87 A Saw is Not Just a Saw

To day the skill of tree falling as with most trades is learned in a class so a person does not get killed the first hour at work. In the early days as with many other trades the skills were quite often learned on the job. Regardless of the method, safety was paramount if you were to survive and not get seriously hurt. Most accidents in the bush occurred when you ignored a known safety precaution or got in too big of a hurry.

This particular afternoon after I had just fallen a small hemlock in a new setting and was attempting to top it, I noticed that there was a small sapling lying before my undercut. The hemlock tree that I was about to top was under great tension as only the top and the butt were touching the ground and I knew that as soon as I began to undercut the tree it would break suddenly and drop to the ground. This meant that the broken fibers could catch the tip of my saw and drag it down, levering it out of my hand over the sapling. This could be very dangerous.

My safety training told me to cut the sapling out of the way, but I was in a hurry and in my impatience I imagined I could be quicker then the hemlock as it dropped. Against my best judgment I carefully put in the top cut and then cautiously began the undercut all the while waiting for that faint cracking of wood that would warn me of the impending drop so I could quickly remove my saw from the cut.

Snap and my worst fears were realized, in less then an instance the saw was gone, I didn’t even have a chance to wince, in microseconds the saw was whizzing past my nose and sailing in a big beautiful arc thirty feet into the air. I felt despair as I imagined my brand new saw of only a few weeks, coming to earth on a log or worse yet a rock and getting smashed to pieces. But lo, the gods of fate were smiling that day as my thirty three pound saw spun over and over, before coming down on the end of its blade like a sword thrust into the soft earth, with it’s engine still running. Moments later it fell over going put-put-put as the engine idled away upside down until I went down the hill to shut it off and check for any damage to the blade.

How thankful I was that it didn’t have a scratch on it, as the thought of having to replace a $4oo power saw made me feel a bit negative to say the least, as that was a lot of money back in ’64.