Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Understanding Ergonomics is important if you are doing a lot of physical things where you are lifting things or splitting wood or building something

 As someone who was raised splitting wood sometimes even from ages 5 to 8 and who was raised around guns (I was given a .22 rifle a Remington pump 17 shot rifle at age 8) it's important to understand ergonomics so you aren't injured doing physical things.

But, if you don't understand how to protect your body from injury then you might be in trouble.

For example, axes and ladders are the two most dangerous things around the house.

For example, a friend of mine was re-roofing his geodesic dome house and  fell off and almost didn't survive it. 

What did he do wrong?

Well. Geodesic domes have no surfaces without large angles. So, to prevent injury often you have to rope in somehow to prevent yourself falling off the roof and breaking yourself in many pieces.

So, this friend now walks with a cane and cannot walk very well anymore.

Another friend of my Dad's whose plane I flew (not takeoff or landing) when I was 10 years old fell of his roof while fixing it and was dead within a month or two.

Because of this my wife won't let me go up on the roof to fix things anymore because I'm 77 years old.

However, sometimes if I find there is something I have to do I go up there anyway if she isn't looking. But, I would only do this in a complete emergency now like Rescuing a hummingbird who got stuck in one of our skylights. He had been stuck in a skylight over our kitchen thinking he should be able to fly through the glass and up and out. However, this wasn't going to work as you and I know but he didn't.

So, after doing everything I could with a broom to try to get him to go out our foyer door without success, finally in desperation I climbed up on the roof when me wife wasn't looking and undid a lag bolt to the skylight and freed him. So, I saw him fly barely across the road into a pine tree near dusk.

Did he survive the night after beating himself to death on the skylight all afternoon?

I don't know. However, he at least survived to fly to a pine tree across the street.

The point is on regular house roofs you can throw a rope across the roof and tie it to a tree or even your car or truck but you cannot do this on a geodesic dome as easily because you have different surfaces.

So, to me, ergonomics is being smart enough not to injure or die doing normal things around the house like splitting wood with a mall or axe.

If you haven't been trained in safety with an axe or mall then until someone who knows how to do this shows you often it is dangerous for you to do this.

An Axe or Ladder is as dangerous as a gun.

If you understand this you understand enough to survive all three things.

So, without enough training an axe, a ladder or a gun are all equally dangerous to your health followed by electric hand held skill saws with around an 8 inch spinning blade at high speed.

In the 1950s I was always meeting men with one or two fingers gone from Skill Saws. This was pretty normal then.

So, if you don't know how to use skill saws, axes, malls or guns and haven't been properly trained by someone experienced then you are taking your life into your own hands.

Even someone experienced like me has experienced things like a piece of wood exploding into my face because of unexpected things splitting wood with a mall or wedge and mall or having a dead lodgepole pine come down and the last 6 feet of it hitting me on my head as I ran away from it. It didn't knock me out but did knock me to the ground and hit either my baseball cap or hard hat if I was wearing one.

It's sort of like this: "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword".

But, in this case he who lives with tools often is injured by those tools.

It's unlikely you are going to die from tools. But, it is very likely you will be injured by them at some point or points no matter how well you are trained.

So, if you have had no useful training regarding tools find someone to teach you unless you are very brave and experimental. 

Also, I was trained in the 1950s to see a gun as a tool like a hoe or a shovel that was used for hunting or defending your family. This is what I was taught by age 8 to 10 years old in the 1950s. All my friends and I had .22 rifles then. It's what boys did then in California and the western States in the 1950s. I had a rifle in my room and bullets in my closet.

A very different world than now.

Something to think about.

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