1/3 Diameter Notch Rule

[smokechase II]

Photos officially requested

ZeroJunk, let's have a picture 6 pak of some easy to do hardwoods.

 

[smokechase II]

Goggle earth requested

Holmentree:

Starting with 100 trees / acre, just for discussion, dividing that into 2,000,000 we arrive at 20,000 acres of deforestation.
That would be just over 31 sections of land. An area three miles by ten miles and a couple months extra thrown in.

With the scale of this massive deforestation rather than ask for a few photos, could you give us a Goggle Earth area to go to for verification?

Perhaps a Sierra Club web page pleading for the Canadian Parliament, (sorry for the edit), to change the law to prevent this in the future?
A Greenpeace logo with a circle and slash through your saw(s)?

Thanks


********************

My name is Bill, (Hello Bill - Hi Bill - Howdy) and I have problems with accurately recounting events. Recently I told a tall tale about how much noise I have generated falling trees. I'm here to back off and make my stories believable.

(psst. Holmen. It's your turn.)

 

[Gologit]

Holmentree:

Starting with 100 trees / acre, just for discussion, dividing that into 2,000,000 we arrive at 20,000 acres of deforestation.
That would be just over 31 sections of land. An area three miles by ten miles and a couple months extra thrown in.

With the scale of this massive deforestation rather than ask for a few photos, could you give us a Goggle Earth area to go to for verification?

Perhaps a Sierra Club web page pleading for congress to change the law to prevent this in the future?
A greenpeace logo with a circle and slash through your saw(s)?

Thanks

********************

My name is Bill, (Hello Bill - Hi Bill - Howdy) and I have problems with accurately recounting events. Recently I told a tall tale about how much noise I have generated falling trees. I'm here to back off and make my stories believable.

(psst. Holmen. It's your turn.)

ROFLMAO...good post.

 

[ZeroJunk]

Here are some out in my pasture. the first one is probably the best example because you can pick the trunk out. The next is pretty much the same. They are about 36 inches in diameter and would heat my house for a year.

I cut one about like this that had been hit by lightning a few weeks ago. it had so much stress from leaning that about 1/3 of the way through I heard it starting to crack. I backed off and watched as it broke and fell.You really don't know how far to notch these because if you get in there to far, chances are you'll lose a bar in the deal.

Hard to tell from a photo, the last tree on the right is 9 feet. About as big as you see them. I don't have anything to cut it with and couldn't split it up if I did.

 

[2dogs]

Don't try to make this one size fits all. I have spent a lot of time in the west hunting and see the way the conifers grow. For the most part that is not the case here. A lot of what I cut is on the edge of pastures and 60% of the weight is on one side and they are leaning several degrees out. if you don't want them to go that way you had better have something with some serious weight or a lot of leverage working against it.You are kidding yourself if you think notching and wedging will make it go the other way. I can post some pictures if you are really interested.

Reread my post. A tree growing on the edge of a clearing where one side has full sun and the other side competes with other trees is not a typical straight growing tree. I agree with the need for serious weight when it comes to pulling a large branching tree like you (and I) deal with on a regular basis.

 

[teacherman]

Here are some out in my pasture. the first one is probably the best example because you can pick the trunk out. The next is pretty much the same. They are about 36 inches in diameter and would heat my house for a year.

I cut one about like this that had been hit by lightning a few weeks ago. it had so much stress from leaning that about 1/3 of the way through I heard it starting to crack. I backed off and watched as it broke and fell.You really don't know how far to notch these because if you get in there to far, chances are you'll lose a bar in the deal.

Hard to tell from a photo, the last tree on the right is 9 feet. About as big as you see them. I don't have anything to cut it with and couldn't split it up if I did.

Nice pasture and trees! Looks like a job for the 084 (if you actually want to remove it)

What kind of trees are they? We get a few decent sized oak, walnut and hackberry trees around here, but nothing 9 feet in diameter! Must be well over 100 years old.

 

[ZeroJunk]

What kind of trees are they?

They are southern red oaks. I also have a few northern red oaks. This place was select cut 60 years ago, but they left the poplars and I have some of those that are huge. They actually do grow straight up like a pine or fir.
Some of the oaks were left where the old houses stood. Who knows how old they are.

 

[Haywire Haywood]

All you need is a long misery whip and an ax with the neck steam bent so that you can swing straight and still notch it out without standing at a weird angle to the notch.

Ian

 

[2dogs]

Yeah I forgot to mention that a 9' diameter tree is awsome. I have never cut a tree that big, good luck with it.

 

[ZeroJunk]

I'm not going to cut it. It's for sitting under and drinking beer.

