So yesterday I went to my grandparent's house, and I helped Grandpa chew up some bushes and trimmed tree limbs in this new wood chipper thingy. Armed with safety goggles, gloves and a large plastic object designed to allow you to jamp objects into the device while keeping your hands clear, it continued to remain obvious to me that this machine was the single most dangerous object I'd ever seen.
You have to keep your hands clear of the inlet, because obviously you don't want to shove your arm down there and pull it back out missing anything.. but yeah, all of the objects you do put in there feed themselves in at brownian rates. One moment you are pushing to get it in, the next moment you are pulling wildly to get yourself free of snags feeding themselves into the machine at mach 20.
They tell you to keep clear of the outlet too. It makes sense, since sharp chips of wood fly out of there at muzzle velocity. They don't tell you that sharp chips of wood also fly out of the inlet at muzzle velocity in every direction like a giant blunderbus, or that when you throw a large limb into the inlet, it is likely to thrash about like a set of posessed nunchucks. Indeed heavy clothes, protective eyeware and gloves and keeping your hands out of places they don't belong is not enough to keep you safe around this thing. Right through my jacket I still got about a dozen lacerations on my arms. It's just a nightmare machine in so many different ways.
Posted by jesse at August 22, 2004 12:44 PMI'm sorry, I picture your encounter with this Evil Beasty Machine ... and I laugh. I'da been cringing too.
I got a minor slice across the belly today from our younger, MUCH larger cat, Salem, who did NOT want his nails cut (but oh did they need them). So we can compare lacerations sometime;-)
Posted by: Barney at August 22, 2004 09:29 PMSalem the cat, eh? Is your neice Melissa Joan Hart?
Seriously though, my scrapes came from barbs on tree limbs some of which were 6 inches in diameter, thrashing about at unsecured-load-attacking-jogger speeds, and the fact that I was nicked by a dozen or so barbs as opposed to sharper ends which would have come away with hunks of flesh or blunter ends that would have left luisville slugger logos imprinted upon the impact region was little more than a lottery-quality coincidence.