Dumb and Dumber

[mikebinthesky]

Whats the dumbest wood/stove related thing youve ever done.Dont be shy and know that we all were rookies once and others can learn from your mistakes.
I'll go first.
When i was a younger man,i was splitting wood for a camp fire.My family watched as i diced up round after round.
There i was in all of my glory,swingin the axe,shirt off,shorts on and......flip flops.Yep flip flops....
Well I under swung the axe and it drove through the round between my big toe and the next toe,through the end of the flip flop and into the ground.
I kinda just stood there for a minute waiting for blood.Nothing.Not even a scratch.I still look at it like a harmless reminder from god not to be a dummy.I learned from that lol.

 

[begreen]

Dumbest thing I did with wood was stacking the woodshed without checking the level. Our wood shed is 8ft deeps and the last stack is 8' high. You want to be sure the stacks behind it are not leaning forward toward the front. I was unloading the top of the front row one day several years back. All was well until I heard a creak in the pile. Fortunately my reptilian brain went into survival mode and I leapt backward, almost magically about 4 ft. That wa just enough to clear the cascade of an 8' wall of splits falling over. Now I am obsessive. All stacks lean slightly to the rear of the shed.

 

[jb6l6gc]

2 seasons ago when I started burning, I smoked out the house on a few occasions on mild days. I now always roll up one piece of paper and use like a torch to warm up the flu a bit.

This year stupidly when using splitter, got complacent and a split launched off and smacked my hand pretty bad. Thought for a few minutes it was broken but pain subsided.

 

[Wisneaky]

I was loading splits into the back of a pickup. Throwing them into there not paying attention and I slammed my finger in-between the one I was putting in and the one on the truck. Ended up fracturing my finger. Damn that hurt like hell. That finger still bothers me every now and than.

 

[semipro]

I was loading splits into the back of a pickup. Throwing them into there not paying attention

I thought you were going to say you broke the rear window of your truck.
The rear slider on my truck costs about $1500 as a I learned from a friend's mistake.
I place boards over my rear window when loading.

 

[firefighterjake]

1) Reloading too soon . . . seeing the fire is maybe 3/4 or even 1/2 through its burn cycle, realizing it's time to go to bed and figuring it would be OK to just toss on another split or two . . . or three . . . to get a little longer burn . . . and then having the stove go nuclear to the point where instead of going to bed on time you're up another hour or two to try to cool things down.

2) Tossing paper, cardboard or kindling on coals without giving it enough air . . . and then letting it smolder . . . and smolder . . . and smolder . . . until it gets just enough oxygen and them KA-BLOOM! all of that combustible gas ignites at once. Shortly thereafter I typically have to change my underwear.

 

[Jags]

. . . until it gets just enough oxygen and them KA-BLOOM!

My dumbest was in the form of using the ashpan of my stove to start a fire. Within minutes of lighting the stove off I had a ROARING fire. Shut the ash pan, shut down the primary air and watched the stove fill with smoke. Then came the explosion. The stove pulled in enough combustion air to light off that volatile smoke and what a boom it made. I seriously thought I may have to go and retrieve the stove from the basement.
I walked away from that mistake with two take aways:
1. Never use an ashpan for startup air
2. Always make sure to use 3 screws in every pipe joint

 

[Wisneaky]

I thought you were going to say you broke the rear window of your truck.
The rear slider on my truck costs about $1500 as a I learned from a friend's mistake.
I place boards over my rear window when loading.

I've been close to doing that. I've had them bounce off the window. Thankfully never broke it.

 

[semipro]

I typically have to change my underwear.

At least you'll have a handy way to incinerate them.

 

[billb3]

Cutting and splitting several cords on several weekends of dead standing red oak 2 Winter ago and tossing it into the back of a dump truck.
Left elbow started to hurt, wanting to get the last 3/4 cord done with to watch a football game kept pushing through the pain.
Ended up taking 16 months to heal from tennis and golf elbow. PT getting pulled, pushed, prodded and measured.

Heh, and then when I finally healed from that I overdid it with my knees and am just finishing up PT rehab on those.

Use it or lose it is painful sometimes.

 

[BrotherBart]

My two dumbest ones were:

In 1987 I had been working on a big blowdown read Oak 1,200 feet down the hill from the house for a couple of days. Lugging the stuff up out of the creek bed to the road and trailer and up to the house. After I got the last load out and loaded I went back down to get the saw. There was a three inch ironwood standing there with the top knocked off by the Oak. Pulled the rope and instead of notching the little sucker I just pulled the saw through it about waist high. The thing fell on top of the bar and drove the running chain into my left leg just above the knee. Got a view of my leg bone. Held the leg together and climbed up out of the creek bed and dragged the leg to my neighbor's house and they took me to the emergency room in town. Wife was a little surprised to get the call from the hospital.

Second was a few years ago when I vacuumed the fireplace really well and didn't notice that I had knocked the magnets off of the secondary air intake that keeps my 30 from going nuts. That night I started a fire and waited a little too long to notice that the stove was headed for the moon. Realized what had happened but no way to reach back in there and fix it and got to watch a IR thermometer go to 1,025 as I rode it out. At 1,025 was when I discovered the open the door wide open maneuver. It didn't look like it was gonna stop climbing. So as a last ditch effort...

 

[begreen]

My dumbest was in the form of using the ashpan of my stove to start a fire. Within minutes of lighting the stove off I had a ROARING fire. Shut the ash pan, shut down the primary air and watched the stove fill with smoke. Then came the explosion. The stove pulled in enough combustion air to light off that volatile smoke and what a boom it made. I seriously thought I may have to go and retrieve the stove from the basement.
I walked away from that mistake with two take aways:
1. Never use an ashpan for startup air
2. Always make sure to use 3 screws in every pipe joint

Ya, had one of those with the Castine trying to start damp wood. I was glad the glass held in place and thankful for those 3 screws at every pipe joint.

 

[jatoxico]

Have all the bumps and bruises associated with horsing rounds and tossing splits. But one dumb thing I did early on happened when I tried to get a fire going on a bad draft day. Got my kindling in the box and a bunch of paper but only managed to smoke up the house. Added more paper to no avail just more smoke and now lots of paper ash. Frustrated I grabbed a hair drier and stuck up the flue and promptly blew all that ash all over myself and the room.

 

[WES999]

This^

Learned that you must let the stove cool down BEFORE cleaning the chimney.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

Thankfully nothing as bad as the rest of you dummies

 

[semipro]

Thankfully nothing as bad as the rest of you dummies

Not yet anyway.
We'll be waiting....

 

[johneh]

This^

Learned that you must let the stove cool down BEFORE cleaning the chimney.

X2

 

[sportbikerider78]

I was cutting down an 18" diameter dead standing tree at dusk, New Years Eve....I did not have a clear path to drop the tree and it was too cold to mess around. I cut it down and one of the large dead branches fell down inches from my head. Scared the absolute hell out of me..and I learned from that moment on, never to rush dropping any tree. And never in the dark.

The end result was good. I got an outdoor fire going that was so hot that night (with it -5F out) my wife came out of the house to toast the new year with me. She calls me crazy. Shes right.

 

[kennyp2339]

A couple notable ones from yours truly - #1, don't through one of those clementine wooden boxes into a smoldering fire, they off gas pretty quickly and when it lights up its like dynamite in the fire box. #2 When lighting a cold stove, if you keep the door open to give it that little extra air, don't forget to close it, smoke pipe is suppose to stay black, and ceiling support boxes should be smoke free.
Oh and one more - if using a atv or vehicle with a rope to help guide a tree down, make sure the rope is long enough (that's the one that really scared me.)