I Was NOT PREPARED For What Happened

so welcome back everyone so it's nice to be home after seven days on the jolly mountain fire I I feel beat up not as young as I used to be it was a lot of work the day started at 5:30 the alarmed me 4:30 a.m. the Lord LARM went off and get up and breakfast starts at 5:00 morning me faint meeting at 6:00 you're on the line usually around 7:30 and I was getting bet to bed anywhere between 12:00 and midnight so someone one night we had about four and a half hours sleep in it after after a week or so it just kind of wears you down a lot of lessons learned for me on this fire as you may remember a couple years ago my friend Alan and I who was a fighting fire horse fire with their wildland fire with the Forest Service this is the second year did a video I think it was called war-bag where we had some some ideas on what we wanted in our packs I'll tell you that a good portion of that has completely been turned upside down because of one thing wait wait has become a big issue for me trying to work with a pack I was able to strip down almost seven six or seven pounds out of my pack with things that just didn't need to be there so we'll talk more about that later so as those of you who follow my Instagram page and Facebook will know that we have a new addition to the family after twelve years of faithful service my my big saw my 441 still it's time for it to retire it's getting a little bit long in the tooth starting to the suspension is starting to break down and well this it's probably got a lot of life left in it for just a wood cutting saw it'll probably who knows maybe get another 12 years out of it but what I found on this fire was I was a couple days kind of pressed into service as a as a Sawyer and I didn't have access to a nice big Pro saw like this we had an agency saw which I believe was a still 311 which is not a professional saw it's a smaller cut time of a maybe kind of a homeowner wood cutter type of saw and it did the job was able to it was never had any problems is actually quite a brilliant little saw but I really missed having the features of her professional saw and I would have felt a lot safer and more comfortable in a couple situations that I was in with that said saw so how come the questions going to come up why doesn't the department by professional sauce why don't you have the best tools that at your disposal for this dangerous and an exhausting work the answer is it comes down to money volunteer departments in the country or most of them are really struggling you know it's the money is tight with those and we can't afford to buy professional saws like that and that goes same into packs wildland packs and gear and boots and equipment they just simply don't have the money to supply us with the best equipment that is so important so many of us who really take this seriously have to purchase our own equipment me for example I've purchased my own pack in my own boots and and majority of all of the equipment in here is all comes from me because you know I it's important to me to have those things and it's important to have every tool that I need to make my job easier and I'm not getting any younger and anything I can do to make my job easier is is of importance to me so that really that this last week on that jolly mountain fire pushed me over the edge to purchasing a new saw and primarily for the reason is I'll be taking the saw with me the agency saw will be in there it's fine I'm not gonna let anyone else use it would be my for my personal use but I want it I need it for any type of a big falling job that I want to have and I was uncomfortable with taking the 12 year old 441 with his you know it's got a lot of hard hard I mean I've just run the guts out of this thing chainsaw milling and and I just don't know when and if it's gonna let me down so I don't wanna to take this on a fire I don't trust it the 441 has not been a notoriously terrible saw for a lot of people I on the other hand have had really good luck with my have never had an issue it says predictable to me we know each other I know its quirks I know I know everything about it because I've spent so much time with it but I was talking to when I was trying to spec out which saw to buy at the saw shop yesterday we were talking about this and he said you know this has really been a problem so we have actually refused to sell it for years and years because it just was never designed very well it's he said that there were like somewhere near a hundred and fifty line changes on this saw meaning changes in mid production recalls on the saw it has had a really poor reputation I know with the Forest Service that the of the Sawyer's that I've spoken with and so even though it's introduced and it's been a good saw for me I decided to get away from it and go with the 461 so let's take a closer look at this this beautiful beautiful saw there it is probably the finest saw well I think it was without a question the finest saw money can buy for hard professional use the new steel for 61 man rave reviews on this saws when I before I thought long and hard about this and it really never was another option apart from this soon as I started talking to low-key local followers that have been using this saw now for for quite some time they just rave about it they just love it this particular saw is brand-new you'll notice it doesn't have a bar on it yet and that's because the dealer didn't have the bar that I wanted I run a 32 inch light weight bar and that had to be ordered in so I didn't want the factory steel bars so he ordered it in and and I just had to go down there and pick it up when it comes in so we have here is a a regional saw specific to our region we have the fort it's a 461 they call it an AR meaning it has a full body wrap a wraparound handle a lot of saws the handle stops right here you don't have this reach this is a this is something that's not available in all parts of the country it's a Western it's a Western option and it's I just can't imagine