job in Winter Park, Colorado. The buildings were three stories tall with a lot of projecting porches. The floor framing was TJIs. With no doors or windows in it ws like a big box kite. ( I guess you know where this is going - and it ain't funny this time)The crane had just set the load of roof trusses - must've been about thirty six feet long - and everybody on that crew knocked off for lunch. About fifty guys sat down maybe seventy feet away from the building in question, openned the lunch boxes, and a big gust of wind swirled down off the mountain. We saw the top floor lift up about six inches and then come straight down. A load of appliances for other buildings almost finished had just been delivered into the first floor of this one the day before. One guy on the roof framing crew had stayed on the third floor to nap his lunch break away. Other than that nobody was inside. He didn't get hurt but was shook up enough to take a couple days off.Rumor on the job was that a disgruntled laborer had been seen removing braces earlier that day. It's important to watch the attitude of those you work with.That was the year that President Reagan got shot. That was a close call too.
*I was once getting ready to shingle a fairly steep roof (18/12), and was running up one side to get to the top to get my hammer which I sat on the ridge. Fortunately, I was wearing my safety harness, because just as I got to the top, my toe caught in the sawout for the ridge vent, I fell flat on my face, and slid down the back side like snowboarder. So there I dangled until the fire department showed up to get me down. I had a road rash from that OSB for what seemed like months. Funny thing was I absolutely hated wearing that stupid harness and rope; only wore it because the wife would drive by sometimes to "check" on me.The other good one I saw recently was in a basement remodel. One of the guys is sawing the floor for a new drain line, while across the basement, another guy is fastening plywood as a backer for shelves to a studwall. Saw man is wearing a hardhart that has a full brim, ear protection, and a face plate. Guy nailing misses the stud, blows a nail through a hollow in the plywood, which sails across the room and thunks the guy sawing in the head. Neither seems to notice what has just happened, so I call for a break. While they're outside smoking, I look at the helmet; the nail entered about where the ear is, and just stopped, probably about 1/2" from the guy's head. Luckily the concrete guy had a skinny little head; if he had a big pumpkinhead like I do, that nail would have gone into my ear for sure.
*speaking of pumpkinheads, reminds me of the following...http://webx.taunton.com/WebX?233@@.f00c5a1!enclosure=.f00c5a3
*Whew!That is close!
*Friend of mine bags himself a deer, first kill fall bow season. He calls me up, "Got something to skin this thing with?". So we're in his garage and I give him my skinner, which needs sharpening, and go at it.Half way through I'm holding the carcass steady and he's kneeling,finishing the hind quarter with an upswing and the knife is pointed at you know where.Then he encounters a tendon, and he's sawing at it and before I can say STOP or move out of the way it gives and luckily there's no follow through. "Sharpen your knife next time" he saysA sharp knife is safer than a dull knife
*i was 16 and working on a painting crew for the summer. we were painting windows on an apartment bldg about 30 ft up. the painters were all old timers and, (i know now), did'nt practice any safety procedures. we had ladders and ladder jacks set up with about 3 ft. of plank extending past each ladder. to paint the farthest windows each guy had to manuever around the ladders and to the outside edge of the plank at the same time to maintain balance. the old timer finished before me and started moving back to the center of the plank without saying anything. can you say "fulcrum"? his edge of the plank stopped on the bottom of an open casement window as i clawed mortor joints with my fingers. he realized what was happening and scurried back to the edge of the plank seesawing me back to safety. the old timers treated me to my first beer that afternoon after i took about 20 mins to get back down the ladder. everyone knows in their gut what's safe and what is not. even at that young age i knew i did'nt like what we were doing but i was summer help so i went along with it. if i get that funny feeling in my gut (we've all felt it) i take a step back and study the situation.
*Most of us can remember a close one. About 4 years ago one of my daughters left a candle burning in the upstairs bedroom when she came downstairs to talk to one of her girlfriends on the phone. As she was chatting away as teenagers do, the candle burned down and overheated the glass candleholder. The bedroom caught fire. No one hurt, the fire department was here in three minutes and the fire was out.Dad will fix it. So she wants to take down the wall and make two bedrooms one large room. Dad can do this. She wants the ceiling raised to 12' to put in paddle fans, Dad can do it. Well there I am standing on the ladder, the top of the ladder to put the light fixture in. Arms hanging over the 2x6's on 16" centers, feeling real safe as I install the new heavy duty electric box to hold up the large paddle fan. I turned sideways to grab the electric wire to wire up the new box and as I pull the wire to me, I pull over the ladder instead. The wire hangs up on a nail. The ladder and I go over. The ladder bounces off the wall but I go through the back wall of the house. A hole big enough to put a truck through. I took out the studs on the way through the wall and land out on the roof. The last thing I remembered was turning to get the wire. 8 months of Physical therapy later I could use my right arm agian. If you ever had to learn how to wipe your a** left handed or lace your belt in your pants before you put them on you know where of I speak. Moral: the top of the ladder says DO NOT STAND HERE and that includes experts with 30 years experience for a reason. You can get hurt at home just as easy as at work if you don't think. The backwall of the house had to be replaced, the ladder was fine. $$$$ Many dollars to repair the wall and Dad.
*WOW!I'm on my way up to daughter's room now to take away her candles!
*
We've all seen or experienced a few and lived to tell about it!
So do tell........
I'll go first - next post