# Tricky Job, Need advice from the pros



## chad556 (Feb 12, 2011)

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Ok hopefully my pictures work because they really illustrate what I'm talking about. I have this tree to take down at work but it looks pretty intimidating. It is a Robinia pseudoacacia (black locust) about 3' DBH and somewhere in the ball park of 90 feet tall (these are just estimates and I suck at estimating this kind of thing) The tree is absolutely covered in poison ivy and there is a portion of the base of the trunk that is rotted out. It is missing maybe 5% of the wood at the base due to rot and the stuff behind that looks solid. There are a few dead branches in the canopy as well.

The issues I am having are these:

A)Tree Has a significant side lean right over a wooded hillside and will get hung up if tried to just drop it towards its lean.
B) I cant pull it sideways because there is a huge branch that would get caught on the trees on the hillside. Also i cant pull it back because there is a putting green in the way (this is on a golf course) Not to mention the biggest thing we have to pull with is a dump truck and there is no way I trust it enough to sit under this behemoth with a chainsaw while that thing attempts to pull 20 times its weight in wood over my head
C) Poison ivy sucks. And would be a pain to spur climb through to say the least. Only other option I have is to ascend about 45 feet straight up through thin air to the nearest decent tie in and use my gaffs to climb up another 30ish feet to dismantle. I have climbed one other black locust before and the wood seems heavy and brittle not to mention thorny when you get to the new growth not something I would be excited to trust my life to.

So what I would like to know is: Is this a job you would feel comfortable doing? Have you done a job like this before? or do you have experience with this species?

Also what gear would you need/recommended? I have a 150' Blaze rope, a 150' 5/8" rigging line, two fliplines; one rope, one cable core, gaffs, my trusty 200t and a 441 with 32" bar, a dump truck, mini excavator, skidsteer. Do I have everything I need or should we just call in the real professionals?


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## chad556 (Feb 12, 2011)




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## RacerX (Feb 12, 2011)

No photo's....


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## lxt (Feb 12, 2011)

No pictures!

If you have to ask what kinda equipment is needed...then your skill level is below what this job needs & you should do two things:

1- bring in a seasoned vet. to help you & learn!
2- walk away knowing this is beyond your skill set!!

to me any time someone asks, what kinda equip, saws, rigging gear & to even ask if a dump truck is needed  well thats just a red flag showing that the poster is an amateur & what he is attempting to do is outta his league!!!



LXT............


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## treemandan (Feb 12, 2011)

chad556 said:


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Everything you mentioned sounds about par for the course:msp_laugh: .


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## TreeAce (Feb 12, 2011)

treemandan said:


> Everything you mentioned sounds about par for the course:msp_laugh: .


 
:hmm3grin2orange::msp_lol::msp_laugh:


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## NCTREE (Feb 12, 2011)

get up there and start cutting you wus:deadhorse:

Its a locust and if you know anything about them they are strong. That liitle bit of rot is nothing,

Man up on the the ivy! if you cant deal with a little poison now and again then you should move to alaska:hmm3grin2orange:


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## TreeAce (Feb 12, 2011)

Just get the pictures figured out and lets see what this locust tree is all about. I will say this...If you are not 110% sure of what you are doing, dont DO anything!


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## NCTREE (Feb 13, 2011)

NCTREE said:


> get up there and start cutting you wus:deadhorse:
> 
> Its a locust and if you know anything about them they are strong. That liitle bit of rot is nothing,
> 
> Man up on the the ivy! if you cant deal with a little poison now and again then you should move to alaska:hmm3grin2orange:


 
Ok don't mean to sound harsh or disparing but thats what my boss would have said to me when I first started climbing. I might have thought he was the biggest ####### sometimes but he knew what he was talking about. He never put me in a situation that was life threatening or that he didn't think I could do.


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## chad556 (Feb 13, 2011)

Ok sorry about the pics guys, I have been having no luck uploading pictures through this site so hopefully this works:















Anyways thanks for the replies, and yes, despite my sad efforts to hide it I am indeed a newbie to tree climbing. In fact, I am an assistant golf course superintendent, a turf guy, by trade but i hoped to branch out into tree climbing (excuse the pun) this year and hopefully gain some valuable experience and save some money by doing some tree work in-house.

As for the equipment, my fault for not wording it right, I think I know what I need to do and I know how I would use my gear to do it. My question is, knowing what I have at my disposal, how would you do the job and is there anything else you think would be necessary?

Oh and NCTREE, haha I keep trying to tell myself to stop being chicken and just get the job done but Its not the same coming from me. My boss in no help because he knows nothing but coming from you, a guy who has done and seen more than I probably ever will in my career, it sounds good, so thanks for the tough love encouragement lol.