 

[HolmenTree]

[I"2,000,000 trees in 20 years works out to 100,000 trees per year. That means 2,000 trees a week for 50 weeks. That means 400 trees per day. Wow! That means 50 trees per hour! You are a stud! You should have your own series on History. Heck you have to be a multi millionaire by now just by gross scale."

Allowing for Credit hours.
No holidays and a boy to fill the saw and file the back-up saw.
Inclusion of 1" diameter saplings, (The small end was not specified).
Domino falling, (The number of trees felled by one backcut was not specified).


-----------------

In any case, I believe that while my trees dropped does not even remotely reach 100,000. My total boomage is of some merit.

I wish to boldly state, realizing full well that this will generate some new level of calculus on this thread, that my total boomage is 1 x 10 (23rd) decibels. Perhaps you've heard of my work?

Well I guess I better explain our way of logging here in central Canada or the way it used to be in the good old days before full mechanicalized harvesting 24 hrs a day. Unlike the west coast here in central northern Manitoba it is table top flat ground, dry sunny cold winters with 2 feet max dry snow .Warm to hot summers with not much rain but lots of moisture in the ground from our abundent lakes and swamps. Mostly spruce and pine with hardwood sparsely mixed in.Everything harvested here is still old growth,trees close to each other with limbs only near the top. 10" to 16" dbh average 50-75ft tall, with the biggest spruce being 5ft dbh 120ft tall.All this old growth in an area greater then all of Wash.,Oregon and California put together.[ look at the map] The company I worked for then was owned by the Manitoba government and the only company in all this area since 1969.

All the timber was harvested by 2 man cut & skid crews,1 faller,1 skidder operator x about 12 crews in 5 camps[60 crews].plus several independent contractors. When the company started the big paper and lumbermill in 1969 they couldn't get good reliable production out of the local loggers because they the locals only cut a little for small sawmills. So the company brought in some of the best French Canadian foremens , superintendents and loggers from Quebec where forestry was always big time and they were running out of old growth if not already were well into their 2nd growth. When the Frenchmen first came the company production standard was each 2 man crew had to produce 20 cords [50 cubic meters] in a 8 hr day, the Frenchmen were easily doubling that.This meant felling,limbing&topping at 3 1/2" then skidding the tree length to a pile at the landing. Clarke Ranger, Timberjack and Cat skidders were mainly used. Me and my 2 older brothers learned quickly from the methods of the Frenchmen. Work as a team, cut your stumps low, trees always felled straight ,butts up to a 1/2 treelength back from each other,then the skidder backblades the butts even in a straight line back blading the limbs as he goes along. the faller cuts off the side& bottom limbs and tops then helps the skidder operator choke up the trees and then the cycle starts over again. In the winter limbing was all done by the skidder ,only the tops had to be cut. The average wind came from the northwest and the trees lean towards the southeast.Cut your strips[block] face in a straight line from west to east, working it back to the north,this way the felled timber is always at an angle to the face allowing easier skidding. The ground is always flat making operating that much easier. We took no coffee breaks, only 1/2 hr for lunch. This is high production piecework cut & skid.In the late 1980s my partner and I could produce as much as 300 cords[750 cub.meters]in a 40 hr week ,running a Stihl 064 20"and a Clarke Ranger 666 skidder.We also ran Stihl 044-18", Jonsered 670-18" and Husky 266-18". We were very fit athletes . Every movement we did at work was not wasted. Yes we made good money. PNW logging is another total different league of logging with the rough terrain and much larger and scattered timber with undergrowth that can stop a tank.These 2 worlds are totally different.All the hardwood in our manitoba operations was a weed,if they were in the way they were just felled and left adding to the extra thousands of trees a year we had to cut. Any big backleaners were cut then the skidder would push it over with its arch and proceed to backblade it. We had a very efficent system and the saws and skidders were getting faster and more powerfull every year.We peaked out around 1994,then the company wanted 24 hr stump to dump contractors running processors, feller bunchers,grapple skidders and forwarders. They laid us off and thats what they got.
Yes its hard for other loggers to understand how someone can cut 2 million trees with a powersaw in 20 years. Especially if they are in rough terrain with oversize timber. Or if they are always burnt out from working too much with no days off and spinning their wheels and getting little wood into their piles.But I think it all boils down to, if you learn to log right in the first place and not be scared to push your self you can make alot of money. I am proud to be a high baller and not scared to give er s##t.

Willard:greenchainsaw:

 

[clearance]

There you have it. Good enough explanation for me. When people from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, or pretty well anywhere else in Canada talk about trees, the usual response is "You guys have trees out there?"

We have the big trees here, even the second growth can be over 4' dbh.

Anyways, back to the question, it has been explained well here, enough. Cut how you want, you have been told how to do it properly by pros, so, its up to you.

