how to cut tree so it doesn't fall?

This pine is partially uprooted and being supported by the trees behind it. I'd like to cut it so it stays on the stump and then drag it out with my tractor and winch. Telephone lines out of sight prevent me from dropping it to the left against the lean. It's about 14" DBH. Any suggestions? Thanks.

vertical cut

At a comfortable height cut the flat part of your face at least 1/2 way in.
Then finish your notch with an almost vertical humboldt.

Theory: Since the tree is being held up. A deep face is possible. You're floating the bar back and forth, rather than dogging it in, to feel for a pinch coming on, should the hang up not be that secure and the tree starts to fall instead of drop.
This vertical face is to allow the tree to drop straight down, rather than fall over. An open face or a conventional offers nothing to solve this problem.

The back cut will be slanting, down to the face, place it just on the face side of the tree to lessen a chance of a bind. Again, floating the bar and cutting with the end of a longer bar if possible. This to get your feet as far as possible from that toe severing stem that will come down with a very brisk movement.

Theory: Straight drop accomplishes what you want, but has a few dangerous components that must be mitigated. Toe avoidance yes. But also multiple escape routes available and played out before hand, as the tree could go any direction. This vertical drop could break free the limbs holding the tree and you're now "all in" on this poker hand.

Suggestion:
May want to make the drop a short one. Tree will be less likely to pull free from hang up.

Suggestion:
Do not take a short cut above and just do two vertical cuts. If you skip that flat part of the face you'll create a spear that will be hard to pull.

Suggestion:
Place a piece of old plywood where the tree is going to drop to. This to help with pulling it.

Suggestion:
If you find yourself bringing this guy down in stages, make sure you take care of the limbs above your head. Cause they'll thunk you just like they don't care.

Suggestion:
You may be able to progressively take the butt of the tree in a direction that will it to eventually fall "backwards". Place a strong rope above where you are going to cut and off to the side. Make you're cuts till it is almost ready to fall. Saw off and to the side and you can now drop the tree from the safe distance of the length of your rope. Location. Location. Location.

This last effort really needs a sort of reverse face set up. Think of it as a vertical buck where you are dealing with compression wood and your face is actually the wedge cut.

If you want, tonight I could take your photo and draw on it these suggested cuts/their order.

All the best.

(This all comes from working with dead Lodgepole in Campground settings. Trivia)

Thanks. That sounds good. The first pic is the original cropped with the cuts drawn how you described (I hope). So when the cuts meet, the tree should slide right down the trunk. The second is the top, which is pretty well supported by the others, so I doubt that it's going anywhere. I wasn't sure how to do it without getting the saw in a bind. If I have a problem, I can get in there with my tractor and loader, but I don't want to tear up my campers lawn if I can avoid it.

Another option would be to make two overlapping cuts from opposite directions, then using your tractor and a chain or stout rope to pull the tree off the stump. This puts you out of the kill zone when limbs start popping up above.

Excuse my horrible artwork, but the red is your opposing cuts and the green is your chain or rope heading off towards your tractor. The idea is to cut the stump in such a way that it will hold until you pull it off with the tractor.

Again, this is pretty dangerous stuff. I'm assuming you are proficient enough to handle this without the 327 warnings and admonishments typically addressed towards most posters asking for this type of advice. This is beyond the capabilities of your typical homeowner.

Yup, sounds like you need to use a "Texas ????? Cut". (Like what Smoke explained) watch for roll out. You've got yourself a fun situation going. Ask somebody to film it!

I looked at your digipics again...Not sure if a Texas Bi_ch Cut will drop it straight down. I'm not sure from the pics if you have enough branches to keep it from going over. Just be careful and be sure to film it for the rest of us...and you might win ten grand from America's Funniest Videos.

one more option...
cut an open face notch about a foot off the ground facing away from the lean and in-line with the direction that you will pull with the tractor, make your back cut leaving plenty of holding wood for a thick hinge, go up about four or five feet and cut another open face notch facing the direction of lean perfectly opposite the lower notch, again make a partial back cut leaving a fat, beefy hinge( you can use a couple of wedges when making the backcuts , tap them in just enough to keep your bar from getting pinched while you are establishing hinge thickness. set your rope just below the upper notch and partial backcut, pull with tractor in line with lower notch. If you cut too far with your backcuts the tree could go while your making the cut in which case a pre established escape route at a 45 degree angle away from the work free of obstructions is essential. Do not attempt this technique if you are at all unsure of the concepts of hinges ,hinge thickness and a clean notch free of undercutting(no dutchmans!) This is an advanced technique and should only be attempted by an experienced faller and definitely not alone.

