High Back Cut, Burnham Style!

[Burnham]

I had a single good sized hazard tree to fall at a slide removal site a couple of days ago. This is a stone dead Douglas fir, 36" dbh, on a steep slope between two cross slope roads. I threw it over the lower road and into the creek below, as directed by the fish bio.

The point here is that I had a tight window of a lay between standing green trees in which to put this snag. The escape route from the stump was less than satisfactory, due to the steepness of the slope with no good hidey hole to get myself into.

A small mistake in gunning could have put the snag into a green tree, and likely had the butt coming back at me. Of course, the other bad thing that could have occurred would be breaking the snag apart, throwing large parts of it all over hell and gone.

Mitigation for the latter could only be accurate felling and watchfulness as it went over, but as to the former, I chose to use a maximum amount of stumpshot.

Y'all who have seen pics of my stumps before know I tend to do that in most cases with hazard trees anyway. Here's another example to question .

The first two pics show the snag, then a couple showing the little window I fell it to.

Another interesting thing about this fell: there was a small amount of back lean, but I didn't expect any trouble wedging it over to the face. As it turned out, I had to cut the hinge up REALLY small to get it to drive over. The reason for this is clear in the stump pic. Within the hinge wood there were two long knot/limbs from a grown over whorl holding the tree on the stump.

 

[darkstar]

You deffinatly cut that hinge real thin.
Nice shot.

 

[Burnham]

I got to that point gradually, Jerry. Whack up three wedges tight as a tick, then put the saw in the back cut kerf and take out a little more, then wedge it up tight again...did that three times I think before those buried branches gave up. Each time I thought, "that'll do it for sure"...but nooo.

 

[GASoline71]

Nic shot my friend!

Did ya get a little cardio workout bangin' on those wedges?

Gary

 

[stehansen]

Wow, nice work Burnham. Looking back would you do anything differently?

 

[wiley_p]

Them long fiber shots can sure sap the wedge advantage some. Pretty wood in that butt.

 

[Stumper]

Pretty wood in that butt.

There is a potential double entendre there that is terrifying.


Good job Burnham. I'm a thin hinge advocate but I get nervous when they get that thin.

 

[darkstar]

No doubt , i get nervous when they get that thin to, but me loves a slightly high back cut.
I know nothing of felling with wedges except what ive learned from reading here.
Throw line and set a rope is all we do.
Must be nice to hammer home a few wedges and watch it creak forward.

 

[stig]

Looks like some pretty solid wood, for a snag.
How come you leave them to rot, instead of taking them out when they could still be used for something?
Seems a little wasteful to me, but on the other hand, most of the hazard trees I take out for the Forest service around here, I get asked to cut about 30-40 feet up, so the woodpeckers can use them for nesting trees. That's would seem like a waste of a good log, too, unless you happen to be a woodpecker.

 

[Burnham]

Wow, nice work Burnham. Looking back would you do anything differently?

IF it would be possible to have known those knot/limbs were there (which it wouldn't, in any way that I'm aware of), I could have gutted the hinge...that would have taken their effect totally out of play and a thicker hinge on the corners would have been easy to wedge over.

If the back lean had looked even a smidge heavier, I likely would have done so anyway. Then I'd have looked like a genius.

 

[stig]

You know, that was my first thought: a short-bar european would automatically have gutted the hinge in order to be able to reach through......problem solved.
Then I looked at the sapwood and it didn't look too healthy, so I thought that this short-bar european might have gone back to the truck for a bigger bar and had the same problem as you.

 

[Burnham]

Looks like some pretty solid wood, for a snag.
How come you leave them to rot, instead of taking them out when they could still be used for something?
Seems a little wasteful to me, but on the other hand, most of the hazard trees I take out for the Forest service around here, I get asked to cut about 30-40 feet up, so the woodpeckers can use them for nesting trees. That's would seem like a waste of a good log, too, unless you happen to be a woodpecker.

Seldom do we maximise the harvest potential these days, Stig. Some go out as firewood. The value of down wood to the ecosystem has been well-documented, and the current trend is to leave them, for the most part. The National Forest is public land, and the public, though legislation and litigation, has firmly stated that extraction of wood is not as important as other values.

