Tree Trimmer Dies In Chipper

bert0168

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Quote:

Originally Posted by CCCo. Yep, you guessed, sold by a fancy white guy, installed by the brown army.

J F

That's exactly what I thought about after reading the 1st post

woodchuck2

That IMO would be a horrible death. But, although the "feed" bar is not for safety it is designed that when struck forward which obviously is the same direction as feed that it will either stop and/or reverse direction. So either this guy was using a machine without the bar or he was to far inside the chute to control the bar. I have used an older machine that was direct drive with no feed bar and that machine was downright dangerous, the machine would beat the crap out of yah with the wood. All the newer machines i have used were much safer and wont beat yah as much. I have been snagged in the brush before and pulled towards the chute and this will get you attention in a hurry but a simple bump of the bar will stop the feed or reverse it so you can get untangled. I would be curios of whether or not this other employee helped him in the chute.

allrightthen

you would think a wood chipper would have a foot peddle control like pipe threading machines have.

Tom R

How'd you like to put that puzzle together for an open casket??

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ChainsawCharlie

Complacency kills.

Whenever I find myself getting too relaxed with chipper or chainsaw, I take a break, get re-focused.

I also don't wear gloves or long sleeves when I chip . Got my glove snagged once, but was ablr to hit the stop bar and reverse the feed. My chipper is small though-8 in max. I wouldn't have died though, only lost (most of) an arm.

Paulie

There's no excuse IMO not to have a better saftey set up on those damn things.

www.phbconstruction.com

Michaeljp86

Good idea, Ive never ran one of these things.

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rjconstructs

Maybe this can be another reminder to work safely. If we all could take a second and rethink something before plowing ahead. It only takes a misguided moment or a lack of focus to change our lives forever.
rj

Michaeljp86

Yep, this happend to me once because I was in a hurry. I paid dearly, not I dont care if it takes 10min, I try to imagine how everything will play out before I do anything that could be dangerous.

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bwalley

They are safe if used properly, sometimes a limb will get stuck and instead of turning it off and then clearing it, they will try to free the limb by pulling or kicking it, if you get tangled up in it, you get pulled through.

Sir Mixalot

Holy Crap!

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Michaeljp86

I wonder if the guy screamed before he went in?

That would be one hell of a way to commit suicide.

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Global warming is a myth, like evolution and the metric system.

ChainsawCharlie

How powerful are pipe threading machines? My chipper-considered about medium duty-has a four cylinder engine running it.

What could a foot peddle do? Maybe controlling the feed drum, but I don't see it being very convenient/effective. Seems it would be more of a distraction than anything. Chipping is messy. You would be constantly rooting for and needing to uncover the pedal.

Unforunately, for certain equipment, the safety feature become an impedance to operation of the equipment.

Be aware, be alert. Pay attention to what you are doing, and know your equipment.

woodchuck2

Exactly, . The machine is only as safe as its operator, one should know the dangers of running a peice of equipment before operating it. The one i ran many yrs ago would take 16" wood, the last year i work for this place they contracted the brush/tree cutting out and they brought in a chipper that would handle 32" wood. That was an impressive monster, this was state land so there were still alot of tree's that were too big for it.

chris n

Back in the day( late 70's) when I worked for a national tree expert co there were no safety devises at all on the chippers. You just had to stand at the side or the machine and throw the brush in. We also had in house mechanics who used to beef up the engines on the chippers to make them even more powerful. We had one with a Ford v-8,dual exhaust( forget the cubic inch,I was not a motor head) installed, you could get a whole 8 to 10 inch diameter tree into that thing and it would disappear in a wink of an eye.Osha would not know what to think about that beast and why one of us was not ever pulled through was just dumb luck. AHH the good old 70's days, smoke a J and go climb trees and chip brush all day. Actually, if you got to be a top climber, you avoided the chipper most of the time.

hughjazz

I fed one of those exact machines for 3 years
(vermeer 1250 i believe)

I can't see how it could happen, unless the guy was on the table for some reason.

It doesn't move that fast.

the stop/reverse bar goes around the top and sides. It must have been malfunctioning, and the operator not very well he's dead

Hibernia86

Same thing happened in my town a few years ago. A branch got caught when the guy was feeding it, so he climbed on top and started kicking it to get it through. The branch caught his pants and pulled him in. I talked to one of the cops who responded, he said the guy made it all the way to his chest before he stopped screaming. They pulled him out of the truck in 5 gallon buckets. The guy who was working with him (his nephew I believe) was right there and was trying to pull him out. Bad situation all around.

Michaeljp86

I bet thats will stick in his nephews mind every day until he dies.

I guess the good thing is the guy died, could you imagine getting 1/2 your body shredded and living through it. Ive seen a few people on TV who lost everything from the belly button down. There elbows are the lowest part of their body.

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Global warming is a myth, like evolution and the metric system.

tccoggs

I saw a chipper on the road the other day that had what looked like nylon straps hanging into the feed area, and they were tied to the feed bar. Sort of like those saftey releases they started putting on car trunks a few years back. I guess if you started to get pulled in, you could grab these and reverse the feed or stop the machine before you hit the blade.


Not sure if this was a custom mod, or standard feature.