I think this a a story that most here will like to read, as it proves you just never know when, where, or for what reason you may need that knife you carry everyday, but when the need arises and you have it, it litteraly saves your butt, or someone elses.
I find myself 5 weeks into a new job, I couldn't be any greener if you sprayed me down with a rattle can of John Deer green. I'm a cell tower climber/rigger. Being a guy with a drawer full of knives from my younger years of collecting, every monday morning I look in the drawer and wonder which to carry this week, what could I possibly come up against to use it? In the front chest pocket of my bib overalls I carry an old Camillus folder with a sheeps foot blade and a marlin spike. I figure it would be good for what it was designed for, cuting rope and dealing with knots, both of which rigging a tower to bring pieces up and down entails. So far I've never used it on a single rope. In my side leg pocket of my bib overalls, is always a clipped folder of some sort, maybe an old original Gerber Easy-Out, maybe my cheap CRKT spearpoint M16, most of the time my Boker Automat Kalashnikov 74. The latter making the most sense to me because if I'm hanging on a tower and need a blade fast, all I need to do is slide it out of my pocket and push the button. Hanging in a harness, afraid of dropping something with freezing fingers made me think the auto knife made sence. Yesterday morning, I was carrying the CRKT M16. I was climbing to 350 ft and thought it was the cheapest and easiest to replace if I dropped it. We were called to this particular tower close to the NY-Penn. border in NY state for an emergency on a 911 antenna. When we got to the site on a very high hill top, almost at the top of the tower, there it was, a 25ft pole antenna dangling off the side swinging in the wind. We tried to access it the best we could from the ground with binoculars, but just couldn't see all the details (like what was really holding it there. It looked as though the bottom mount might have been somewhat still attached, the top completely gone, and one out of the 5 coax cables left attached maybe holding the thing swinging in the breeze. The plan was for two of us to climb up with a rigging set up- a rope, block and tackle to rig above the broken antenna, and tie off the antenna to keep it from falling and possibly taking out the 5 guy-wires below it. For those that aren't engineers, or don't know about them, when you see those tall cell towers with cables running from the ground to different heights up the tower... Those cables are the only thing keeping it standing, take one out, and you have a major dissaster on your hands, or the most hairy situation at the least.
So two of us made it to the antenna, roughly 330ft up above the earth, and upon closer inspection, realized that the only thing keeping it there was that one coax cable we could see from the ground. The lower mount, a length of stainless C-channel that clamped to the bottom of the pole antenna and the other end to the tower , was missing completely it's clamp that attached to the tower leg. (The stainless bolts had been sheared probably when the top mount let loose). The lower mounted slid though the X bracing of the tower and simply kept that end from falling, it was rocking back and forth on a piece of angle iron, as if to wave at us and say "hello, are you here to talk me out of it?!, stay back, I'm gonna jump!". I went on above it with the rigging set-up while the other guy radioed down the situation as he saw it in front of us. Once I had it rigged to the tower, I lowered the rope down to the other guy. The plan was to fasten the rope around the mid section of the antenna ( which was about 5 1/2 feet out from the side of the tower) so that we had it by the ballance point, then to winch it up, the lower guy holding the the bottom to the tower and me grabbing the top when it was in reach so we could get it vertical, fasten it to the tower with large stainless hose clamps so we could let go of it, re-rig it at the top, and send it down. All this in 25 mile an hour winds at 300+ft. Yes, being new, I was questioning how badly I needed this paycheck. Really questioning it.
