Why, in the Walking Dead, does Merle cut off his hand?

Question

In season 1, when he is handcuffed to the roof in Atlanta, why does Merle Dixon cut off his hand?? Why doesn't he cut the handcuff chain links or the pipe like he said he was going to in a previous episode?! He had a hack saw... it would have been easy to cut through the handcuffs. So why his hand?

Answer 1

When the group comes back for him his brother Daryl looks at the hacksaw and says the blade was too dull to cut through the handcuffs so he had to cut off his hand instead. Plus he was panicking as it looked like the Walkers were going to get through the door.

Answer 2

i only saw a small clip of that part but the hand would go faster then the pipe plus he got to have to blade on his hand so that was a upgrade

Answer 3

Because the zombies were breaking through the door to the roof. Cutting through the cuffs or metal pipe would have taken hours. Cutting through flesh and bone was much faster.