s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

So, when I was out brush-cutting on Monday something exciting happened. With a juddering thud a piece of the saw blade disappeared. A nice jagged chunk about 3×2 inches in size. Thankfully it not disappear into my femoral artery! Considering the blade was whirling at a few thousand rpm, I don’t want to think about the starting velocity of that metal chunk. All in all I was rather sanguine about the affair, an opinion shared by neither Tamara nor Yvonne when they saw the missing chunk and thought about the possible consequences. Now, I do wear safety gear when cutting (steel-toed boots, helmet, ear protection, face shield, jeans, long-sleeve shirt, welding-gloves), but I am not sure how that would have done against fast sharp steel.

Yesterday we went and bought a replacement blade. I have since leanred that I was not properly re-sharpening the old blade (though I don’t think that played a role in its failure). The old blade was DULL. But since it went dull slowly I did not notice so much. The new blade… wow. I am waiting for it to become light (and late) enough this morning so I can run out and cut gorse like mad for a few hours! Plus with heavy rain predicted the next two days, I had better get my mass-destruction fix in today!