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## chad556 (Feb 13, 2011)

Ok these are taken at some better angles so hopefully they help. My plan is to tie in as high as i can, pull myself up, swing over to each of the two big branches up there and take them apart as carefully as I can and then save the last main branch for last and then just block the whole thing down. By the way all of those things branching out on the first 25-30 or so feet of the tree are from the poison ivy vines and that stuff is thick, so any advice on how to deal with that would be a plus. luckly the tree leans so much that i could probably bypass it on the way up but coming down it looks like i will get stuck in it.


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## husabud (Feb 13, 2011)

It's locust so it burns hot and fast. Use a match. Or man up and climb it. After all it is February it's not like you'll be wearing shorts and a wife beater, unless that's your style.


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## NCTREE (Feb 13, 2011)

Looks like a cake job. Go up and piece the top out. If you don't feel comfortable riigging on the tree then throw some tires down on the road and drop the branches on to them. Get it down low enough that you can drop it but long enough that you can drop the spar across the road without hitting it. Thats what i'd do.

If you take a few branches off the side that would get hung up so you can drop the rest.


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## NCTREE (Feb 13, 2011)

if you have the time and are afraid of getting poison then make sure your body is covered up and go up and handsaw the vines of as you go up. The handsaw will keep the dust and oils to a minimum. Although i'd foot lock up there and then put some spikes on.


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## GLOBOTREE (Feb 13, 2011)

TreeAce said:


> Just get the pictures figured out and lets see what this locust tree is all about. I will say this...If you are not 110% sure of what you are doing, dont DO anything!


dont agree~100% will be fine to proceed~
I might eliminate the ivy, cut the tree in half first into the flopzone, pull the branch off or out of the way(its a branch! think safety, tree will be fine to sacrifice a branch! trust life to reproduce. This sounds like one of those little trees in your way.


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## GLOBOTREE (Feb 13, 2011)

GLOBOTREE said:


> dont agree~100% will be fine to proceed~
> I might eliminate the ivy, cut the tree in half first into the flopzone, pull the branch off or out of the way(its a branch! think safety, tree will be fine to sacrifice a branch! trust life to reproduce. This sounds like one of those little trees in your way.


 
take your time, have a ceremony to celebrate this work, if your grateful the trees around will send energy somehow through the spiritual twilight zone~ i know how your feeling about it and nobody has the challenge you do with this tree. i wood sit down and think about every option on how you could go about it safely and comfortably. Ladder up if you want off ladder with spurs, install false crotch, climb around and clean up in your head first, are there strict anti-flopping regulations there in that field? GROUNDIE @ GLOBOPOWERCLIMB ON ARBORISTSITE


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## chad556 (Feb 13, 2011)

Ahh i like that idea of foot-locking up and then putting on my spurs up in the tree. Seems obvious now haha but I was going to body thrust all the way up there while trying not to stab my ankles. Also dropping the spar across the road seems like the smartest course of action, if anything goes wrong trying to drop it sideways to its lean then that would be the second hole Ive made in our asphalt cart paths and my boss would be questioning if it was a good idea to put me in charge of this job in the first place. Thanks for the advice!


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## Saw Dust Smoken (Feb 14, 2011)

*Ivy tree*

Ya goto do the next step to get better.
Just bypass the ivy. Drop tops off to other side of path. Use tall tree across path if roping is neccessary. Work the three legs down to just above ivy. Set a pull line if needed. Attach yourself to trunk and gin rope for doing tops. Gin rope keeps ya outa ivy as ya head to earth. Put a few chunk under the butt\or path area. Knotch and drop. For more control ty the butt off for less movement over path.


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## goneloco (Feb 14, 2011)

run up there say o maybe 30-40 ft and drop the top out(careful it dont bounce off the other trees and come back at you) and drop the trunk. from the pics it looks like you could just drop it from the bottom. those trees look small enough it probably wont get hung up but chanch is youll bust the other trees all to f***. play safe


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## peregordusmc (Feb 14, 2011)

Seems to me that you should be able to rig it and pull towards that pine in the picture. But i cant see whats farther back other than that pine being off 45 degrees from it. Either way you end up doing it Im sure all of us would love to hear how you ended up doing it and how it turned out.


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## wildwilly411 (Feb 15, 2011)

rope it, pulley it to pine tree, pull with mini exc, notch and fall


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## zogger (Feb 15, 2011)

*Big vines*

OK, disclaimer, I am not an arborist used to taking down a tree in chunks. I just cut some wood. We get big vines here sometimes that make felling and cleanup hard, so a lot of times if it looks to be causing a problem in the drop I chain up those things and yank them out with my tractor, just to get them out of the way. I'll cut the vine up a few feet, then make two yanks, one from the tree to start with, then later on when all is said and done, try to yank out the root. They yank right out for me with a 60 horse tractor and good chains, even stuff wrist thick.

