Two leaners - tapered hinge/wedges

[SkwerI]

Carl, you're walking on thin ice, Buddy! Good thing Burnham just left on vacation for a week, maybe he won't see your slipup by the time he gets back.

 

[Newfie]

Carl, you're walking on thin ice, Buddy! Good thing Burnham just left on vacation for a week, maybe he won't see your slipup by the time he gets back.

I'll PM him a link to the thread.

 

[NeTree]

Burn, I've never noticed an unpredictable nature of a tapered hinge. Maybe you's doin it wrong .

Just fer da record.

 

[woodworkingboy]

I noticed the predictable nature of a tapered hinge just today...albeit unplanned for.

Too lazy to go up the hill for my larger saw, I cut a big ol' pine with a short bar, and when I swung through the stump cutting towards my side, the tree went over prematurely due to head lean. I still had too much hinge wood on my side, and missed the lay by about twenty degrees. The tree got hung up bad on some others, and rectifying the error ate up a big chunk of the afternoon, plus I lost my favorite wedge, and perspired a lot

 

[Burnham]

...I just can't get past the unpredictability of the degree of the swing effect from one tree to the next. I dislike that aspect of the tapered hinge.

Burn, I've never noticed an unpredictable nature of a tapered hinge. Maybe you's doin it wrong .

You're not reading close enough again, Carl...look at all the words.

As I said in an earlier post, the theory is solid and I agree that the effect is loosely predictable; it's the execution to achieve repeatable precision results that leaves me unhappy with tapered hinges in general.

Now if you are able to swing to a target consistently with a tapered hinge that faces some degree away from the lay, then maybe I am doing it wrong and you are indeed doing it better than me.

When you come out for that visit and dinner I owe you, we'll hunt up a tree for you to school me on.

I get to set the target stake .

 

[lumberjack]

It's a date!

 

[NeTree]

Date? Uh.....

 

[lumberjack]

:what:

It could also be the difference in species, Burn. In a Bradford Pear, Tulip Poplar, Cedar, or stone dead just about any species, you can expect for it to not work depending on conditions. On a pine and gum you can get a rediculous amount of predictability in how long the hinge will hold/where it will or can lay out.

You are talking about the amount of swing you can get from the taper before the hinge fails and off the tree goes into the target?

 

[Burnham]

:what:

It could also be the difference in species, Burn. In a Bradford Pear, Tulip Poplar, Cedar, or stone dead just about any species, you can expect for it to not work depending on conditions. On a pine and gum you can get a rediculous amount of predictability in how long the hinge will hold/where it will or can lay out.

You are talking about the amount of swing you can get from the taper before the hinge fails and off the tree goes into the target?

Exactly, Carl...and I'm talking about how the variables of size, species, lean, limb weight and distribution, individual tree grain character, fiber integrity, moisture content, temperature, etc. on and on, affect the predictability of the degree of response you get from each instance of using a tapered hinge. I can't get satisfactorily repeatable results from a tapered hinge. Sure, I can get a tree to swing, but not predict how much. If I can't predict how much, I think I'm better off not planning on it to hit a lay where it matters.

I must repectfully disagree with the last sentence of your first paragraph above.

 

[lumberjack]

Did you fell any while you were here? With the pines it's not uncommon for the hinge to still be holding after it hits the ground.

Granted I'm talking about our pines (loblolly) and our gum (sweet gum).

 

[Burnham]

That's not the point, Carl...it's the question of how far the taper takes the tree in a swing if I form up the hinge 1 inch thick on one end and 4 inches thick on the other, or 3 inches thick on the other...how much does that individual tree respond to that difference in how I form up the hinge?

 

[lumberjack]

I think I'll have to agree to not understand until you show me what we're talking aobut.

I gun off the notch/front of the hinge. The taper, within reason, doesn't effect the gun. If the tension/thick side of the hinge stays together until it hits or nearly hits the ground, then it fell as gunned in my book.

Locally, pine, gum, and hickory all have good to excellent hinging properties.

I don't have any trees here around the house that are leaning and need felling (in my opinion, there is a hickory that dad wants axed) to show what I'm talking about.

I'm either saying or understanding to simply the aspect of this conversation.

 

[Burnham]

If I'm following you Carl, you are saying that you don't use the tapered hinge to modify the direction of fall from that established by the hinge. If that's correct, then I have to assume that for you the point of the taper is to negate a side lean and the resulting tendancy for an even hinge to tear out on the side opposite the lean earlier than the lean side...do I have it right?

