Buying Tools is Never Wrong

I know the entire world is wondering what happened when my jackhammer arrived.

My back was bugging me last week, which is one reason I bought the jackhammer. It arrived on Friday, and I felt good enough to break it out and use it. I only had time to run it about 45 minutes, but that was long enough to convince me everyone needs a jackhammer.

I guess it sounds stupid to say a person whose back hurts needs to buy a tool that weighs over 40 pounds and has to be held up while it rams a huge piece of steel into hard objects, but you have to consider the alternatives, including doing nothing.

I was trying to get a giant rock out of my yard. I pulled on it with a strap attached to the tractor, and as far as I can tell, I was able to rock it about a quarter of an inch. I bought rock-splitting wedges, and they worked great, but splitting chunks off an oddly shaped rock requires contorting yourself into odd positions while crouching in a hole in the ground, and you will have to do repeated splits. I used my rotary hammer to break up the rock, and it works well, but it’s much slower than a jackhammer, and because it’s only maybe two feet long, a certain amount of contortion is still needed.

The only other choice I had was to do nothing. I could put the dirt back in around the rock and continue trying to remember to drive the lawnmower around it for the remainder of my stay on this property. I wasn’t having that. That rock needs to go, and besides, I like using tools to make problems go away.

I bought a refurbished hammer from CPO Outlets, which is known for selling refurbs. Sometimes their deals aren’t all that great, but they sold me a thousand-dollar hammer for under $600. That was hard to pass up. I’ve bought other refurbs from them, and I think it’s smart business. A refurb, typically, is a tool someone bought and then returned because he didn’t like it. The manufacturers have to look them over and make sure they’re up to new standards. They are basically new tools, but they can’t be sold as new, so you get a break. You are likely to get a full warranty, so it’s hard to see any reason not to go for it.

I could have gotten a Chinese hammer for a lot less, as I have said, but it would have been Chinese, so it might have crapped out quickly, and I doubt I could have gotten it repaired.

Interesting thing: the manual for the hammer I bought bragged that it wouldn’t need to be serviced until I had 300 hours on it. That surprised me. None of my other tools have manuals saying, “Get ready for this tool to die at 300 hours.” Made me wonder if Chinese was the better solution. I don’t know how much money it costs to get a jackhammer serviced, so right now, I can’t judge. For all I know, it just means I have to take out a couple of screws and replace an O-ring.

CPO Outlets enhanced its profit margin by not including a bit for the hammer, but that’s okay, because I didn’t want the bit it would have come with. They come with pointy bits. I wanted one like a big flat-bladed screwdriver. When I checked them out online, I saw startling prices. Like $40 each. Then I noticed a DeWalt for $15. It was exactly what I wanted, and it was from a real company, so I ordered it. It works fine, and I can’t find anything wrong with it. I feel like I scored.

I took the hammer out to the hole, put the bit against the rock in a place where I thought it needed to be hit, and went to town. Right away, I was surprised to see how pleasant jackhammering was. I was nervous when I started. I thought the bit might jump around and put my feet in danger. I thought I might be jarred a lot. I equipped myself with safety glasses, a respirator, and ear plugs because I was concerned about noise and flying quartz chips. In reality, the bit stayed nearly where I put it, I was not jarred at all, nothing the bit broke off flew anywhere near my face, the machine was quiet, and if there was inhalable dust, there was so little I could not see it.

When I think of jackhammers, I think of fat guys on city streets operating huge air-powered hammers that seem to make them bounce around like toys on top of a washer full of towels during a spin cycle. It was not like that at all for me. It was more like having a pleasant belly massage. I guess the four fat springs on the hammer suck up nearly all of the pain.

Hammering made me wonder if I understood how rocks work. I think of rocks as things that exist in two states: shattered and not. I don’t think of them as things that can weaken gradually, like fatigued metal. When I hammered on my hard quartz rock, I found that sometimes the bit would stay in one place a long time, seeming to do nothing, and then the rock would suddenly give way, as though the prolonged hammering had softened it up. That was strange.

I had some problems with the bit getting stuck. Sometimes it will go straight down, making a tight hole, and then when it gets too deep, I’ll have to pull it back out. The hammering action doesn’t work when you’re lifting the hammer, so the machine doesn’t help at all. Also, you’re not supposed to pry with the bit. The hammer isn’t made for that. Which is a shame, because the bit alone probably weighs 8 pounds and could certainly pry as well as a typical pry bar. The hammer and bit, together, are about four feet long, so I would have a lot of leverage if I could pry with them.

It seems like I need to keep the sledge and rotary hammer nearby, in case the jackhammer gets stuck. I can beat the rock with the sledge or chisel the jackhammer it out with the rotary hammer.

I cracked a lot of big chunks off the rock in the short time I spent using the hammer. I can see that one of two things will happen. I may crack enough junk off the rock to make it small enough to tear out with the tractor, or I will simply remove stuff until the remaining rock is so far below grade I won’t mind burying it and moving on with my life.

Was this a stupid buy? I don’t know. I didn’t need to remove the rock at all. I could have painted it day-glo orange and driven around it. The house is 19 years old, and the previous owner never had to remove the rock. On the other hand, the rocks are annoying, and they really should be removed. It would cost me maybe a grand to get them removed with a bulldozer, and it would tear the yard up even worse than I have. After all that, I would not have a neat jackhammer and splitting wedges, or the ability to use them, in my tool arsenal. I would just have a bill and a messed-up yard.

It’s fun tormenting the rocks, and I have amassed a very big rock collection which I could conceivably use for decoration.

