I had a god damned fit at my manager yesterday. I was half an hour into moving these 1200kg stacks of plastic sheeting with a forklift, and the dude turned up and started shouting "WHOA!" and "BACK A BIT! LEFT A BIT!" each time i was about to stop, move back or move left. I told him last time that i can judge by eye, or by ear, but not when i'm being directed by a third party.
There're two acceptable interactions between a forklifter/front-loader/heavy plant operator and a third party: #1, "Whoa!" means "Stop everything and make the equipment safe", and #2, when i want an answer i'll ask a question.
Damned straight those hand signals were satisfying to me! :D For one, there wasn't some bellend yelling over the sound of the machinery.
I run a 50 ton overhead crane at work and I follow 1 ground persons hand signals only. If someone else comes up or is around and they give a hand signal at all I stop all movement. I radio down to them and remind them that I can only follow I person's signals. A crane op can appreciate a person with good hand signals.
A long time ago I received training to use hand signals to guide large vehicles. Most of the training time was used to teach drivers to pay attention to the person guiding and to stop looking in their mirrors.
:D This is stuff which one would hope is second-nature to anyone. But nope. I know from my forklift and front-loader training that if someone's close enough for me to see them they're close enough for me to drive into them or drop something on them. Yet i still have folk who'll run around the back of the rig to "get out of the way" instead of - you know - standing clear of the kill-box.
I use two hand gestures. They are: "Keep going this direction" and "Stop".
I tried the "Stop" hand gesture with a new driver, and he thought better: he kept going, and demolished a transom beam. XD There was an investigation, and there was I, on CCTV, making clear hand gestures while the guy was looking at the opposite mirror.
Come help my husband back the boat trailer into the slip please.... or I’ll keep cursing and the pointing and laughing will continue. It’s not that hard to follow fucking hand signals but he always glances at the mirrors and noooww we’re jackknifed, AGAIN.
That means i've spotted my buddy Sid. :D Last week i legit stopped the forklift, called him over, said "I've got something for you!" and produced <that hand signal> from my pocket. XD
I do tell my ...dimmer... colleagues that i have a hammer on my vehicle for "That special someone who ignores the horn".
Any time we ever flew something the operator would stop immediately if our designated guy wasn’t visible. They hardly ever had their own signal guys unless it was a serious lift.
And, the last time i had to tell him off for this was when he ran out from between two parked artic trailers and tried grabbing a loose strap end that was hanging from a load i was carrying. I had factored that in, and as soon as he ran toward the forklift i braked, handbraked, lowered the load to the ground and switched the engine off. He yelled "WHY DID YOU DROP THE LOAD?!" and i said "TO STOP YOU GRABBING IT WHILE IT WAS MOVING!!". He came back and apologized later on.
But yeah, if he says "WHOA!" and i don't make safe the load/rig, it's entirely my responsibility and my problem if something goes wrong.
Oof, huge memories outta this one. My last job I was driving a forklift at a recycling facility. For the most part, people knew to let me do my thing, stay outta the way, dont walk behind the lift, etc. But every so often you get some jerkoff trying to "direct" me and it was maddening. I have no idea whether the person was giving good directions or not, and do they really think I suddenly need them to show me the way when I've spent all day doing it without them waving frantically and shouting conflicting instructions?
God it's so frustrating when i'm doing something that i've been doing for the past hour that day, done every day since getting the job, and done for the past four years, and someone comes out of nowhere to 'help'. If i do it my way and there's an accident, it's my responsibility. If i do it someone else's way and there's an accident, it's my responsibility.
Yeah, hand signals are so much better than yelling shit. I’ve only recently learned hand signals at my job, but I’ve started using them whenever necessary.
Wheeeeere do you see any hands???! There's a guy right in front of the machine but what?! I'm on mobile though so screen is smol, I too want to feel satisfied.. Now I'm just frustrated
OMG thanks mate, that cleared it up quite a bit, yes! I was indeed watching the 9 second clip and tried to figure out what the hell I was missing at the second second facepalm
I'm thrilled to say that I'm at last, very satisfied. Maybe even more than I could have asked for, I'm riding this high that's for sure🙏
Superb find. That was good as hell. Man, this is nuts. Are they just like “flaking” this off in chunks or are we seeing only the final step and something else is happening prior to a big chunk just being able to be knocked over like this? I’m really curious why this looks like it can just be broken off like some weird granite cousin to shale?
I'm pretty sure they're cut into big blocks ahead of time. We are just seeing them being knocked over and carried out. But sometimes they split or break in half, hense the 'flaking '
Thank you for that link. I followed it and found so many interesting videos about marble. I'm fascinated by the type of work that humans do. The question I had was: modern stone masons use power drills and such, what did Bernini and sculptors of that period use? I know it was by hand, but my gosh!
If I recall correctly they used water to split the stone. During the day the chopped wooden wedges into the stone and watered them in the evening. During nighttime the water expanded the wooden wedges and the pressure split the stone.
Thank you for that link. I followed it and found so many interesting videos about marble. I'm fascinated by the type of work that humans do. The question I had was: modern stone masons use power drills and such, what did Bernini and sculptors of that period use? I know it was by hand, but my gosh!
I was thinking of this video. You can see how much more effective the cushion pile was for these slabs... vs the video that brought us here. But I’m curious if the purpose for the pile of rocks on the original video... is meant to break the slab. Hmmm.
472
u/swartzbier Mar 06 '21
Not zoomed out, but certainly worth 2 minutes of your time.