Bill Lantry
Member
- Messages
- 2,663
- Location
- Inside the Beltway
Hey, folks,
I wonder if it's possible that some chunks of wood just aren't meant to be turned... something about their destiny or the forces of the universe or something else? I have NO empirical evidence for this... but last year, when I was thinning some trees and durn near dropped one on myself, in contradiction to all the known physical laws of the universe, I set down my chainsaw for a while, thinking the goddess or some other force was trying to tell me something...
When I was gardening, I had a silly rule that if I killed a plant of a particular species, I wouldn't allow myself to replace it. This at least kept me from trying to grow Himalayan poppies along the gulf coast...
In any case, remember that piece of wood that chunked on me last week? Having acquired a face shield, I went to finish it up last night. You guessed it: I durn near killed myself. Again! (My father always said, having viewed some examples of my "work": "Never give a construction job to a poet!" And I've spent years proving him right...
Anyway, here's where I was:
All was going nicely, except it had developed a sizeable crack on one wing. But I pressed on...
If you look closely at the bottom left, you can see in this recreation what's about to happen. The gouge is going to catch, and get pulled "out"! Of course, I didn't see it coming. All I knew was there was a LOUD bang, and my left ring finger hurt bad, and the palm of my left hand had a pretty good stinger. Yeouch!
Here you can see the trail, where the gouge caught the leading edge, went deeper and deeper, and then went thunk!
It actually took a while to find the piece, once the feeling returned to my hand. Yes, it turns out it was the jagged piece of wood that hit my finger, and then rotated off my palm. I was surprised at the size of the missing chunk...
And very surprized that it was not the cracked side that blew up. I have no explanation for this. But maybe there's something to that old saw about figuring out what the wood "wants" to be. Or, rather, what it doesn't want to be. In this case, this one didn't want to be an oval bowl...
Took one more picture, just to prove I still have all five digits. It was vaguely reassuring to be able to take this one...
Thanks,
Bill
(unsafe at any speed...
I wonder if it's possible that some chunks of wood just aren't meant to be turned... something about their destiny or the forces of the universe or something else? I have NO empirical evidence for this... but last year, when I was thinning some trees and durn near dropped one on myself, in contradiction to all the known physical laws of the universe, I set down my chainsaw for a while, thinking the goddess or some other force was trying to tell me something...
When I was gardening, I had a silly rule that if I killed a plant of a particular species, I wouldn't allow myself to replace it. This at least kept me from trying to grow Himalayan poppies along the gulf coast...
In any case, remember that piece of wood that chunked on me last week? Having acquired a face shield, I went to finish it up last night. You guessed it: I durn near killed myself. Again! (My father always said, having viewed some examples of my "work": "Never give a construction job to a poet!" And I've spent years proving him right...
Anyway, here's where I was:
All was going nicely, except it had developed a sizeable crack on one wing. But I pressed on...
If you look closely at the bottom left, you can see in this recreation what's about to happen. The gouge is going to catch, and get pulled "out"! Of course, I didn't see it coming. All I knew was there was a LOUD bang, and my left ring finger hurt bad, and the palm of my left hand had a pretty good stinger. Yeouch!
Here you can see the trail, where the gouge caught the leading edge, went deeper and deeper, and then went thunk!
It actually took a while to find the piece, once the feeling returned to my hand. Yes, it turns out it was the jagged piece of wood that hit my finger, and then rotated off my palm. I was surprised at the size of the missing chunk...
And very surprized that it was not the cracked side that blew up. I have no explanation for this. But maybe there's something to that old saw about figuring out what the wood "wants" to be. Or, rather, what it doesn't want to be. In this case, this one didn't want to be an oval bowl...
Took one more picture, just to prove I still have all five digits. It was vaguely reassuring to be able to take this one...
Thanks,
Bill
(unsafe at any speed...