In other news, my friends Freddly and Freddelle visited this weekend, along with Freddly’s children Noah and Grace. Noah is my godson, and he is 4. I think. Grace is 10 months old. Freddly’s husband couldn’t make it.

Freddelle is a law student at FSU. I have known her since she was 17. We met at Trinity Church. She found out I was a lawyer and immediately began grilling me for advice. Over the years, I have been able to be somewhat helpful to her. She calls me a mentor. I would say I’m just a guy who gave her advice a few times. She had doubts about even getting into law school, and here she is, coming up on graduation, with one solid job offer already in the bag.

Freddly was an armorbearer at Trinity. The code name she gave herself was “Oreo,” which I found extremely amusing. I was somewhat instrumental in helping her reattach with God after the Wilkerson family and Trinity disillusioned and discouraged her.

When they started talking about visiting, I wasn’t sure what two Haitian girls who were suburban at best would do here, but things worked out very well. We went to a barbecue place and a great Italian restaurant, and on Sunday, we went on a glass-bottomed boat at Silver Springs. Noah was beside himself. You would think he had never seen a fish before.

Noah likes trucks and tractors, so that’s what he gets for holiday presents, and he was well-prepared for my farm. He has a Tonka John Deere, so we got the real John Deere lawn tractor out, and he helped me drive it around the yard.

Noah loves Marvin and Maynard, and I think they enjoyed his company, too.

The ladies and I talked about various Christian topics. They seem much more well-grounded than I had thought. I told them I was thinking of moving to Tennessee, and I mentioned the strange trend of Christians moving to that state. Freddly told me something crazy. She had had a dream in which she visited Tennessee. This was before she knew about my plans, and she has no Tennessee connections. She said she visited to see if it was okay for black people move there.

Something is going on in the supernatural.

My back is at about 95% now. I don’t know what I did to it, but it was not serious. I almost never have back problems, so a week of limited activity was a strange and unwelcome experience. Today I went out and did a few things. A three-trunked oak fell over for no reason at all, so I had to go out in the woods and cut all three trunks to take pressure off the trees it was leaning on. There was poison ivy everywhere. I had to walk like I was in a minefield. Before I started my saws, I hosed the whole area with glyphosate. I may have to go back in there, and obviously, it’s harder to get a rash from dead vines than big juicy leaves with oil all over them.

I noticed something interesting: when you cut a lot of wood and throw sawdust everywhere, it covers up poison ivy and makes an area less dangerous. I don’t think I’m very sensitive to poison ivy, because I have eaten mangoes with sap on them for decades with no problem, and I worked in the poison ivy before I knew what it was without getting rashes, but I don’t want to be exposed any more than I have to. When I came home, I used a brush and dish detergent to scrub the soles of my boots.

Cutting leaning trees is dangerous and difficult, especially when you can’t stand wherever you want. I relied on bore-cutting, which means cutting the middle out of a tree before you sever the remaining strap or straps on the outside. It prevents the tree from splitting, which can throw a trunk in your face. I was not able to get the tree down completely in the time I had, but I severed it from its roots, ensuring that it will dry up and rot faster, and I cut enough off the trunks to give substantial relief to the trees holding the fallen tree up.

I can get more done once the ivy is dead.

I am no arborist, but from watching Youtubes, I can tell I know a few things a lot of the old pros don’t. Some of them don’t know much about bore-cutting, for example. I’m not afraid to cut a leaning tree which is hung on other trees, because with a bore cut and two or three wedges, I can fix it so the tree can’t split in a dangerous way or pinch my saw. I can also fell a leaning tree that isn’t hung, as long as I’m okay with it falling in the direction of the lean. I don’t know enough to log or take down rotten trees that are still vertical, and cutting free leaning trees so they fall away from the lean is too much for me, but I know enough to do what I need to do on this farm.

Cutting leaning trees that are not hung is very dangerous. If you leave the wood in the center of the trunk, the torque from the lean may make the tree split up the middle, and then you get what’s called a barber chair. It’s a heavy trunk supported on a springy bit that has split away, and the trunk may bounce and swing unpredictably. They kill people all the time.

Here’s a video of a tree barber-chairing.

This shows why you should always wear a hard hat when you cut anything taller than you are. You can cut a tree a foot from the ground, but if it barber chairs, the base of the trunk may rise up over your head and then come down on you.

A barber chair ruins a lot of the wood in a tree.

I’ve noticed that some of the techniques loggers use are designed to spare the wood. For example, they often cut almost flush with the ground. My wood is worthless, so I don’t care about any of that. When I look at videos and read about tree felling, I discard the stuff that doesn’t apply to me and could cause problems.

Cutting a tree flush with the ground is hard on your back, and if something goes wrong, it may be hard to straighten up and run. You also end up with a stump you can’t pull out with a chain or rope. I have had to deal with stumps people cut this way (stupidly), and I wouldn’t dream of cutting them like that. The higher you cut a tree, the more leverage you have when you pull the stump with the tractor. I try to cut low enough to be safe and high enough to leave me with something to pull on.

It’s funny, but the oaks here rot like crazy while they’re alive, but once you cut one, the stump lasts forever. It absolutely will not rot. You really have to think about stump removal when you cut an oak here. You can always have a flush-cut stump ground, but it’s expensive, and then you end up with a permanent mass of wood just under the ground, where you had hoped to plant something.

It’s dumb.

I had a maple struck by lightning, and because it was not a dangerous tree, I ended up cutting it about six feet up. After that, I had no problem pulling it out. Took about three minutes. It was nothing like the flush-cut stumps that required hours of digging and hacking.

I guess the world has read enough about my doings for one day.

I’ll try to post some jackhammer photos eventually.