I've been lucky. After 20 years
of stretching from ladders,
climbing on roofs, and bouncing
across over-extended staging
planks, I've never fallen.
Like most conscientious builders, I
always put safety first — well
almost always.
Looking back, I could have easily
avoided the few staging failures that
occurred on my projects. They were
all caused either by using the wrong
material correctly or by using the
right material incorrectly. So it's no
surprise to me that experts blame
improper material selection and
misuse for most scaffold failures.
Planks
Wooden planks seem to lie at the
heart of most residential scaffold failures.
Some experts claim plank failures
are the cause of injury in 90% of
the cases they investigate. Knots and
cross-grain play a