Curved poplars

[JimL]

I had 4 poplars that were just about identical to cut yesterday, it occured to me that i had never cut something this curved.
all 4 were 26-28" in diameter at the cut. 28" bar on 066 just barely went thru when i bored in the back cut, I just dropped them in the woods and left them, thats all they wanted. I had road and power line on the other side.
Pic shows how i cut them, 3 of them had to be driven over with wedges, but it didn't take much wedging, 1-3 wacks and they went over. I left ~2" of hinge wood.
Just curious if anyone would have done anything different? I origionally was going to make my back cut 90 degrees to the tree, like you would on a straight tree. set back could kick it off the stump if i had done it that way.

Steep bank, notch was cut overhead.

 

[moss]

When you were making the backcut did the tree want to lean towards the road and bind the bar or was the trunk balance ok? I don't know much about felling but am learning alot from these discussions.
-moss

 

[skwerl]

I would have made the back cut more perpendicular to the trunk at the point where you were cutting it. On trees like that you can really affect which way it wants to lean by where you make your cut (or pivot point). I would have picked a point closer to the road to make my cut so more of the weight was going in the proper direction. If you wanted to bring it back towards the road then cutting higher where the trunk was curved away would put more weight on the road side of the cut.

 

[JimL]

More towards the road it had fence growing in it, i forgot to mention that

Balance, yes, one fell when i cut holding wood, others had to be wedged a little.