How to cut 3/4" Yale bull rigging rope

3/4" means confidence in your rope, hardware, and tree.

Kyle, idk, but unless you're using a thick hinge "to be sure", I wonder if that isn't overkill.

Spars mostly load the stump.
 
I love 12 strand for most rigging. Lot's of 1/2" and some 5/8". Great for natural or false crotch. Stretchy ropes can be a good thing sometimes.
I also have some 9/16 stable braid that I like for lifting and pulling with truck or whatnot.
 
Sean, I'm not sure i follow....?
Suppose you have a 10,000 pound back-leaner spar, leaning 20 degrees back...
You aren't lifting or catching a big load, with a high peak-impact, you're applying a pretty steady load, hopefully. 4-low should be somewhat steady. The ground is bearing most of the load. I don't know the math, but the vertical vector-component and the horizontal vector-component are independent, right.

If you choke a RB on the back-side of the spar, and come over the top, you maximize your leverage, and have the knot on top after felling.

Some people, like my friend who was bad a tree work, would leave a 3" hinge on oak, just 'to be sure', so he was always pulling too hard.

I watched one guy sweating on a Maasdam continuous rope-puller, and the feller beating the snot out wedges on a vertical doug-fir spar that I would have simply undercut the COG, possibly cutted the face, no wedges. I wanted to tell them, but when people are sweating their junk off, working waaaaay too hard, adrenaline-pumping, they usually want to think they are doing awesome, not overcomplicating things. And they are the competition.

If you use a 1/3 depth face, without a tree top to pull the spar over, you're fighting a way-uphill battle.

Reg had a video where he was fighting a beer-bottle shaped spar, and was having to do waaaaay too much lifting, with big machines, for lack of undercutting deep enough. It was a decayed, old spar, left up a long time ago, IIRC.
 
I stick with the 10 percent of thickness for my hinge size, and don't usually attempt to just muscle stuff, and never fight a thick hinge for no reason. I figure out the approximate line pull to overcome back weight, and if it's well within the wll of the line and my pulling device, i go with it. I usually saw lean into the top, and basically try to stack the deck in my favor. I'm a huge fan of not fighting stuff, and i try to make my life as easy as I can. I also aim for a 40 percent notch depending on the circumstances.
 
FWIW, I"ll undercut most any tree I can, rather than pull (not maples and alders known for killer barberchairs).

10% is the outside of the typical range for a whole tree.

Gutting the hinge saves a lot of pulling power, as you're not bending the middle fibers. Sounds like Stig guts ash as anti-barberchair...don't know for sure, or exactly why (but I think I get it).

10% with a gutted hinge for a straight spar will do the job, for sure. 5%, gutted, probably. Sidelean, different.

Felling hollow trees is basically the same as gutted trees.

Species specifics will vary.

$0.02.
 
It also doesn't help that I'm doing nothing but hardwoods usually, and almost none are just spars unless i made it that way. So I'm too thick with a 10 percent on full hardwood trees with enough branches to make side lean easy to miscalculate or substantial? I very rarely drop full trees because there isn't room usually, on spars I'm probably 5 percent or an inch, whichever is bigger.
 
I'll throw in my little bit with both Sean and Stig...gut out the hinge on trees like this. It's both safer and easier to move them to the lay.
 
Find a tree you can lose to the side... Push to near failure or failure... Fine tune where "the line" is.
 
I melt the cut ends on an electric stove burner. Piece o cake.
 
I'll throw in my little bit with both Sean and Stig...gut out the hinge on trees like this. It's both safer and easier to move them to the lay.

I nearly always gut the hinge when pulling spars over. Saves the gear and your back if pulling without machinery.
 
If you don't gut the hinge, as you may or may not with a full tree, and you have it on the run, wedging it over, but there is too much hinge bending to overcome gravity and wedge-power, you can "tickle the hinge" with the lower corner of the bar, nipping out the center of the hinge from the front. If you're double-stacked, and wedged to the hinge, for example, you can't access the rear of the hinge. I find this helpful with dead trees, where I might want a full-width hinge.

You can "jack" trees with wedges, particularly dead ones, right off the hinge, shearing the hinge, especially if you have neighboring tree limb interference. Did it today. NBD, in the end.

Keeping a full-width hinge was a factor today, 'tickling' a bit, once they were 'on the run'.
 
I nearly always gut the hinge when pulling spars over. Saves the gear and your back if pulling without machinery.

Yessir, me too. And on the big ones (no pun intended, my friend :)) that require pulling to the lay with mech power, it can make the difference between success and failure if you have a little bit undersized pulling machine or winch or anchor placement.
 
Much ado .Sharp knife gets-er-done .I've got a carbon steel Case XX 3" stockman style that will go right through anything when it's sharp .In my navy days I've cut 2" three stand nylon mooring lines and made new eye splices and never had a problem .
 
I had a really nice riggers knife made by a friend, as I always wanted one. I am not fond of melting the ends too much as it can inhibit any milking in the line. Just enough to stop the fibres fraying.
 

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