Comments: - -  I love the second machine, it's so crazy, ridiculously, impossibly dangerous on every level that it reached the pinnacle of insanity. Running it would be like being a WW1 pilot, your lifespan is measured in hours. Watching someone perform surgery would be like going to the Colosseum - an amputation is inevitable.

I watched 3 of these videos and number 2 in this video was the first really dangerous video I saw. The uncontrollable spinning death punch hammer thing wasn't enough, so he added a dangling string to the side of the flywheel. The only design I can think of that could be worse is a large flywheel that grabs wood, carries it around 280 degrees, and throws an ax 10 feet away...

What I loved about number 2 was that when you took good care of it, it was clear that there was a lot of time labor and material in its making. Did the man realize how incredibly dangerous this would be while he was in the design phase?

The old "hit and miss" engine was not homemade. It was one of the oldest machines used on our farms. He ran washing machines, grain grinders, and other useful work. This is indeed dangerous by today's standards, but it did allow for a better standard of living for those of us who were cultivating and cultivating new lands in 1930-40.