Well, with the rope around the antenna, we radioed down to the ground for the superviser with the winch to SLOWLY stared lifting the antenna. The antenna lifted, it was looking like it was going to work. The guy below had a hold of the bottom keeping it at the tower, and the top was going up, swinging it's way closer to the tower, another 6 feet in to me and I'd maybe be able to reach it. And that's when all hell broke loose. The rope slipped, I don't know how because I didn't tie it and didn't see it slip, but the next thing I know, the antenna (just a 25ft long aluminum pole with elements attached to it and mounting brackets) is making like a hatchet and flying down ward, and the bottom, the end the guy below me had a hold of, is now becoming the top, and coming at me fast. When your on the tower, you've got a full body harness on, your attached to the tower with a lanyard or hook of some type to keep you in front of your work, and a long fall arrest lanyard, that absorbs the shock if you do some how fall. This being said, your on a tower, and your fastened directly to it... There is nowhere to go. I saw it coming, I bear hugged the tower, closed my eyes and heard a big metal on metal racket. Like steel pipes falling of a truck. Nothing... I opened my eyes and something tapping the back of my climbing helmet. I turned and looked, and there staring me in the face was that lower stainless mount that used to be at the bottom, now it was the top. I looked down, and there is the other guy struggling with something, the antenna has him pinned right to the tower. Well crap. I yell down are you alright, he yells something back. With 25-30mph winds, it's hard to hear what anyone is saying that isn't right next to you, but I can see the panic in his eyes even though sunglasses and face mask are all I can see. I look, try to figure out what the situation is now, and fast. As the antenna was coming up, one of the elements out on it pushed that one piece of coax cable, a very stiff cable consisting of a hard plastic outer coating, a thin copper sleve, foam, and then a small nickel core up and over what it was stretched across and it somehow changed the way the pole was going up, pushed against the rope, and probably stopped the pole from raising at it's balance point. The rope was floating in the breeze like a kite string, pinched between the antenna pole and the tower, it was no longer holding the weight of it, and couldn't be pulled from the ground. The rope wasn't going to do anything untill that coax cable was cut free, and the guy below me couldn't move and was flailing like a chicken with it's head cut off. He was panicking.
All this was accessed and realized in my head in maybe 25 seconds or so I figure, And the the other guy had the small hack saw in his tool bag we planned to cut the cable with. I grabbed the knife from my side leg pocket of my bibs. My cheap 'ol CRKT. My only hope in my mind was that I could saw thought the plastic and copper sleves with the serated portion of the blade and maybe score the nickel core enough to snap it. My fingers were cold and I was afriad to drop it, so instead of using the thumb stud or the finger rocker on the back side, I slowly opened it with both hands. "slow is smooth and smooth is fast" going through my head. Way fatser than watching the knife fall to it's demise, a cold tomb of snow in the field below. I started sawing as fast as I could all the way around the cable, just hoping the copper sleve was thin enough and it had enough stress on it from the weight of the antenna. In about 30 seconds, I was seeing the nickel core. I sawed at it, the nickel laughed back at me, but it did manage to score it, so I went all the way around, and started to see it splitting. I stopped, grabbed another lanyard off my harness and wrapped it around the antenna and to the tower, with the least amount of slack as I could get out of it, then sawed at the nickle some more. The knife was done, kaput. I clipped it on my harness and grabbed at the cable working it back and forth, finally braking the core. The antenna dropped a few inches, the rope wasn't pinched anymore and tension came back to it. I hand signalled to the gound the "up" signal, and the antenna rose slightly, coming of my co-worker, and we both breathed. I was shaking, he was breathing fast and hard, but it was better now. And hour later, the antenna was on the ground, and 45 minutes after that, we were too. If I didn't carry that knife, the one with the half and half blade (I always disliked half serated blades), the one I was never very impressed with but liked the way it looked and felt in my hand, I really don't know how we would have dealt with it.
I think I'm going to retire the knife to a place on the wall, I did way more than it was ever expected to do, and I'm going to be looking for what I think I now know I need. A tough, half serated, assisted or auto opening knife, something a bit bigger, so that the serated portion is just a little bit longer than the small knife. Oh, and a hole for a lanyard. And maybe some type of a retractable lanyard like what my wife's ID for her work is on so she can swipe her card at doors ways but still keep it attached to her person, yea, that sounds like a good idea too. But I know now when someone asks me why I always carry a knife where ever I go, I can smile and say, "Hey, you just never know". Mark.
