Big confidence booster today. Took care of some mowing clients most of today, which went better than I anticipated. Then went to my buddy's house to drop 2 pines. He asked me last week to look at them, then I found out he had a "tree guy" come in to top a row of smaller pines that were into the electric lines, and drop a large cedar (well, large for PA, sapling in the PNW) and the remaining 2 (of 3) codominant pine spars. He didn't know I was doing tree work till after the other guy jerked around with the job and realized he was over his head and is afraid of the tall trees. So today I went to drop the 65 to 70' spars, which they had already mostly stripped using a lift. I dropped a few more limbs to give more safety margin for his neighbors roof, set pull lines, then dropped 'em from about 15 feet so he could have the trunk carved into a bear. There was only about 20 ft between the houses, and the second spar was leaning the wrong way, with the top weighted even more to the wrong side. I had my friend pull with his truck, with specific instructions NOT to gun it. It went perfectly, I nailed the exact spot I wanted to land it, did't even touch any of the obstacles I was trying to avoid. I was really sweating it when we dropped the second one, but the results just confirmed that the learnings from the treehouse have helped me grow into a capable and confident tree faller. I can't thank everyone here enough for all the help, tips, knowledge, etc that I have received. I charged him about half for the job, but the confidence boost would have made it worthwhile even if I did the job for free.
Then the next morning, the other one was flat.
I'll fire up the old phone and see if there are any pics of the shed without the roof or siding on.
hope you had a good ride
