Cool Or Creepy Things Found In The Bush Or On Your Property

[MossRoad]

Those are some soft looking hands. Work much Mossy? Or are you retired?

You want to hold them, I know.

My last few years at the newspaper doing maintenance on all of the production machinery and the press made them pretty rough. But that ended in 2017.

For the last 5 years I've been doing light carpenter, plumbing, electrical and HVAC. Those are pretty cushy jobs on the hands. No repetitive work.

But still the occasional hazards...

 

[drssg]

You want to hold them, I know.

My last few years at the newspaper doing maintenance on all of the production machinery and the press made them pretty rough. But that ended in 2017.

For the last 5 years I've been doing light carpenter, plumbing, electrical and HVAC. Those are pretty cushy jobs on the hands. No repetitive work.

But still the occasional hazards...

View attachment 741817

Yikes! What is the story behind that picture? I'm guessing that the metal sticking out must be part of the medical treatment for the injury, but it looks horrible.

 

[ponytug]

What @drssg said! Yikes! Story?

 

[MossRoad]

Freight elevator door accident. You know, the type where you pull the top door strap down and the bottom door comes up, and if it's faulty, the doors fly together fast enough to smash bone, like a dull guillotine. And, the door was made back in the good old days where instead of having two flat metal faces with a rubber bumper on the top half, they omit the rubber bumper and put an angle iron on the top half to make a nice overlapping metal seal over the bottom half as the doors come together. Then it latches shut on your hand and you see the car leave the floor through that little window, triggering the interlock so the door cannot be opened until the car comes back to that floor and you start to feel the warm blood oozing over what you hope is left of your hand. So you start kicking the door latch so hard that it opens just enough to stop the car, but you're still stuck in there. You know, that kind of door?

It's the stuff of nightmares!



Turns out the only strap handle was on the inside of the door, which automatically puts your hand inside the path of the closing doors, and the springs that are supposed to prevent rapid door closure failed.

When a coworker pried the doors apart with a shovel I saw my index finger over by my pinkie, held on by about 1/2" of skin. I was just happy it was still there.

In that picture, there are three pins in my index finger. They are the size of large paper clip wire. They bend over the ends so they don't poke through the padding they wrap around the cast. They go through the joints and bones and bone fragments to hold everything together while the body grows new bones. Had to remain in a cast for 8 weeks. Middle finger was fractured as well. Lost my thumbnail, too.

After 8 weeks, they cut one bent end off, rotate the pin, and just pull it out of the bones. It's a very weird feeling. Doesn't hurt at all and just a tiny drop of blood. They don't numb it or anything.

The surgeon gave me worst case expectations for healing up and range of motion and what to expect after 6 months of therapy. Fortunately, I ended up with 80% of motion after that, so I'm technically 20% disabled in that hand. However, my PT was great and I follow through with it to this day, and am close to 98% in my opinion. Just a bent finger and now some arthritis in the joints that gets tender, and it gets cold easily, but hey, I didn't lose the finger. Could have been much worse.

 

[BigBlue1]

This is an interesting video of recovering an old bulldozer which sunk into a bog in 1975. It always amazes me how the paint is still visible, right down to the Army star on the back.
I’ve watched the recovery several times over the last few years, either it’s different every time or my memory is playing games. I’m quite certain that once they said that a scuba diver had gone down to attach the chains... I don’t know how else they would have done it anyways although the excavator operator was good enough so that maybe he just hooked the blade.
Note the snow during the recovery, then the grass starting to green up when they dropped it off at the snowsled clubhouse. That’s in Maine, for sure!
In another video you can see them getting it started.

That recovery was in Minnesota.

 

[Jstpssng]

That recovery was in Minnesota.

Memory is a terrible thing! I was sure that when I first watched it a few years ago they said it was downstate from me.
Apparently it's a bit further "Downstate" than I realized.


Edit; from the description... very first line.

The discovery and rescue of the lost IH TD24 crawler from a remote swamp in Minnesota that sunk in 1975 during the construction of snowmobile trails.

Perhaps it's my reading comprehension skills which area bit rusty.

 

[ponytug]

Sunk, after being told by the landowner not to drive onto the swamp!

I was interested to read that under Minnesota law once the dozer was "in the ground" ownership transferred to the landowner.

All the best,

Peter

 

[JethroB]

Freight elevator door accident. You know, the type where you pull the top door strap down and the bottom door comes up, and if it's faulty, the doors fly together fast enough to smash bone, like a dull guillotine. And, the door was made back in the good old days where instead of having two flat metal faces with a rubber bumper on the top half, they omit the rubber bumper and put an angle iron on the top half to make a nice overlapping metal seal over the bottom half as the doors come together. Then it latches shut on your hand and you see the car leave the floor through that little window, triggering the interlock so the door cannot be opened until the car comes back to that floor and you start to feel the warm blood oozing over what you hope is left of your hand. So you start kicking the door latch so hard that it opens just enough to stop the car, but you're still stuck in there. You know, that kind of door?

It's the stuff of nightmares!



Turns out the only strap handle was on the inside of the door, which automatically puts your hand inside the path of the closing doors, and the springs that are supposed to prevent rapid door closure failed.

When a coworker pried the doors apart with a shovel I saw my index finger over by my pinkie, held on by about 1/2" of skin. I was just happy it was still there.

In that picture, there are three pins in my index finger. They are the size of large paper clip wire. They bend over the ends so they don't poke through the padding they wrap around the cast. They go through the joints and bones and bone fragments to hold everything together while the body grows new bones. Had to remain in a cast for 8 weeks. Middle finger was fractured as well. Lost my thumbnail, too.

After 8 weeks, they cut one bent end off, rotate the pin, and just pull it out of the bones. It's a very weird feeling. Doesn't hurt at all and just a tiny drop of blood. They don't numb it or anything.

The surgeon gave me worst case expectations for healing up and range of motion and what to expect after 6 months of therapy. Fortunately, I ended up with 80% of motion after that, so I'm technically 20% disabled in that hand. However, my PT was great and I follow through with it to this day, and am close to 98% in my opinion. Just a bent finger and now some arthritis in the joints that gets tender, and it gets cold easily, but hey, I didn't lose the finger. Could have been much worse.

Our engineer insisted that our freight elevator be called a Reciprocating Conveyor. According to him the term Elevator might be assumed to carry human cargo and OSHA or some like entity would get interested.

 

[MossRoad]

Our engineer insisted that our freight elevator be called a Reciprocating Conveyor. According to him the term Elevator might be assumed to carry human cargo and OSHA or some like entity would get interested.

At my old employer we had 6 elevators.
- One was strictly for passengers.
- Two were for freight only, and you'd face disciplinary actions if you rode them. You had to open the gates, load the freight, close the gates, push the button and take the stairs behind the elevators to go to the floor you were sending the freight to.
- Three were for both freight and passengers.

 

[ponytug]

Reminds me of the "freight elevator" at one place I worked at. About 30"x30"x60", plywood. I knew someone who rode in it once, for bragging rights I think. Personally, I hated to put anything worth much of anything beyond the daily trash in it for fear it would drop to the sub basement. Anything of any size or weight either had to be hand carried up the stairs or the windows taken out and brought in with a crane. Definitely a "last mile" issue. (The building also had DC wiring, in combined AC/DC distribution panels. Absolutely gorgeous varnished oak doors that opened onto to wide copper bus bars with either fuses screwed in, or unfused DC coming off.) I was happy to get out of there without a major fire, or personal injuries.)

All the best,

Peter