This one I was specifically asked to drop across the creek below it...you just can see the water in the picture that shows the butt. Requested to do so by the district fish biologist, for structural habitat.

 

[Burnham]

You know, that was my first thought: a short-bar european would automatically have gutted the hinge in order to be able to reach through......problem solved.
Then I looked at the sapwood and it didn't look too healthy, so I thought that this short-bar european might have gone back to the truck for a bigger bar and had the same problem as you.

That's true, Stig. It was on my mind. I chopped around at the corners of the face, and it was punky there. But there was plenty of solid wood to have bored out the center third...in hind sight, of course. X-ray vision would be useful at times.

 

[stig]

The value of down wood to the ecosystem has been well-documented, and the current trend is to leave them, for the most part. The National Forest is public land, and the public, though legislation and litigation, has firmly stated that extraction of wood is not as important as other values.

That is the reason we get asked to leave as much standing log as is safe.
After the oilcrisis in 73 the demand for firewood here meant that very little deadwood was left in the forests. This lead to a serious decline of the larger fungae and beetles.
That is slowly changing now, with the state forests leading the way.
We have had a lot of oaks dying lately and those standing along roads, I get to top out, to make them safe. The hope is, that by leaving some large dimensioned oaktrees, we can get the staghorn beetle back.
It has been extinct here for almost a century, but have been found 2 times within the last 2 years, getting us all excited.
I still try to explain to the biologists, that the beetle doesn't care if it lives in a 5000$ veneer log or a twisted old knotty firewood tree, though.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Cool thread, B.

 

[woodworkingboy]

It seems like kind of a tough call there, wanting stump shot and at the same time a maximum momentum of fall to drive it through the limbs of the green trees, if your aim was a bit off. A spot on direction for your fall seems the priority, and you did a good job there Burnham.

 

[darkstar]

Short European Bar , what a crock.
Stig you better confine that statement to the more northern european areas .
Some of the absolute worse tree work ive seen in the 20 or so countries ive visited to was from a european country , alas SPAIN.
Ha Har
Big bar.
Anyhow im teasing whit ya but ive seen some bad bad bad tree work in southern europe and they had nice long bars as well.
Spain takes the cake , Mexico is a close second but then again its not Euro.

Some of the fellows here proably remember my pictures of the spanish fire men trying to use a crecent wrench as a felling bar .
All the while belayed from the ground with a gri gri standing on a ladder about to take out the ladder the climbing line and everything else.
Those thank goodness they never could or would cut through the horrible hinge.
Any of yall remember those pics from El Chorro ?
Geese how many of yall were even here way back then .That was 2004.
Crikey , im getting old to fast.
I had to Not watch the spanish tree crews .
We saw such tree debachery that made even the mexican Atlanta tree crews look golden.
Sorry for the derail...

 

[PCTREE]

Hey B. please educate me, why the high back cut???

 

[woodworkingboy]

Stump shot.

 

[PCTREE]

what jumps off the stump quicker??

 

[SkwerI]

Paul, I think it's more to keep the tree from shooting back over the stump if the top gets hung up or hits something. With that much weight and momentum, it's coming down. And if the top can't go forward then the butt is coming backward.

 

[squisher]

Burnham, do you think it would've wedged over easier if you'd used less stump shot?

 

[Bounce]

I'm picturing the situation in my head - you think your finished with the back cut on a stone dead tree leaning slightly the wrong way with no escape rout to be had and 3 wedges not quite cutting it. If it were me, I think I'd be sweating a few bullets right now. Burnham on the other hand has the presence of mind to take a few pictures so he can teach others.

 

[MasterBlaster]

 

[darkstar]

I'm picturing the situation in my head - you think your finished with the back cut on a stone dead tree leaning slightly the wrong way with no escape rout to be had and 3 wedges not quite cutting it. If it were me, I think I'd be sweating a few bullets right now. Burnham on the other hand has the presence of mind to take a few pictures so he can teach others.

No doubt