Man, Sean... You and Rico are stealing all my glory... and I'm lovin every minute of it.
(Well, Rich always does, but I've somehow found it in my heart to forgive him.) Gotta love a topped Maple though. Maple's been the Tree du jour lately.
Re, the safety thing: Yeah... I NEVER wore safety glasses, till I smacked the crap out of my eye with my climb line... Traumatic Hyphema... basically means you get blood under the lense of yer eye... thought I'd severed the optic nerve... scared the deuce out of me... blind in one eye for four days. That'll scare an inbred Jed very much indeed. Weird how much yer eyes matter. Still... I, for one, salute Rico's valor. I HATE the restrictions of safety crap. Just hate it. i Do wear my hardhat like a religion. Got struck in the head today by a quite biggish Maple limb. Knocked my hat clean to the ground. Heard this story about a couple brother's from Maple Valley... old fallers gone arb... they never wore hard hats... the one brother struck his younger bro in the head with a smallish little stick. The "injured," guy was laughing it off, cussing his brother out, and that... anyways: Next morning the little bro just blacked-out while he was brushing his teeth before work... (I know... I know... How could any faller from Maple Valley actually be accused of brushing his teeth EVER.) but anyways... he blacked out a little-bit after that, once again, later on... Jackass still wouldn't got to the doctor. Anyways... he was dead of a brain-hemmorage a short time later. Everybody was really sad. The guy (a Stihl man to his death) was an excellent race-saw-modder-guy... all these guys got together to go to his funeral... in short... The guy Emmett who told me this story was really ticked that the guy wasn't wearing his hard-hat. Still... gotta be a guy's own choice, imho... God knows were all gonna die.
Re, the Square-grind/square hand-file bit... Man! I gotta learn howta shoot up a vid here pretty quick. I gotta really cool way of howta hog-out a ton of gullet with the round file, and then hit the top and side plates with the square (Triangle or double-bevel, makes no dif.) to put the dirtiest little edge on it you've ever even SEEN. Sam: Yessir... the square edge is much more durable than the round, because the round, when it's filed to cut REALLY, really well, like Brian does, leaves the chisel angle with a CONCAVE, structure, whereas, the square, leaves the chisel angle (not to be confused with Top Plate Angle) with a more rigid, flat structure, thus sustaining the durabuility to a much greater extent.
Anyways... back to our Maple trees... Just a BEAUTIFUL little Maplewood to work in today...
Wish you guys coulda been there...
Crazy pigs though, look...
This one was dang-near four foot on the stump...
O.k.... ok... the last pic is one from a Maple-prune that I threw-in from yesterday... man, you guys are a tough crowd. Gimme a break.