having a saw like this without it it gives you the flexibility to hold the saw and work the saw in so many more angles than just having it the other side or just having it on the left side I felt at a huge disadvantage with that little 331 saw when I was working bucking that big cedar log that was on fire by not having this limbing very very much missed it so this is that the our this is what you want you may not be able to get it in all parts of the country but out west pretty much every saw you're gonna buy is gonna have this so one last thing I'm going to do is I'm going to have this saw completely gone through the the cylinder head taken off and there's and some piston work piston and exhaust work done it we have a local saw shop who works with all of professional loggers that that for that does a really amazing job on these saws by getting more power out of them and opening them up and without sacrificing a reliability he's really a maestro and it's a hundred and fifty dollars to go through and repose the piston out and does a piston work is exhaust all of that and this thing will go from a respectable a respectable powerhouse to an absolute fire-breathing dragon that will pull itself out of your hand if you're not careful so that all more on that in the future so one other thing I want to talk to you before I close about also some serious issues that we ran into with other saws by not having keeping getting that having not being able to keep them up and running because a lack of a simple bit simple parts kit that everyone should have had myself included was not as prepared as I would like to have been so because we did so much falling work with and we had three saws going when they were running when we were doing some brushing out with our strike team I learned some valuable lessons and I have put together a kit that I would strongly recommend you consider some of these things if you are going to find yourself in this role we didn't have many of these things and it did cause some problems if everything was overcame of course but it could have been better so I want to show with you the things that I've put together and this is bare-bones minimum because weight to me is so so critical after after being all day on that saw and with pack and all that this is this is what I came up with a couple of small wedges these wedges we had guys were having pinched bars in in different logs and they were bucking in things and having these little guys if you don't have your main followers bill they don't take up much space and you can include them in a small bag in your kit also files most guys had files I've got three files here I've got three brand-new chainsaw filing files and a flat raker file not one of us had a raker file and because the guys we were cutting and doing brushing out in the rocks and on the ground our chains were getting absolutely hammered and they took a lot of filing and then what was happened as the filing was the breakers were sticking up for the depth gauge is so high that they wouldn't cut properly because we didn't have this simple tool right here a four dollar raker gauge so this is also going to be included in the kit as well as a spare scrunch a chainsaw wrench right here of course guys had the primary ones and this is my primary one here that I keep on my belt and I drilled a hole in it put a piece of paracord on there so I can get to it quickly and I don't have to constantly undo my pack and go digging for it or put this in a pocket where it's going to skewer me if I fall one guy lost his for some time it didn't have one if you don't have this tool your sock can be out of action and it just right away so having a spare one of these also I saw the the wisdom and that a carburetor tool that depending on your abilities to adjust the carburetor and extra spark plug that is so so important and this is a what's nice about still as many of the saws share the same spark plug so if I have another guy with a different saw maybe well guys get a 441 we can I can help him out and swap that back and forth and a file handle a file handle this is a steel file handle that will fit on both the raker or the depth gauge file as well as the chain file and the Torx tool this is the factory Torx tool that came with the saw if I needed to if I had a handle backing out or something this will pretty much disassemble the entire saw two sets of earplugs for one for myself and one for my Swampert if he doesn't have them we should of course have all of these an extra factory elasto steel pull pull rope you know that's again that this thing goes down or breaks you know we got a serious problem you ever saw out of commission and then some internal parts these I never did have issue with him and I never have but I went down and I talked to the steel mechanics that work on this logger saws and I asked them I told them what I was doing and I asked them what would you put in a kit what would you put in your replacement kit for spare parts and this is what they recommended they said put two bar nuts in there and I'll test it at because we did have I think two guys that lost one of their bar nuts when they were changing their bar or doing changing a chain or something and weren't able to find them and they were running with one so having a couple extra bar nuts oh I can those in there as well as these are kind of where bearings that slide into the outer case I've had these things fall off and lose them and a chain can tear up the case and they don't weigh much or anything so I've got two of those for upper and lower as well as a new pilot bearing that will go here for the the clutch and the sprocket a chain sprocket right there a factory pilot bearing in case of that were to go out and finally three clutch springs I'd never heard of a clutch spring breaking but these can be replaced easily with your Leatherman which I carry on my line gear and if you have one of these brakes your whole saw goes down and again this also fits a wide variety of saws so that we can make those