 

[HolmenTree]

Holmentree:

Starting with 100 trees / acre, just for discussion, dividing that into 2,000,000 we arrive at 20,000 acres of deforestation.
That would be just over 31 sections of land. An area three miles by ten miles and a couple months extra thrown in.

With the scale of this massive deforestation rather than ask for a few photos, could you give us a Goggle Earth area to go to for verification?

Perhaps a Sierra Club web page pleading for the Canadian Parliament, (sorry for the edit), to change the law to prevent this in the future?
A Greenpeace logo with a circle and slash through your saw(s)?

Thanks


********************

My name is Bill, (Hello Bill - Hi Bill - Howdy) and I have problems with accurately recounting events. Recently I told a tall tale about how much noise I have generated falling trees. I'm here to back off and make my stories believable.

(psst. Holmen. It's your turn.)

You know I was just seriously getting ready to talk with you about notches and hingewood but now I see you are either completely nuts or your smoking too much weed.

Willard

 

[sperho]

HolmenTree-

With your methodology, you probably busted some major rump up there, but c'mon. 2,000,000 in 20 years is an exaggeration.

2,000,000/20 = 100,000/year
100,000/260 = 384/day
384/8 = 48/hour
48/60 = ~1 per minute

People will know you by tall tales, but I guess that's OK.

 

[ZeroJunk]

Reminds me of when I told a man that I had caught a 20 pound largemouth.

The other man said that was nothing. He hung a lantern off of a sunk pirate ship and when he pulled it out of the water it was still burning. But, he said if I would take a few pounds off of that bass he would put the light out on the lantern.

 

[HolmenTree]

HolmenTree-

With your methodology, you probably busted some major rump up there, but c'mon. 2,000,000 in 20 years is an exaggeration.

2,000,000/20 = 100,000/year
100,000/260 = 384/day
384/8 = 48/hour
48/60 = ~1 per minute

People will know you by tall tales, but I guess that's OK.

Come on guys there has got to be some other high ball loggers out there on this site who can back my claim. Got to be someone from the midwest or great lakes areas who has done this.

Willard

 

[Haywire Haywood]

I used to be high ball, but I got old and just tonight almost stepped on them in the shower.

Ian

 

[smokechase II]

Math still rules

"Smokechase sorry I didn't explain myself a little better there in my last post, I didn't mean for you or anyone else to blow a head gasket responding to it. Like I said earlier I could go on and on about notches and hingewood, but the way this thread was going I didn't think it was needed anyway, but it sure turned your light bulb on upstairs though eh?"

Look, you never intended to respond to my questions. Being the first to take a toke. I stated opinions on the 1/3rd diameter issue and asked questions and you set the "blow a head gasket" tone. As ye post so shall ye reap.

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I still don't believe a cutter could do 440 trees a day for twenty years, (10 months of 5 day work weeks to get to 1.936 million trees). Even under the easiest of small tree flat ground conditions where the tree is at least partly trimmed by the skidder.

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By your opening post you did something approaching that level of production before the superior training you received later from the arbormaster.

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In the spirit of detente I will concede that you have cut more trees than anyone I've ever met. (The Goggle Earth resolution for remote Canada wouldn't show anything anyway.)

--------------------

I would like you to respond to the following previously asked question:

1) "Why not go with a 1/8th notch and get more sapwood that way than a 1/4 notch? That would result in just plain sapwood hinges on most trees."
Aside from oblong shaped trees, so assuming circular generally for this point, if more sapwood is better why not go with complete sapwood hinges? My point with this question was not to actually promote this 1/8th face but to point out logically that the face is not just to set the hinge width, but to provide the initial part of the release and it can also set the fulcrum better for superior leverage on larger trees.

 

[stihl 440]

logging

OK...350 sum trees is hard for a feller buncher to do in a day....let alone a person with a saw. Around here we are preety fast paced in my book......I and the other loggers around here get about 75 trees in a day, that's average on a good day. I can cut more if it's just felling small DBH trees.......but normally i'm cutting and skidding. BTW....we work 10 hr days............. And at the end of a day like that you're whooped............:greenchainsaw:

 

[smokechase II]

Other questions

"Notches were designed by the forest industry to reduce waste for the lumber making process. When falling blocks of forests or plantations the average lean of trees is towards the south east [anywhere on earth north of the equator],so felling in this field is fairly straight forward."

---------------

Notches were designed to get a tree to go over in a specific direction. Different notches came later that reduced waste in specific settings.

*********

North of the equator in the PNW the general lean is most often downhill. Your blanket statement about our blocks is not accurate. There are a variety of different species on different slope scenarios where this can vary.

However I'm curious as to the explanation as to why trees lean to the SE in yours and other locations. Plants lean toward the sun and there are more clouds in the afternoon making the morning sun the most dominate. Just speculating and not sure why that SE thing would be.