hinge pics

murphy4trees

TreeHouser
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Nov 28, 2008
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Philadelphia PA suburbs
I've been looking through some pics of hinges from the last year... posting up a few pics ... nothing too crazy...

some standard, some not so standard...


this one not so standard
 

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Both. Old news.

Even big trees are commonplace out here. I did a leisurely 42"x 160' grand-fir, solo climbing and ground work, three easy partial days while my kid was at summer camp so I had about 5 hours per day to unload, work, reload and leave for pick-up. Chipped, ground, mulch spread, logs stacked for the mobile mill. No sweat. No stress. No damage to the building, fence, or driveway below. meh. Just a tree.

I've pulled over rotten, leaning, big second growth from over a multimillion dollar bathroom with a 65 hp, 40 year old skidder, rotten through, then cut rotten as a drum 5', neutral doug-fir, easy 200'+, again next to the multimillion dollar bathroom (Puget Sound waterfront park).


A couple plain hinge pics, so what? No offense. Hard pulls on small trees.

Reg's giant dead, decaying fir climbing-dismantles, exciting.
Tahune airwalk, exciting.
 
I don't expect so see much else on these forums other than pictures of trees and stumps. I wouldn't classify them as exciting nor boring. Thanks for posting Daniel. I doubt I will ever play around with those fancy cuts but don't mind hearing about them.
 
Damn me, I posted a long rebut to Sir Daniel and a few others who have posted to this ridiculous thread.

Then my brain overcame my emotions, deleted the whole thing and fall back to this...

Dan, you are wondrously empowered by your singularly perceived personally skill. Amazing stuff.


I'll now go back to my end of the bar and have another single malt :). Good night.
 
hate to say anything after what Mr. Burnham and Sean said.... but ... even though these may be advanced techniques and not for beginners.... it seems they would be even more valuable/interesting at least to a noob like me if they could be accompanied with the context, etc. ... e.g. why was this used (e.g. what was the lean, condition, species of the tree, targets, etc.)... what would have been the outcome with a "normal" hinge... what was the outcome with this hinge, etc. thanks!
 
Learn and experience the tried and true fundamentals that have put wood on the ground reliably before any trick shots, IMO.

Keep trigonometry out of it, too.

Most tree-felling can be accomplished with 1-2-3 cuts, wedge/jack or pull-rope, if gravity doesn't suffice.
 
Trig was one of my fave classes... I had an awesome teacher. If all of my teachers' woulda been like him I'd have a rocket on Titan by now.
 
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Here's a slightly side leaning maple which we were pulling by hand, which I hesitated to do, but thought that setting up a redirect to pull with the truck or skid steer was not worth the time as there wasn't enough side lean to concern me. Cut the face wide and deep, about 1/2 way. Keeping the hinge in the middle of the tree allowed it to be slightly longer than it would be otherwise, and also a little further back than 1/3, which thrown the COG forward relative to the hinge.... This is a lot thinner than I normally like my hinges, and the lack of long fiber pulls (whiskers) shows relatively little holding ability, but it was enough to get the job done. This is an example, where not having the skid steer's pulling power, and having side lean towards a house made me cut a much more traditional hinge. tall hinge fibers.jpg tall hinge fibers after.jpg tall hinge fibers after.jpg
 
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usually creating that height to the hinge fibers takes an extra 20 seconds.. I think it CAN offer more control, and allows a little more flexibility in the height of the back cut.. For the extra few seconds this cut takes on average (probably more than 20 seconds on this one which was cleaned out well) x the very few trees I put on the ground, it's worth it and something I do habitually on all but the easiest trees.

gives me more confidence. and if you can't match your cuts perfectly every time, this cut can actually save time in that you don't need to fool around with a hammer or walking around the tree to see where the tip of the bar is etc...
 
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This was a big dry tulip from last saturday.. nasty tree til the top was out... It had a slight favor to the lay but still needed a good bit of pounding, whihc is not something I often do.. I could have set a line but wedges were a lot easier due to the location.... Pens show how far the gutting kerf went. gutted tulip hinge.jpg gutted tulip show plunge.jpg
 
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