Many who advocate use of a tapered hinge do so with the intent of modifying the direction of fall beyond that dictated by the face...this is the use that I find difficult to gauge.

But if I have it right in my first paragraph, then I have to ask how you know how much to taper the hinge, and how you avoid getting swing anyway?

 

[lumberjack]

Damn, I had a decent amount typed, must have closed the wrong window.

Anywho, you're right, I don't use the hinge to pull the tree more than the gun.

It's the first I've heard of that, without using a dutchman to lift/tear the compression side as it goes over.

Here's 3 vids where the tree fell into the lay.

The oak spar rolled over onto an insignificant plant, but it made it not picture perfect. The notch's floor was perpendicular to the lean, not the ground.
<a href='http://media.putfile.com/Winter-Pine-Flopping'>Click here to watch 'Winter-Pine-Flopping'</a>

The pine fell within a foot or two of the lines, you can see the needles in the closing picture that look to be fairly under the power lines. Keeping it close kept the majority out of the road, so we could clear it quickly.
<a href='http://media.putfile.com/Winter-Pine-Flopping'>Click here to watch 'Winter-Pine-Flopping'</a>


I don't have a vid of the hickory going over, but you can see that it cleared the tree the tip leaned past a good 4' or better. It rolled down the hill and was caught by the tree as intended.


Off to smash a couple stumps

 

[Stumper]

FWIW, I have never been happy with "adjusted guns" or tapered hinge swinging preciseoly because I see them as unpredictable. Good hinging wood tends to fall into the face. Unreliable wood is just thta-unreliable. Since we can only guess as to whether or when the hinge will break in the course of the fall when dealling with unreliable wood it gets rather iffy. My own preference with side leaners is to face the tree to the lay and use a tapered hinge solely for the purpose of helping the tree to prevent premature tearoff.

 

[JIML]

I cut a bunch of little black locust trees today. ~8" dbh. Fun to steer them around while cutting either side of the hinge wood on their way down. I personally hate cutting pine! We got white pines and what I call jack pines. Sticky ass things. Pines are easy trees for the most part, climbing or out of the bucket. Climbing them I try to just work off a couple lanyards and not have to tie in to keep from gummmmmming up my rope. Id almost rather climb a dead one.

 

[lumberjack]

I've been nothing but happy with adjusted hinges, but not adjusted guns for directing the top (or any other portion) of the tree into a given lay.

All that's required doing it like I do is making the floor perpendicular to the lean that you want to counter, and make the back cut parallel to the apex of the notch.

 

[Burnham]

Now I'm not getting it, Carl. "Back cut parallel to the apex of the notch" seems to me to be making an even hinge...I know I must be mis-interpreting something here. Help!

 

[MasterBlaster]

 

[woodworkingboy]

Lots of variables it seems, hence the reputation for unpredictability. I'm thinking that a higher back cut, where the tree falls slower, and the hinge breaks later than it might with a lower back cut, is going to help compliment an uneven hinge to give some swing. The weight factor of the tree is somewhat lessened, I theorize. Not a big fan of high back cuts though...says the dog.

 

[lumberjack]

Now I'm not getting it, Carl. "Back cut parallel to the apex of the notch" seems to me to be making an even hinge...I know I must be mis-interpreting something here. Help!

My bad, parallel in the sense of matching the slant of the notch (perp to the lean), not parallel to the horizon, or worse an even hinge.

Or another way, the backcut also perp to the same lean the notch is perp to.

 

[NeTree]

So Carl is schooling Burnham now?

 

[MasterBlaster]

Hahaha.

 

[Stumper]

So Carl is schooling Burnham now?

Nope! Trying to 'splain his upstarty self.

 

[TGCIII]

i hate to get involved in this discussion but who in this forum, without a rope, has never faced up an 8"x 20' oak limb, the face being 75 or so degrees left or right from straight down, limb being only few degrees up from horizontal,and held the top side of that hinge, while sawing the bottom side almost completely off, till the last second and watched it swinggggg and miss the deck or the gutter or the grandma's azaleas by inches or if u did it right by feet? a tapered hinge is as unpredictable as the man who fills in the blanks where it says "variables". in my eyes that is. great discussion folks