another distinction between logging and suburban arb

murphy4trees

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Hoping this day finds you and your families well...

Rico and I are getting into it over at treebuzz again (ain't life grand?) And think this one is worth presenting to the community here...

Regarding the tapered hinge, I will often cut off the entire compression side corner on SMALL TREES... when they don't have enough weight to compress the gap... I've cut these corners countless times and it works well. Now this may not be reliable enough to teach as an approved method because: how do you know when the tree is too big or you've taken off too much of the corner.

So here are a couple posts and pics... hoping there is some insight to be had here, perhpas getting some thinking outside the box or helping a newbie understand the limitations of a tapered hinge etc!

That said, there is a pic in the article similar to this hinge, which I will defend as being very effective at controlling against side lean... this one worked very well, better than I expected... Removing the entire compression side corner on a hinge might be problematic on a bigger tree, where the shear weight of the tree could collapse the compression side corner. But on this relatively small, but significant side leaning ash, it worked...

and then another reference to the same picture:

Those hinges that you called "gawd awful" worked PERFECTLY!!! The hinge on your 48" red had RELATIVELY little holding power as evidences by the lack of stringy fibers on the stump (even though it may have been plenty strong to get the tree to the lay).... The broken fibers sticking up out of the locust stump show unquestionably that the hinge held until the face closed... and it did....

Here's the important distinction to understand. If you cut the compression corner (downhill as you call it) of the hinge on a BIG tree, the weight of the tree will tend to crush and close that empty gap. When that happens the tree leans just a little farther to the side, which is no bueno. One way to handle that situation is to off-center plunge the hinge (aka gutting the hinge or as the brits call it a letterbox). When gutting the hinge most of the fibers are removed on the compression or downhill side of the hinge, leaving just enough fibers intact on the downhill corner to act as a post, propping up that corner to keep the tree from settling there and leaning even further to the side. This allows the faller to keep as many fibers in tact in the hinge as possible on the tension side of the hinge, which is optimal when using the tapered hinge.

With smaller trees (this ash and locust are in the 12-14" range) the tree doesn't weigh enough to collapse on the compression or downhill side of the hinge , so there is no need to center plunge and preserve a post on the compression side corner of the hinge. In the case of this ash, I was trying to keep the tree off the neighbor's fence. That cut was made as high as I could reach (over head high) with a 201T top handled climbing saw) to shorten the fall, with the idea that even if I lost the tree to the significant side weight, shortening the fall could keep only the tips hitting the fence, which would probably do no damage. I think I was standing on the bucket of the skid loader in order to get this picture. That cut is over 6' in the air. So it would have been very awkward to plunge this hinge and more importantly there was no need...

The tree stayed on the stump all the way til after the face closed, and ended up 10-15 from the fence. Look at the stringy fibers on the broken hinge, a clear sign that the hinge held well..

And that is another important distinction between logging and suburban arb... when you are working in the woods and getting paid for the timber, and that but log has the greatest value of all the wood, you try to PREVENT fiber pull.. Those long stringy fibers sticking out of the stump are money out of your pocket....

In my world, the LAST thing I think about is getting paid for the logs. I'm trying to make 3-4K/day, the mills are 2+ hours away and I'm cutting trees by the onesies and twosies.. and the trees usually have problems or I wouldn't be cutting them.. Bottom line is I've gotten paid less than 5K for logs in the past 10 years.... What I care about is getting these trees to the lay reliably. Those long fiber pulls that loggers disdain are a source of pride. They show that my hinges held all the way until the face closed....

Pictures coming:
 

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here's the locust cut referenced above:

Once again notice the size of the tree.. not too big to crush the compression side corner of the hinge...
 

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The feathers have been flybing over at the buzz..

here's my latest post...

#132
@rico

Look at the fibers on the locust hinge.... Those long whiskers sticking up on the fat side of the hinge clearly showed that the hinge held all the way until the face closed.. You pride yourself on reading a stump, then say that was a gawd awful cut... Why do you think I took the picture.. BECAUSE THE CUT WORKED!!!

Look at the whiskers on the ash hinge... again the hinge clearly held until the face closed... what makes it gawd awful? can you read the stump? that hinge I remember specifically because it held a ton of head and side lean. really surprised me... as I said I was expecting to lose it, so cutting it high (about 6') enough to shorten the fall enough so that if it did hit the fence, it would only be small tips, so that the branch tips would break before the damaging the fence...

Again I took the picture because the cut worked.. If you know how to read a stump you cannot say otherwise.. If you continue to disparage those cuts as you have done throughout this thread, you are truly a dumb ass that has no business commenting on my work.

Both those cuts worked and yet you have repeatedly called them frigged up, gawd awful and referred to me as a hack for cutting and showing them...

Well if you want to call me a hack, you got to call Dent a hack too... Because both those cuts are right out of his book... Did you go read pro timber falling pages 110-111?????

