I'm truly sorry to hear of the loss of your friend. I knew a fellow over in the Castskills who died on his tractor. His dog came home without him. They found him dead on the ground, and the rear wheels of his old Ford still spinning, pushing the tractor's bucket up against a tree.
Down here in Maine, we have a lot of two of the most dangerous types of work -- timber and fishing -- and the hazards are much the same as our pastime, especially in the woods. Poorly rigged hauls, cable and chain failures, rollovers, inexperience and complacency all contribute. Leaving the obvious peril of drowning aside, and fishing has many of the same hazards with the winches and lines and, down below, motors and turning shafts.
Another thing those endeavors have in commmon with what we do is that folks are many times working alone or, at best, in pairs but separated.
You did well, I think, to point out the need for care in the shop, as well. I know I've had tractors do unexpected things at the moment my carefully-planned split took place. The most important part of any such plan I ever laid out was that I was out of the way of anything that might fall, and that detail paid off handsomely in one case. If anyone were to ask my advice about how to go about such a project, I'd also emphasize a sound rigging of adequate capacity for the job and having help. And that's just in the shop.
Operation is a whole other kettle of fish. It doesn't really apply to the farm tractors, but I'd suggest folks remember that there is a reason the lawn tractors have a cutoff on the PTO when the machine is thrown in reverse -- it's a safeguard against 1)ignorance of the danger, and 2) complacency. Yeah, they're a pain in the neck, but who hasn't started backing just that split second before getting fully turned around to check behind? Many accidents can be laid to just one slip as simple as that.
And we should always remember what we're working on. A lot of the non-tractor folks at tractor shows are amazed that a lot of the old-timers are just 20, 30, 40 hp machines, and wonder how they can do the work that they do. We who restore, tinker on, and operate the great old machines should never forget that their power to destroy, maim or kill is just as impressive.
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Today's Featured Article - Identifying Tractor Noises - by Curtis Von Fange. Listening To Your Tractor : Part 3 - In this series we are continuing to learn the fine art of listening to our tractor in hopes of keeping it running longer. One particularly important facet is to hear and identify the particular noises that our
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