MTFCA Forum

LOL, I was expecting a kid riding on a running board holding his hands up!

Wow! I cringe, just looking at that photo.

It takes me back to our farm in Iowa where we had an old AC- WC tractor. It had a drive pulley that my grandfather connected to a 36 inch circle saw with a sled that moved the pieces of wood back and forth into the blade. Of course there was not one bit of safety protection anywhere on the contraption. In later years I asked my grandfather about the saw, and he acknowledged that a couple of guys got hurt using the saw, but he said the reason they got hurt was their stupidity, and not the absence of safety shields.
Mike

My late aunt used to be a medical secretary to a neurosurgeon. One day a group of Amish came into the office; they had been using one of those saws when the blade came loose, flew across the yard, and hit one of them squarely in the forehead, splitting his skull down to the brain. They had been treating him for the past few days by pouring kerosene into the wound but for some reason he didn't seem to be improving. When he started acting and talking oddly, they figured they'd better take him to an English (as they call non-Amish) doctor. I think of that every time I see one of those saws.

My line of work involves using a LOT of circular rotating bladed
tools. It has been a SOP for me since I was a kid to never work
in line with the rotation of said blades. Seen or heard about WAY
too many bad endings.

In my youth I used such saws. One was for an orchardist where I worked on school holidays. He had a saw bench interestingly built onto a TT chassis, It had a Continental red seal motor driving the bade by belts and a slide to carry the logs to the blade which was simply pushed forwards and backwards by hand. I had heard of accidents of course, but with normal care neither the orchardist nor myself had any problems with it. There were similar saws on virtually all rural properties in Australia up to the 1970's when the chainsaw had taken over the task.