Oh that's right.. Dent's your hero, but you know better than he does.. We should listen to you not Doug Dent... Because your experience has shown you that the tapered hinge, which he calls an "extremely important part of the faller's technique" (pg 99) you refer to as "having "a minimal effect on changing the coarse of a falling tree" and "that most here don’t need to rely on to get their job done". So who should we listen to you or Doug Dent? It's one or the other... there is no gray area here..

And regarding the ash and locust hinges, they are again straight out of Dent's book.. He calls them a swing dutchman. (pgs 110-111) I honestly hadn't touched the book for close to 15 years, so that's one good thing that has come out of all this ugliness.. And I didn't remember Dent's example, or the name of that cut that he calls the swing dutchman, which he refers to as "an effective method of handling the heavy head and heavy side leaner". I basically read it, forgot it, and then some time later discovered it through trial and error. And surprisingly enough that is a perfect description of the ash hinge here... It was a heavy front and heavy side leaner. And surprise.... it worked so well...

So once again who should we listen to ... you who call it gawd awful, frigged up hackery, or Dent who calls it an effective method? Dent goes on to say that "many variations occur in the amount of holding wood and the position of the bar..the holding wood on the lean side (you call it downhill) should be severed PRIOR to the final back cut step....the secret of the Swing Dutchman is in determining how much of the remaining holding wood should be cut."

So everyone here can make up their own minds, should we listen to you or Doug Dent? Me.. I'll stick with Dent.. Kenny aka useless info (formerly the tree spyder) is on board with Dent too... But don't feel bad.. You're not alone...
Tony Tresselt @Tony thinks he knows better than Dent.
Dwayne Neustaeter thinks he knows better than Dent https://www.arborcanada.com/instructors/Neustaeter-Dwayne/
Ken Palmer thinks he knows better than Dent.
Tim Ard thinks he knows better than Dent...

The question is WHY???? Why do all these people, so called industry experts, think they know better than Dent... When you figure that out you'll have come a long way to understanding why this industry, this thread and you are so ignorant!
 

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Hey Dan. You get way too involved with this hinge stuff. Of all the things I could get in a fight over, hinges would not be it. Species, age, form, environment all factor in. Just put what you think is important on your youtube channel, and people can either like it or lump it. It doesnt really matter
 
^

Like!!!!!



Its harder to be argumentative with comment on YouTube. Some people just want to have an argument or be told their the best thing since the motor saw was developed.



Shocking but true, the world holds more than Philly suburbs that seem largely flat, with wide open lawns being common, and forest.

One could just get myopically stuck in the idea that there are those two places, exclusively (or some other binary choice, which clearly has the making for a "me versus everyone" argument).
 
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Hey Dan. You get way too involved with this hinge stuff. Of all the things I could get in a fight over, hinges would not be it. Species, age, form, environment all factor in. Just put what you think is important on your youtube channel, and people can either like it or lump it. It doesnt really matter

Always the voice of reason... mostly telling me to "calm down"... puts a smile on my face....
 
Hey Dan. You get way too involved with this hinge stuff. Of all the things I could get in a fight over, hinges would not be it. ...... Just put what you think is important on your youtube channel, and people can either like it or lump it. It doesnt really matter
.
Head down, Internal Locus of Control
i do what i somehow think i'm supposed to(perhaps mis-guided, but that is the deal).
.
BS @ TB is over the top, i can't believe is allowed;especially after watching AS fall.
>>all the concerns over sponsorship and keeping them etc. >> hey, i thought we were the bad boyz, even outcasts !
>>every once in awhile i flip thru AS and nothing there seems pertinent.
>>then, even the old pix are gutted from old posts >>who woulda thought...

.
...Species, age, form, environment all factor in...
They certainly do, as well as condition of dead/rot etc., i think he is hitting form tho.
i start with what can be done/is needed per shape of stump, lean etc.
>>then limit within that domain to this Water Oak won't take that Tapered Hinge pressure like a Live Oak
>>or this palm is too soft for any Dutchman real predictable push
>>this is dead, doesn't seem as elastic for strong tapered hinge pull,but rock solid for face slaps etc.
>>or there is rot on the left side of face,and that essentially makes this like a Step Dutchman(on right side pushing to left)
i think dialing into species internationally or even just nationally would really be a mess >> gotta know your own woods
>>so generally just raw physics of the potential forces can be taken to (and is a fascination i guess)
>>but then might say this volume of force doesn't fit in this pitcher, rope, hinge etc.w/o running over top
So,get bigger pitcher,rope perhaps; but in tree concerns tone down the force to fit container (but still survey all)
>>can tone down force volume for pitcher or rope also of course if want, but are stuck with tree
.
BUT, for me felling was training at high end of scale on hinging.
>>in tree at lower loading ranges, and less breadth across hinges tapered and dutchman effects seemed to perform within ratio, w/o overloading what the force container (tree in this case) could take.
But still need to watch species, rot etc.
 
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