Chainsorry

I’ve always liked the smell of gas fumes, which explains two things:

Why I fondly remember helping my dad cut up firewood as a yute.
Why I posted such a boneheaded photo of me using a chainsaw last week.

In case you missed it, here’s the photo …

And if you don’t see what’s wrong, here’s something more like what it should have been …

Thanks to regular readers John and Vicki for pointing out the bad example. I won’t try to defend it, but, I mean, it could’ve been worse. I could’ve been standing on a ladder and cutting an overhead limb with it. I’ll also say that this is, I believe, the only time I’ve cut with a chainsaw while not wearing safety glasses (in my case, a retired pair of racquetball glasses). I nearly always wear gloves — unless I’ve taken them off to add fuel and forget to put them back on. Jenn snapped that offending picture as soon as I successfully cleaned its carb, got it running, got a little inappropriately happy, and turned saw onto a piece of wood as a test.

That’s no excuse, for either running the saw without safety gear or for implying to the rest of the world that it’s OK to do so.

John was also right in pointing out I should keep body parts behind the saw’s guard. This can be tricky with short, light pieces of wood. The answer is to knock together a sawbuck — this one perhaps, which folds up and stacks out of the way — to hold a big stack of those pieces for one quick cut.

For some real advice on chainsaws, check out this recent post on the sublime Cabin Dweller’s Textbook.

And thanks for keeping me straight, y’all.