Every now and then Fine Homebuiding editors and readers come across a video on the Web demonstrating a dangerous or crazy technique that sends shivers down our spine. And in some cases, we’ve shared those videos with you in the blogs for two reasons: they make great entertainment and they make great examples of what NOT to do.
As we take a look back at the year in review, we assembled our top five list of the worst home building videos we’ve come across in 2009. This is by no means an endorsement of techniques. Watch these at your own risk. And, if you’ve seen a dangerous video that should top our list, post a link in the comments section.
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1. Craziest Shingle Tear-Off Method Ever? This video of a crane operator using a excavator bucket to remove the cedar shingles from a roof with some fancy steering is a real nail biter but got a lot of people talking. |
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2. How do You Handle Customers Who Don’t Pay? One UK builder’s approach: knock down the finished work with a sledgehammer. Watch the unfortunate demo set to music and read the original news article to prevent this worst-case scenario from happening to you. |
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3. SawStop Inventor Walks the Walk Tired of the hot dog demo? The inventor of this safety-centric tablesaw puts his finger to the blade to demonstrate how the blade break works. |
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4. That Can’t Be Safe! A Visit to the Shingle Mill Luckily this wasn’t followed up by “A visit to the Emergency Room” though the gigantic exposed blade used for cutting shingles might just be the most frightening tool we’ve seen. |
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5. Man Coughs up Nail after 30 years |
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BONUS: Effective Nailing Techniques |
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Dead link on Bonus
sorry, mike. link is back online.
Per the SawStop video, moving a finger into the blade at the slow, controlled rate that is show is NOT anything like a realworld incident. Would love to see them video a hotdog or a finger moving rapidly into the blade to see what actually would be the real life result.
Yes, sometimes it would be slow, but I am SURE that sometimes the user moves his wood/hand at a higher rate of speed into the blade and in the interest of truth in advertising it would be nice to see a realworld scenario video
John
jtcrea - I don't blame the sawstop guy from inching his finger in the saw so I won't argue there - but they rammed that hot dog in there like they were ripping wood all day. Watch it again and you will see the speed - I was kinda disappointed they did it so fast because I couldn't tell what happened at first but I am sure they did it just to answer comments like the ones you made. For me its impressive as it gets...