Thanks for the input guys. I'm not too worried about getting kilt, I just don't wanna damage the saw. I've got a Farmi 501 winch with 150' of 5/8" cable, so I can give it a pretty good tug from a safe distance when I'm ready. I probably won't get at it for a week or too, so I have time to stew on it. I will record and update.

tree

i dont see alot of limbs to hold that tree i'd be doing some thing different than the tractor, those tree limbs only cover the top 25% of that tree , i think you are going to have trouble ,it looks like a fir tree those small limbs wont' hold the weight of that tree very well once you cut it off.
i think we need you to take some more pics so we can help you figure it out

Get the phone lines dropped if possible.

What happens if it falls the way it leans? If that's not an issue, Texas Bit_ch cut it down in approx. four foot sections. Mark it out in sixteen inch blocks, cut at waist height. Many a feller bi_ch cuts trees down in fire situations like this. Although in fire work you don't actually "mark" off the sixteen inch sections. Use a calculating eye. It'll "walk" it's way straight down until it'll clear the phone lines and you can push the top over by hand. IF it makes it's own way through the upper branches(limbs) it'll go over towards the lean. What's there? Almost impossible to properly assess the situation with two dimentional digipics. I'd say just cut er' down with the camera rolling!

tree

doesn't look like much of a tree canopy to hold the tree would be good for us to watch lol not so good for him

I finally got around to this tree yesterday. I decided coydogs method would be the safest for me. I set the cable to a snatch block on a tree in back of the leaner for starters, to hold the tree in place while I did the cutting. Till I got the saw pinched doing the backcut on the lower one(leaner2). Stupid, should have put a wedge in, but I thought the tree was supported by the trees in back so it would open instead of close. Then I unhooked from the snatchblock and tried to pull on the tree enough to free the saw. Didn't so moved the chain up higher to get more leverage. That worked, so I put the wedge in and then kept cutting a little more at a time on the back cuts and having my buddy give the winch a yank till she went. I tried wrapping the chain around the tree to get it to roll towards the right in the last pic, but it didn't so it took the telephone line down that was beside it. Oh well, the phone companies got a few lines to fix each spring here. Thanks for the help and advice everyone.

Whilst I was at it and had some help, I took down a couple of pine trees that died last summer. We had a very dry summer, which I'm sure contributed to their dying, but these were the only big pines that died in my park. The one was a little hollow. It also had a crook in it about 2/3's up that went towards the front of the fifth wheel. I've seen these crooks be a hollow spot but this one wasn't. There's still a dead hemlock there that has to come down, but I'm going to move that boat first, it's a little to close the the target for me.

Tom,

Thanks for the photos, particularly 'Leaner3'. It illustrates what others described but now I understand the double-hinge concept better.

reply

tawilson said:

I finally got around to this tree yesterday. I decided coydogs method would be the safest for me. I set the cable to a snatch block on a tree in back of the leaner for starters, to hold the tree in place while I did the cutting. Till I got the saw pinched doing the backcut on the lower one(leaner2). Stupid, should have put a wedge in, but I thought the tree was supported by the trees in back so it would open instead of close. Then I unhooked from the snatchblock and tried to pull on the tree enough to free the saw. Didn't so moved the chain up higher to get more leverage. That worked, so I put the wedge in and then kept cutting a little more at a time on the back cuts and having my buddy give the winch a yank till she went. I tried wrapping the chain around the tree to get it to roll towards the right in the last pic, but it didn't so it took the telephone line down that was beside it. Oh well, the phone companies got a few lines to fix each spring here. Thanks for the help and advice everyone.

Click to expand...

Glad no one got hurt did you save any money!

in order for that technique to work ideally the open face notches could have been much wider, to allow more room for the hinge to work, with the pull line being set below the upper hinge as opposed to above. The upper backcut being set up first would have allowed the tree to settle into place as a hung tree often doesn't have that backpressure if it is still attached to it's rootball and has just gently heaved over to a neighboring tree, then the bottm cut setup is the really critical one to get the wedge in early to avoid pinching. I'm glad you tried it, from what I gather the tree just came over away from the trees it was hung in as opposed to jacknifing loose as was planned? I've used this technique several times and had it work great, but a couple of times it's done just that, come over whole in line with the bottom hinge because the lean wasn't as intense as it needed to be to activate the upper hinge. In a case like that you tie the top off but if your going to climb the thing to set a rope might as well piece it down from above.

No, it jackknifed off as planned. The only hitch I had was not getting the wedge in the lower cut soon enough. And you are right, I should have made the notches wider, but having the winch let me get clear before it came down. I did the top cut first, and it did start to open up and let the root ball start to settle back down, I just should have cut some more and let it settle down as much as it could. Once it started opening, I stopped. I had the pull line below the upper cut, but moved it up to get more leverage to put the wedge in, and decided to just leave it there. Tree's down and out, nobody hurt, nothing broke, I didn't feel like I was in any danger, I'll do it better next time, thanks again.

awesome!

Cool, never seen a double hinge in action but as I have studied the principal thus far (thankyou awesome arborist site) I can see advantages of using this technique in certain situations. Glad everything worked out fine, kudos. The learning curve continues so