Tree felling vids

If I was cutting on steep or really convoluted ground, where hard end or side binds come up fairly often...the answer to your query would be..."me, and many other wise fallers".

Only once can I remember needing the razors on a fall, as opposed to bucking. That was something I never will forget, and never have figured out the cause. I put in a perfectly normal conventional face on a stone dead (but not so long dead as to have lost it's structural integrity) 40"ish Doug fir in a campground.

I had a nice lay down a graveled road in the CG, and only needed to miss a new and expensive vault toilet by 15 or maybe 10 degrees at half the tree's height (200'+or-) out there on the other side of the road/lay :). All well so far. Started the back cut, and maybe 12" short of hitting my intended hinge thickness, that bastardo set straight down on my 36" bar pulled by my Stihl 066. No warning. Just cutting strong, then bound dead.

Lucky for me, this was a campground job, so the pair of razor wedges where in the truck only 300 feet away. With them, and FOUR 8 inch hardheads, and TWO 12 inch double tapers, I was able finally to stand that tree up and finish the back cut, then send it on it's way. Missed the $9k vault toilet by 25 feet, just as planned :).

Stump autopsy showed some relatively minor heart rot, but over a foot of solid wood all around the stem. I still don't know why that one set down. To be clear, it did not just set back...the whole width of the backcut of the tree settled straight down, then shifted to the rear. It was weird, and still seems so after many a replay in my mind of the scene.

Burnham, I take you to be one to do fine at sizing up a situation and preparing for it, like a good professional sawyer would.

Bucking for timber logs puts sawyers into much different situations than when things are left to lay, or cut short. A very different world than accessible, front-country work.




Did you see conks or ID the pathogen?


I've only had one hinge squish down on the felling cut. It was weird! Phaeolus schweinitzii conks. Heart-rot. Leaning, so I didn't wedge it. Less leaning that I guessed, I guess.


I'm surprised how compromised hinges that have crazy concentrated weight on them don't crush regularly. Trees are amazing.
And, I think that the tension strength is something like double the compression strength. Someone correct me, if I'm wrong, please.

A large, hollow, neutral pull-tree gets a number of wedges in its backcut just to prevent all the load on the hinge area, stacking the odds in my favor. A 6' or so hollow-like-a-drum cottonwood with 4-6" of rind, started me on this line of thinking. Needs wedges in it anyway, just make it lots, and then pull with authority, leaving it only forcing on the hinge and a concentrated part of the stump for a short, short time.
 
I know this'll sound weird, coming from me, but what was he intending to do to that tree with that short a bar?
Makes me wonder if it was staged.
 
I can't see it either. I get this...

vI4FIiy.png


So... let facebook track me, or watch the video. I can live without the video.
 
I was referring to BBR's hung up tree, not the uprooting one.






Looked like a bad tree, as a start.

Laid up steep into other stuff.

Gravity is there all day. I prefer to cut steeply hung trees with a face-cut and backcut, folding it to one side. Gravity harnessed. Roll it off if you can.

Also double face-cuts, one high, one low, opposite sides, with a rope up high to fold it away from the support tree, lessening the angle on the hung tree.











Long way down there, Jed!
 
Yeah, great topping vid! How high were you? Crazy hitting a shot like that from so high.

The second tree obeyed nicely!
 
Yeah, Jer knows. We shot that dead fir from a bad angle with the Nikon Forestry laser. Those things are deadly accurate even from a close, sketchy angle. It kept popping up between 119' and 124', so we called er 120. Jerry's 18% rule measured the tree to pretty dead on 120' as well. What I mean by that, is that after cracking off that little 20' top, I was able to take a roughly 18 to 20' log off a COG cut, and with a 270 degree flip she flopped down pretty perfect with a little added manual help. I'll try to get the COG vid up. The next one I took at 15', and she under rotated a hair. (I maybe didn't open the face up enough) I'll try to get the vids up. The vids need to be real nice and short to upload here cause the dang files are so stinkin big with the company's GoPro 8 Black. Dang files are huge man. Let me see if I can pare this stuff down enough to getter up here in a sec.
 
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