The whipper snipper from hell............................
Earlier I mentioned a bush block cleanup which was a regular pilgrimage, well before it became a bare block of land it had a very old home on it and we STILL had to go and clean it up yearly or more to keep the neighbours happy as well as putting the CFA (Country fire authority) at ease.
For one of these events my Dad had borrowed a petrol line trimmer from somewhere but found it lacking in the choppy choppy department when it came to bracken and ferns which we had a lot of on the block and as I was the tallest child I had the dubious honour of driving the brushcutter which is exactly what it became.
Dear old Dad "Modified" this thing by unscrewing the line feed and bolting on a circular saw blade............
Yep, he packed out the fairly thin shaft with "Stuff" and dropped a blade from a 9 inch saw onto the packed out boss and then held it in place with about 15 washers before screwing a nut on the end.
So the big day arrives and we make the trip, unload and are handed our various implements of doom.
So I wander up the back of the block and start the brushcutter which roars to life and away I go.
The thing was laying waste to everything and anything I swept it across doing a great job until the vibration started.
I ignored it being 13 or 14 and kept going arcing the thing in wide sweeps to chop down the bracken and blackberries.
Then the vibrations got worse.... and worse and then went away as the saw blade whizzed away into the undergrowth.
Ya know it wasnt until id retrieved the blade from under the bungalow that I noticed the nice neat way my inside pants leg had been chopped thru just above the ankle and as the boss on the end of the machine had sheared off I was excused from further duty.
Oh and we got Macca's on the way home, a rare treatfor us in the late 70's lol
I wonder why?