repairs in the field too so that's a pretty small set of two set of tools or parts there that could make the difference and it doesn't weigh very much and then finally I'm going to put a killer tree tape here this is Universal Lee understood on the wildland fire ground this is a tree that's dangerous and may be a tree that I'm not comfortable with taking down that I want to leave for a more experienced fall or I can flag that and everyone knows when they see it to stay away from that so I've got that there as well just as opposed to orange ribbon you you kind of get worn out with ribbon on the fires because there's so many ribbons going up for scape routes and for this the dozers guys a dozer boss puts his own stuff on there and vice versa and so this is kind of universally understood so all of this stuff fits neatly in my recycled firefighter pouch that I have a bit I've pressed this in too so so many different roles and it's always such a handy thing it just works good because it's long enough to fit your files in and that's what I like about it so I'll just keep all it in there now I'm not going to carry this stuff with me all the time again I'm super super fanatical about weight after this last deployment so this is of course this is a heavy bag but I don't really care too much because I usually if I'm gonna be working on the chainsaw the engines gonna be close by I can take this and I can throw it into the pouch the side pouch on my lion gear and have it and I could even take it out throw it on the ground if I didn't want to pack it around as I'm cutting and options so there are few more options here too and I don't haven't completely flushed out how I'm going to do this I would like to have a way of mounting my my wedges on my lion gear I love the Grizzly Peak Enterprises this is a my man up in Idaho I forget his name builds these he's a faller but he's a timber faller by trade and his daughter was telling me at night he comes home and he makes these these aluminum of course you know the my favorite axe scabbard there if you want to call him and get these his numbers 208 7 8 3 2 3 3 7 he's up in Idaho Grizzly Peak enterprises and who makes some really great stuff and this course is scabbard so I actually I talked to him yesterday or I sent an email yesterday to someone there and said I'd like to talk to you about maybe figure out a way to doing a custom design or something that I could carry this ax and the wedges on my lion gear something that I could snap on quickly if I needed them and not have to because I can't wear a father's belt because I got that big belt you know the big waist belt on the line gear and that you just can't have all that stuff around your waist and this has been kind of a problem I could take my line gear off but it may be a situation where I need to wear it and run the saw so I haven't quite figured that one out yet now of course a spare chained none of us had spare chains on the fire and I was able to keep mine going fortunately but I was only one Rock away you know like some of the other guys they had a hard time and we did a lot of filing and and we actually had to go and because the we couldn't get chains from the supply they didn't have any we had to go in town and the guys had to buy their own chains because they didn't have hinges and neither did I so that was a lesson learned of course a trauma kit right there one of the things that I might be adding I don't know yet here's a this is a shoulder pad that goes on your suspenders you align gear if you're going to be carrying the saw a long ways they're really kind of painful on your shoulder and this is a leather pad that threads in through the through the loop over the shoulder with a leather side out and the felt inside and I'm a I I don't know if I'm gonna put that on my line here I know I mean I don't it all depends on how much how much time I spend on the saw so that's kind of what also what I will learn was this I'm gonna be incorporating this into my kit to our strike team leader old Tom he was a well he was a really admired him he was an excellent firefighter he had 32 years of experience I think you know I learned so much from him on this last fire and one thing that he carried was a small folding saw and I gonna incorporate that as well this one here has got a quick attach on it so I have actually threaded onto my belt or my waist belt here the other end of it that I could snap that on because I'll look we were in some we were trying to do mop up and we were really struggling with small branches and vine maples that were you know just too small to get in there and fool with a saw but just kind of hitting you in the face and he had this and that made a big difference so I'm gonna have this not always on my pack but I'm gonna have it there if I do need it so that of course the fight finishing up the bugs goggles and the chainsaw chaps it goes without saying but that makes up my kind of my father's kit and I just need to figure out a way to kind of incorporate this with the line gear but this is I think this is a pretty solid kit if you put something together like this you would be have everything that you could you do everything you could possibly do to keep your saw running and do the best job that you can so so that is that oh thanks for watching and we'll see you guys on the next video

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 556,770

Rating: 4.7342629 out of 5

Keywords: firefighter, wildfire suppression, wildland fire, wildland, wildland firefighting, fire, wildfire, works, smoke jumper, wranglerstar, firefighting, emergency, rescue, forest fire, tribute, department, forest firefighter, hot shots, firefighters, wildland fire engine, sawyer, chainsaw, stihl chainsaw, stihl outdoor power tools, husqvarna, chain saw, arborist, string trimmer, power tools, yard work, review, wood, saw, landscape, stihl ms, stihl 880, stihl timbersports, stihl ms 880

Id: djKjwb-Ys_0

Length: 17min 35sec (1055 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2017