The " No wimpy euro short bar feller, me!" hazard tree.

stig

Patron saint of bore-cutters
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Aug 26, 2007
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Burnham and Willie should love this one!
I was running a 60" bar!!!

I got a call from the local State Forestry District yesterday. They had a hazard tree they wanted gone, and since it was next to a road, they wanted it gone, pronto!

I know the tree well, since I took a large broken branch out of it about 10 years ago, and forgot to tie a knot in my rope, so I had to climb back up to get my friction saver.

The guy I worked with then brought out a beach chair, sat down and had a beer and a smoke, enjoying the show.

So I remember that tree well.:lol:

Huge double beech. Now it had started to come apart, it appeared that the roots holding the side with most lean have been giving up.

Since the leaning side had overgrown the other slightly, it was sorta horseshoe shaped in cross section.
That meant I was going to end up with not one back strap, but two.
This combined with the possibility of center rot ( normal in Beech of that age) made me decide not to attempt a Coos Bay cut.

Since a tree like that, with no branches or knots on the back side to hold it together, is extremely prone to barberchair, I decided to gut the middle of the tree out and set my face cut later.

If I set the face first, I might not be able to get the hinge narrow enough to avoid a barberchair, without getting the saw pinched when the weight of the leaning tree compressed the hingewood..

This was a tree where being able to work the whole thing from one side would be beneficial, so I brought out the 880 and 60" bar.

Bored through the tree with that, left it idling in the cut and made the face with the 660 and 24" bar.
Loads of stumpshot, since I wanted this one to get well clear of the stump.

Then I proceeded to cut backwards with the 880, cutting the back strap on my side of the tree first, so if the backstrap blew up, it would do so on the far side of the tree and not right in my face.

Down it went, like shot from a cannon.

Felling the other half was easy, not much lean at all.

One thing.

Was this too long winded.
Did it make sense?

Sorry about the lousy pictures. The guy using my camera apparently wasn't aware that you had to let it focus.

As you can see from the last picture, 60" bars are rare birds around here. P1010518.JPG P1010547.JPG P1010540.JPG P1010537.JPG P1010536.JPG P1010532.JPG P1010531.JPG P1010526.JPG P1010521.JPG P1010548.JPG
 

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Very nice, Stig. I was a little confused by the narrative until I looked at the pics, then it all made perfect sense. That's a biggun.
 
Pictures helped!
So did you brng the big saw all the way back through the backstrap and out the back on your side then release the remaning by cutting forward?

Spiffy!
 
very cool. great explanation. out of curiosity, when cutting the face, were you worried about pinching the bar as you finished the hinge?
 
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  • #20
I finished the hinge BEFORE cutting the face. That was the whole idea!
I did that because I would have got the saw pinched otherwise.

Fiona, I cut the side next to me out, the other side ripped from the weight of the tree.
That is why I chose to cut the near side first, that way I wouldn't be standing on the same side of the tree as a ripping out backstrap.
Those can get pretty wild, throwing splinters and stuff around.

It would have made better sense if the pictures had uploaded in order.
 
Really appreciate the thread Stig. Well done. That thing was absolutely huge. I've never even worked on a tree like that, and we grow em' pretty big.
 
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