Man, I had one real nice beech half a dang tree hanging in mid air held up between a combo of poison ivy and wild grape vines before. Got a lot of wood out of that mess eventually. Took several yanks, eventually it came down in a pile of vines and assorted other branches. It was so tangled I just chained up wads of vine, backed off and pulled slow. Keep getting huge messes of vines. Eventually it got pretty clean and the log fell down. 

Added bonus yanking out the vines first is it drops a ton of dead branches right away with the vines, meaning you don't have to worry about them coming off later on when you get to the tree. And then all your cuts on the wood you aren't constantly getting poison ivy vine chips all over you. I mean, why would anyone want every single cut working all day long to be infested with poison ivy? Not this boy..no thanks. I don't have poison ivy "macho", I can get it, so I minimize contact with it when I have to deal with it. Extra gloves and shirts mostly, just get the vines out of the way, then change gloves and shirt, the stuff that is now covered with juicy poison ivy stuff, then get back to working.

Just FWIW. I can't see real clear in the pics but maybe if they gave you permission to drop a few of those smaller trees towards the natural lean, to get them out of the way, then you could just drop it and cut it on the ground.

If all this is irrelevant to arborist work, my apologies, I only work around where it doesn't matter where stuff falls usually. If it looks easier to drop across a fenceline (I always go for easiest and safest), dang, I am the "fence guy" here, so I just cut fence out of the way and roll it back someplace, and pull out a post or three. If it has to fall across a dirt road I just do it and cut it up and get the big chunks out of the way of the once in awhile traffic real fast like fast, heh. 

Now I have passed on some drops where it went across a fenceline, because it was an area that had the fence posts in rockhard built up raised roadbed, etc, and I DO NOT LIKE trying to pound fence posts back in to near solid chert and whatever other rocks were used that was packed down by heavy equipment like a long time to build a road. I did a post on that here where that is the theoretical case. 

I just have a biodrive fence T post pounder so that's that. 

I have no idea what human/moose hybrid put those sorts of posts in before, my guess is they are extinct now... I like my wrists and elbows too much to deal with that.


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## chad556 (Feb 22, 2011)

*Mission Complete*

Well today I got up there and finished the job. It was cold and windy this morning but everything else went pretty well. I will let my pics tell the story.







I Tied in as high as I felt comfortable with(highlighted my rope so you could see it), I have a 150' length of blaze rope and i pulled up all but 15' of it. Easily the highest I have ever been.





Footlocked up, pulled up my saw and spurs and got to work, started out dropping that skinny branch all the way on the right.













Removed branches on the second big branch and then blocked it down in big pieces all landing harmlessly in the woods, no damage to the asphalt.










Worked my way up to the top and took the whole thing in one shot. That baby shook quite a bit after it detached.


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## chad556 (Feb 22, 2011)

Finally, dropped the spar into the woods. I was trying to drop it 90 degrees to that direction along the road into the snowbank for easy clean up but it fell with the lean. I'm not afraid to post my mistakes especially if we all can maybe learn something from it(myself especially). Since the wood was rotten i tried an open face with a plunge cut and had our dump truck driver hold tension on my rigging rope and start pulling right when I cut the last piece that was holding the tree up (the skidsteer was used as an anchor for my pulley). It started to go as planned but before it fell more than 10 degrees the whole hinge popped out of the stump and the tree went with its lean right into the woods. It wasnt a big deal. Nothing important was damaged just a couple maple saplings and devils walking stick. Maybe I should have also installed a guyline,? I knew these trees were brittle but i thought a hinge that big (3"-4")would hold. I guess if it was really that important the answer would be to pull my ms441 up there and block it down.






Here is what the base looked like when i flush cut it. Kind of scary thats all that was holding the tree up. But still I got it out and cleaned up. Only took 4 hours or so. I want the thank you guys again for all the advice and encouragement. This is the first tree I have done that really has made me nervous and taking it on made me feel like I have passed a threshold in my tree cutting career. Thanks!


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## zogger (Feb 22, 2011)

*Looks cool!*

I'll wait for the pro's to chime in with technical critique, but from my non pro perspective, cool beans, man! Got it down slick! And you didn't mention getting poison ivy so good there as well. How did you feel up high and working? Most of the high work I have done is on steel, and after awhile it just doesn't matter, it's not a whole lot different from working on the ground or near the ground..just you ain't.