My CRKT M16, to be retired with the dull blade and weather proofing tar still stuck to it on the wall as a reminder.
I find myself 5 weeks into a new job, I couldn't be any greener if you sprayed me down with a rattle can of John Deer green. I'm a cell tower climber/rigger. Being a guy with a drawer full of knives from my younger years of collecting, every monday morning I look in the drawer and wonder which to carry this week, what could I possibly come up against to use it? In the front chest pocket of my bib overalls I carry an old Camillus folder with a sheeps foot blade and a marlin spike. I figure it would be good for what it was designed for, cuting rope and dealing with knots, both of which rigging a tower to bring pieces up and down entails. So far I've never used it on a single rope. In my side leg pocket of my bib overalls, is always a clipped folder of some sort, maybe an old original Gerber Easy-Out, maybe my cheap CRKT spearpoint M16, most of the time my Boker Automat Kalashnikov 74. The latter making the most sense to me because if I'm hanging on a tower and need a blade fast, all I need to do is slide it out of my pocket and push the button. Hanging in a harness, afraid of dropping something with freezing fingers made me think the auto knife made sence. Yesterday morning, I was carrying the CRKT M16. I was climbing to 350 ft and thought it was the cheapest and easiest to replace if I dropped it. We were called to this particular tower close to the NY-Penn. border in NY state for an emergency on a 911 antenna. When we got to the site on a very high hill top, almost at the top of the tower, there it was, a 25ft pole antenna dangling off the side swinging in the wind. We tried to access it the best we could from the ground with binoculars, but just couldn't see all the details (like what was really holding it there. It looked as though the bottom mount might have been somewhat still attached, the top completely gone, and one out of the 5 coax cables left attached maybe holding the thing swinging in the breeze. The plan was for two of us to climb up with a rigging set up- a rope, block and tackle to rig above the broken antenna, and tie off the antenna to keep it from falling and possibly taking out the 5 guy-wires below it. For those that aren't engineers, or don't know about them, when you see those tall cell towers with cables running from the ground to different heights up the tower... Those cables are the only thing keeping it standing, take one out, and you have a major dissaster on your hands, or the most hairy situation at the least.
So two of us made it to the antenna, roughly 330ft up above the earth, and upon closer inspection, realized that the only thing keeping it there was that one coax cable we could see from the ground. The lower mount, a length of stainless C-channel that clamped to the bottom of the pole antenna and the other end to the tower , was missing completely it's clamp that attached to the tower leg. (The stainless bolts had been sheared probably when the top mount let loose). The lower mounted slid though the X bracing of the tower and simply kept that end from falling, it was rocking back and forth on a piece of angle iron, as if to wave at us and say "hello, are you here to talk me out of it?!, stay back, I'm gonna jump!". I went on above it with the rigging set-up while the other guy radioed down the situation as he saw it in front of us. Once I had it rigged to the tower, I lowered the rope down to the other guy. The plan was to fasten the rope around the mid section of the antenna ( which was about 5 1/2 feet out from the side of the tower) so that we had it by the ballance point, then to winch it up, the lower guy holding the the bottom to the tower and me grabbing the top when it was in reach so we could get it vertical, fasten it to the tower with large stainless hose clamps so we could let go of it, re-rig it at the top, and send it down. All this in 25 mile an hour winds at 300+ft. Yes, being new, I was questioning how badly I needed this paycheck. Really questioning it.
