Check what you're putting through your wood chipper

dirt ditch · Feb 19, 2009

This was on yahoo news. JERSEY CITY, N.J. A note to someone in northern New Jersey: Check what you're putting through your wood chipper. Al Smith was forklifting a sofa in his moving company's warehouse in Jersey City on Wednesday morning when he heard a sound he thought was a bomb. A chunk of hot metal the size of a brick came crashing through the roof just steps from him. It splintered a wooden beam and crashed into a shelf.

The Federal Aviation Administration looked at the object and determined it wasn't from an airplane. Mayor Jerramiah Healy said the cast iron object came from a nearby wood chipper.

Smith was not hurt but said he was shaken up. He feels so lucky it missed him that his next step was to buy a lottery ticket.

WantedWolf · Feb 19, 2009

Wow, anything can happen i guess I wouldnt have expected that

Working in the big city with an arborist I know, I was using a vermeer BC1500, that dissolves stumps of 12" diameter and suddenly I hear a thud, turn it off, jack up the drum only to find 1 tiny AAA battery. I must have swept it in off the road with the debris. thankfully the drum saftey released to protect the engine.

But launching stuff into buildings wow

Renze · Feb 19, 2009

In the 60's farmers all used hay blowers to blow hay upstairs. The blowers were fed by hand: My father told me a story of a pitchfork that was grabbed by the blower, and got stuck in a roof beam of the hay shed....

tatra805 · Feb 19, 2009

And never ever be tempted to stick in your hands to retract an object that caused a jam,

or your head. even with switched off engine.
When I was a kid a farmer from the next street stuck his head between his manure spreader beams to see what blocked the spreading mechanism. When pulling out some manure the tension released and the mechanism made a part of a turn. In an instant the rotating spreading "hammers'' cut his head left-right. he died on the spot before his wife could even call an ambulance.

Be carefull and expect the worse. stay safe. We love them but they can be a b****.

Taylortractornut · Feb 21, 2009

Afriend the other day called from a hospital he runs a tub grinder and was loading them with an older 922 Cat loader without a rop/fops. His main loader was down for service and he was on his last load ready for a break down and move. He was loading a couple little stumps and in a hurry let the tub geet to empty a small chunk of something hit him in the head and cut him bad. His wife found a large old horse shoe that had apparently stuck i nthe crotch of an aspen tree.

Cat_Driver · Feb 22, 2009

Roger that!

The Orange resident was working with a tree-trimming crew in Tustin. He was throwing branches into the machine one moment, authorities say, and then suddenly 'he was gone.'

A man killed in a Tustin wood-chipper accident was identified Thursday as Gabriel Gonzales-Ferrer, 24, of Orange.

The tree service worker "was standing at the back end of the chipper, throwing branches into it with his co-workers nearby," said Sgt. Pat Welch of the Tustin Police Department. "One of them looked over, and he was gone."

Authorities took the wood chipper and the truck to which it was attached to a parking structure at the Orange County coroner's office, where it was dismantled and Gonzales-Ferrer's remains removed. An autopsy is scheduled today to confirm the cause of death "and rule out anything else, including foul play," supervising deputy coroner Leslie Meader said.

jimmyj · Feb 22, 2009

I know sawmill guys won't touch trees that have been grown around houses (either that or they do a serious metal detector run through first). I wonder how many times people have chipped old nails or bits of fencing or whatever without knowing it.

Onthesauk · Feb 22, 2009

I just heard a story down at the fire station a week or two ago about a crew running a big tub grinder, they will take stumps up to 4 and 5 feet in diameter. There was a Volvo car block hidden in the brush that got dropped in the grinder. They found if over two blocks away in someone's back yard! This was along the freeway and could have as easily gone bouncing down a lane.

I know a fellow who use to be night manager at the local mill. He fired a guy one night after catching him, (a second time that night,) up on the belt feeding the chipper, trying to clear a jam. Could have taken him in the blink of an eye.