Why that Avatar and Name?

not much to tell mine is just short for pottratz. the avatar is my dog which many seem to use. funny no one uses a cat though !

My earlier cartoon hand with a splinter in the thumb (Sponge Bob) was just because I was always was pulling one out.
Big, little, I seem to get them everyday.

The current one was just to get something different for this site. That's not me though, just the guy wearing the tumble weed "New Mexi-fro"

I still get a chuckle from that time LBD said he uses his wife's DL photo.

My wife calls me Buck. She had a sign made that say Bucks shop (I’ll get a photo of that to post). The pic is of my grandfather in law and I out at his hunting shack. He left me his lathe and some other tools. The lathe is the reason I searched for a woodworking site as I had a ton of questions about turning and didn’t know anyone (at the time) that turned that I could turn (pun intended) to ask those questions.   
Really grateful I found the people on this site as I feel like true friendships have been made. 

Ron is my name, well short for Ronald and no one calls me that.   The 987 is the model number of my Porsche Cayman S and that is the picture.    

My name is short for Bentlyjackarundadiliod the III,  so it's easier to just type bentlyj   :)

I told someone on the business team I supported once that I was too lazy to do something the way they wanted me to do it and I showed them how I would do it.  Impressed, she told me that her dad always said that he always hires the lazy man because they always find a better way.  That always stuck with me because I always tried to do things the simplest way possible (but never simpler) and I realized that my laziness was sort of the catalyst for my approach to most things.  Of course I could never tell my bosses my philosophy but it definitely made those that I supported happy.  

My avatar was a logo a friend of mine helped me design.  He made me a small branding iron with it.  The picture itself is an inlay that I put into the leg vise of my workbench a few years ago.  The bench is one of the projects I posted.  

My statics professor would say the same thing.  Engineers are lazy.

My name is short for Flibbertigibbet, and my avatar was chosen simply because it fits nicely in that space.

Mine is just my first name and the first two letters of my last name. The avatar is a Halligan. I work for the fire dept and a halligan is an old school fireman’s tool still very much in use today. It’s for forcible entry, that is, opening things that don’t want to be opened. I’ve carried mine on every shift for almost 20 years, and can confirm there isn’t much I can’t open with it. 

BentlyJ too funny.

My name is Peter but only women say that.

Peteybadboy is because I am generally bad and quite immature.  I usually get away with things others can't.  It's a gift.

Also I talk to myself alot, don't know why I threw that in. To quote Greg Lake, " but there it is"

Ryan..A couple of our SWAT guys carried those in a sling on their back like a samurai sword......do u guys carry it up to the structure?  do you sling it somehow?  hard to hold a hose and a Halligan....

Moke: Usually I carry it mated with my roof hook. Some guys will carry it mated with an axe, which is the classic way to carry it…known as ‘the irons’ or ‘the marriage’. I have my axe in an axe belt and carry the other combinations in one hand, so the other is free to work. The tools kind of fit together so you’re not trying to wrangle individual tools. 

When departments were fully funded, and there were more guys on each rig, there was a fireman on each rig specifically tasked with carrying the irons, in fact that’s what his riding position was called: ‘Irons’ (each seat is called a riding position, and each one has a name for radio communications…”Truck 23 Captain, this is Truck 23 Irons, the doors are forced and open”). His job was to get the doors open for the guys moving the hose line. We lost all the Irons seats many years ago. 

Now that short-staffing is normal, often Engine Captains carry the forcible entry tools with them to the door while their fireman lays out the attack hose line. If they’re worth their salt, they’ll have the doors open before the fireman is ready to go inside. 

Since I work on a Ladder Truck, and we spend most of our time on the roof, the Halligan isn’t much use to us, but I still take it to the base of the ladder so I know where one is on the fireground (habit from being an Engine Captain for so many years before moving over to a Truck about 6 years ago). If our assignment isn’t to go to the roof for ventilation, we’re usually tasked with forcible entry and search (especially on commercial buildings with more stout doors…Truck companies love to break stuff 😁). So then we’ll bring several Halligan, axes (flat headed for striking, axes aren’t used for cutting anymore), a sledge hammer and a hydraulic door opener called a rabbet tool. We come heavy, and loaded for bear. 

These are some images I found on the inter webs on the ‘mated’ tools. The top one is a roof hook and a Halligan, the bottom is the traditional Irons configuration. Not my stuff, but it explains it well enough…

So how much "extra" weight do you guys normally carry?

Must be a real bummer to arrive to a call and find someone is just smoking a brisket. 🙄

Cool Ryan...thanks!  How much weight difference from naked to full turn out gear? 
At the end of my career for me it was 28 lbs... 

My gear, when we go to the roof, all in is about 100 lbs. maybe a little more. 

Turnout Coat and Pants, suspenders, boots, helmet, and the complete SCBA (air pack) make up about 75 lbs. Lots of extra stuff in the pockets adds up, small hand tools, radio, thermal imaging camera, a couple different lights, bail out gear, wedges and stops, etc... I carry spares of almost everything in case one of my guys loses something while we move around too. Plus an 8 lb axe, a 6 lb roof hook, halligan is 10 lbs…the list goes on… Years on the job has lead me to carry more gear than some guys. When the clock is ticking, there’s not time to go back and get tools. 

That doesn’t include the 28’ extension ladder I carry from the truck to the building when we go to the roof. My Saw fireman carries two chainsaws as well. 

If we go above grade (like up three or more floors), I’ll pack a 200ft utility rope and we’ll all take extra air cylinders. The guys will take extra saws, hooks, halligans, etc. 

People think retiring at 50 (or now at 57) is too early for firemen… move that gear around for 25 years (or more) and you’ll think differently. The last thing I want is 60 year olds, no matter how good of shape they’re in, coming loaded down to get my family out of a fire. You want brash, jacked 30 year olds rip snorting and tearing walls open. 

Doesn't SFFD use all-wood ladders (seen on an episode of Dirty Jobs)?

Yeah, they do. Made in their own ladder shops and maintained by the same family for like 5 generations or something. Their ladder shop is really cool, I was able to visit it once years  ago. There are some other places that use wooden ladders as well, but very few now. Mostly San Francisco keeps the wooden ladders because of tradition, but they also have to deal with a lot of overhead power lines from the streetcars, the old build of the city, etc. They’re heavy SOBs to be sure. Their long ladder is called a Bangor pole ladder. It’s a wooden 50’ extension ladder that weighs something like 425 lbs. 

It’s a pretty messed up fire department, but they do have some awesome traditions from doing it ‘their way’ for so many years.

Our primary 28’ aluminum ladder weighs about 50 lbs, for comparison. 

Do you have an alarm on your coat that will go off if your standing still too long?

Used to be. It’s integrated into our SCBAs now. When you turn the air cylinder on, it powers up the alarm. It’s called a PASS (personal alert safety system). The idea is that if you go down inside of a building and don’t get back up in a certain amount of time, the alarms will go off and the lights will start flashing to alert other crews that you are in distress and help them find you. There’s a pre-alert that starts sounding when you’re still for too long and if you start moving it’ll shut off…if not, it goes into full alarm and then has to be shut off manually. 

During the Academy, it’s a guaranteed way to end up running up and down the tower as punishment if you allow the PASS alarm to go off when it’s not supposed to.

You probably wouldn’t notice it, but in videos when you see guys standing around outside, you’ll see them sway side to side, or shakes their torso around from time to time…that’s to keep the inactivity alarm from going off. 

I've seen guys push something when it first started making noise.

Same thing. It’s a manual reset.