Well, with the rope around the antenna, we radioed down to the ground for the superviser with the winch to SLOWLY stared lifting the antenna. The antenna lifted, it was looking like it was going to work. The guy below had a hold of the bottom keeping it at the tower, and the top was going up, swinging it's way closer to the tower, another 6 feet in to me and I'd maybe be able to reach it. And that's when all hell broke loose. The rope slipped, I don't know how because I didn't tie it and didn't see it slip, but the next thing I know, the antenna (just a 25ft long aluminum pole with elements attached to it and mounting brackets) is making like a hatchet and flying down ward, and the bottom, the end the guy below me had a hold of, is now becoming the top, and coming at me fast. When your on the tower, you've got a full body harness on, your attached to the tower with a lanyard or hook of some type to keep you in front of your work, and a long fall arrest lanyard, that absorbs the shock if you do some how fall. This being said, your on a tower, and your fastened directly to it... There is nowhere to go. I saw it coming, I bear hugged the tower, closed my eyes and heard a big metal on metal racket. Like steel pipes falling of a truck. Nothing... I opened my eyes and something tapping the back of my climbing helmet. I turned and looked, and there staring me in the face was that lower stainless mount that used to be at the bottom, now it was the top. I looked down, and there is the other guy struggling with something, the antenna has him pinned right to the tower. Well crap. I yell down are you alright, he yells something back. With 25-30mph winds, it's hard to hear what anyone is saying that isn't right next to you, but I can see the panic in his eyes even though sunglasses and face mask are all I can see. I look, try to figure out what the situation is now, and fast. As the antenna was coming up, one of the elements out on it pushed that one piece of coax cable, a very stiff cable consisting of a hard plastic outer coating, a thin copper sleve, foam, and then a small nickel core up and over what it was stretched across and it somehow changed the way the pole was going up, pushed against the rope, and probably stopped the pole from raising at it's balance point. The rope was floating in the breeze like a kite string, pinched between the antenna pole and the tower, it was no longer holding the weight of it, and couldn't be pulled from the ground. The rope wasn't going to do anything untill that coax cable was cut free, and the guy below me couldn't move and was flailing like a chicken with it's head cut off. He was panicking.
All this was accessed and realized in my head in maybe 25 seconds or so I figure, And the the other guy had the small hack saw in his tool bag we planned to cut the cable with. I grabbed the knife from my side leg pocket of my bibs. My cheap 'ol CRKT. My only hope in my mind was that I could saw thought the plastic and copper sleves with the serated portion of the blade and maybe score the nickel core enough to snap it. My fingers were cold and I was afriad to drop it, so instead of using the thumb stud or the finger rocker on the back side, I slowly opened it with both hands. "slow is smooth and smooth is fast" going through my head. Way fatser than watching the knife fall to it's demise, a cold tomb of snow in the field below. I started sawing as fast as I could all the way around the cable, just hoping the copper sleve was thin enough and it had enough stress on it from the weight of the antenna. In about 30 seconds, I was seeing the nickel core. I sawed at it, the nickel laughed back at me, but it did manage to score it, so I went all the way around, and started to see it splitting. I stopped, grabbed another lanyard off my harness and wrapped it around the antenna and to the tower, with the least amount of slack as I could get out of it, then sawed at the nickle some more. The knife was done, kaput. I clipped it on my harness and grabbed at the cable working it back and forth, finally braking the core. The antenna dropped a few inches, the rope wasn't pinched anymore and tension came back to it. I hand signalled to the gound the "up" signal, and the antenna rose slightly, coming of my co-worker, and we both breathed. I was shaking, he was breathing fast and hard, but it was better now. And hour later, the antenna was on the ground, and 45 minutes after that, we were too. If I didn't carry that knife, the one with the half and half blade (I always disliked half serated blades), the one I was never very impressed with but liked the way it looked and felt in my hand, I really don't know how we would have dealt with it.
I think I'm going to retire the knife to a place on the wall, I did way more than it was ever expected to do, and I'm going to be looking for what I think I now know I need. A tough, half serated, assisted or auto opening knife, something a bit bigger, so that the serated portion is just a little bit longer than the small knife. Oh, and a hole for a lanyard. And maybe some type of a retractable lanyard like what my wife's ID for her work is on so she can swipe her card at doors ways but still keep it attached to her person, yea, that sounds like a good idea too. But I know now when someone asks me why I always carry a knife where ever I go, I can smile and say, "Hey, you just never know". Mark.
My CRKT M16, to be retired with the dull blade and weather proofing tar still stuck to it on the wall as a reminder.
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