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## TreeAce (Feb 22, 2011)

nice job ......and nice photos! I will take more pictures with less words anyday!


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## TreeAce (Feb 22, 2011)

][/HTML]Most of the high work I have done is on steel[HTML 

Most of the high work I have done was in my early 20s....LMAO:hmm3grin2orange:
Sorry..I couldnt resist.


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## zogger (Feb 23, 2011)

*heh heh heh*



TreeAce said:


> ][/HTML]Most of the high work I have done is on steel[HTML
> 
> Most of the high work I have done was in my early 20s....LMAO:hmm3grin2orange:
> Sorry..I couldnt resist.



bwaa!


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## NCTREE (Feb 23, 2011)

chad556 said:


> Finally, dropped the spar into the woods. I was trying to drop it 90 degrees to that direction along the road into the snowbank for easy clean up but it fell with the lean. I'm not afraid to post my mistakes especially if we all can maybe learn something from it(myself especially). Since the wood was rotten i tried an open face with a plunge cut and had our dump truck driver hold tension on my rigging rope and start pulling right when I cut the last piece that was holding the tree up (the skidsteer was used as an anchor for my pulley). It started to go as planned but before it fell more than 10 degrees the whole hinge popped out of the stump and the tree went with its lean right into the woods. It wasnt a big deal. Nothing important was damaged just a couple maple saplings and devils walking stick. Maybe I should have also installed a guyline,? I knew these trees were brittle but i thought a hinge that big (3"-4")would hold. I guess if it was really that important the answer would be to pull my ms441 up there and block it down.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
It's hard to tell from the pics but it looks like you cut your notch in the bad rotten part of the tree. If you would have made your notch lower on the stump and a little deeper you would have had more holding wood on your hinge. Remember length of hinge relative to the diameter of the tree is more important than thickness. The length of the hinge should be at least 80% of the diameter. You also have to compensate for the side lean which from the pics looks like you didn't This can be accomplished by setting an imaginery plum bob line from the center of the canopy to the ground. The distance from the trunk is your lean...if your plum bob is 10ft away from the trunk then your notch should be offset opposite from the lean about 3.5" I believe ratio is for every 3' of lean the notch should be offset by 1", although as you get more comfortable with drops you should be able to just eye it up with the saw. Remember those lines on the saw are their for a reason and are very accurate if you know how to use them. Another thing is when you need control longer on your drop then make your notch open face about 80 degrees or wider, it gives you more control. Good job over all, keep it up you'll get there


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## Highclimber OR (Feb 23, 2011)

Nice confidence builder and good job. Makes me think of all the ridiculous trees I have done and say "What was I thinking?". I then remember that someone has to get these done and that I am one of those "crazy" bastards, then I feel a sense of foolish pride for my risky actions and have another drink (never at or before work of course). Welcome to the club Sir, and a very nice job and pics.


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## husabud (Feb 23, 2011)

A good learning experience and confidence builder beats a giant bonfire almost every time. Nice job. Hope you washed with Technu after to get rid of any PI residue.


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## chad556 (Feb 23, 2011)

Hey guys thanks for the feedback. Good advice on dropping leaners, I have heard a variation of that rule but that one makes more sense. I will definitely try it next time im in this situation. I did kind of just eyeball it, i took a picture of my bore cut (the one with the truck in it) and If you look close it shows the felling guide line pointing at the dump truck. I guessed that if i aimed it about 10 or so feet from the curb of the road it would compensate for the lean. So much for that though, That hinge literally shattered like glass though as soon as the thing started moving. I would attribute that mainly to the rotted wood though, Once it hit the ground it split into 3 loosely connected pieces of trunk, that thing was a nightmare to buck up, dulled 2 chains and pinched my bar a couple times too. 

As for the poison ivy, i came prepared. Before i went out i tried an old trick a tree trimmer who came to our house when i was a kid showed me: I covered my arms and face with vegetable oil. Now if this is a confirmed old wives tale im going to feel pretty foolish but the theory of this i understand is to clog up your skin and pores with the vegetable oil which will make the poison ivy oil less likely to find its way under your skin until you wash both oils off when you shower. Right when i got out of the tree I went and took a shower with fels naptha soap. So far its been two days and no new poison ivy breakouts so I think at least part of what I did was successful. I did use a handsaw to cut 99% of the poison ivy in my way but there were a couple vines i sliced through and some chips got in my sleeves and on my face I'm sure. Nasty stuff and it just gets worse and worse every time i get it so I am glad i avoided it at least this time. I also have a tube of zanfel, it works ok but it seems like I have to use it 3-5 times to really get the breakouts under control.


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## lego1970 (Feb 24, 2011)

Nice work.


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