LOL!! IT'S GOOD TO HAVE A LITTLE BEAVER ON THE JOB FOR MAKING THE DULL DAY IN THE BUSH..... movies are not to bad either when home with the wife.
Falling pics 11/25/09
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I had one of my dozer bosses in the cab of Olga with me one afternoon , he was little and flexible enuf , and the cab was big enough so I could stuff him behind the seat . He hadnt run a dozer before ao he got to see things from my pov. A new road had just been pushed in down a ridge thru hard black and I was giving him a ride up to get his 4wheeler. . He had told me to get any bad looking snags I saw so I figured Ide kill 2 birds with 1 rock. 3 actually. . The 5H Grapple is wwll set up for getting out on piles and rootin around. . Lot of clearence from the belly to the ground. . He qas like a kid at a carnival ! . granted none of the trees were over 16" dbh. . After 1 particularly fun multi tree push I told him. " this is why kids want to run bulldozers " . I think he agreed
I'll probably sound foolish, but a dozer is the only one besides powersaw that I feel, like i used to operate them in a past life. Our skidder engineer, (engineer, is that proper?) Says he feels uneasy on one, yet he is farely proficient & is not scared to use the the timberjack to its capabilities. Im totally opposite, granted i have less time than he does on a rubber tire skidder by far. The skidder is like work. The cat, like the saw feels like I am part of the machine, doing something a little more fun, or maybe natural. Homogenization of man & machine brings a special little kind of feeling.
Now give me 20 years lord willing and I'll make another assesment. The banging around is part of the fun now, I can see that changing over time though.
Thinking now, it would be a real treat to hear everyones dozer related stories. What to do with them, what not to do. All the stuff that a guy who knows his stuff knows. And we've got them here, or had. Im not around enough to know whos who. You & Bob could probably make a good starting contribution, to a thread, that I may start, if there is not one already in existance. Have a good morning Folks
About half of what was a nice sized honey bee hive. Other half is attached to the top. I knew there where bees in there so I left about 5' attached to the forks. I misjudged... dont know how many times i got stung, but none of them took place anywhere near the hive. I'd be 200 yds from the hive and id be getting stung repetitavely. Go stand 2 feet from the hive and no stings.
Maybe a little smaller than they look. 
Looks like nice sized poplar
I think western nc and across state line in the smokies spoiled me for the east coast wood. Sssssssshhhhhh, don't tell anyone but I'm getting back to the rite coast soon...
Good post. But be careful Ted...you lose IQ points for every day you spend on one of those big yellow machines.
Good post. But be careful Ted...you lose IQ points for every day you spend on one of those big yellow machines.
You just diagnosed my current bosses mystery illness. LMAO
As for me, i think I've gotten rid of all of the ones that where gonna go if they ever got the chance. The ringing in my left ear is still here after being walloped by a bowed over hickory of maybe 5 or 6" dbh 8? Years ago. A larger tree lodged ina standing tree and took that hickory over too. I figured id saw in a face till it started to eat my chain and then let it go over. It kicked off the stump instead. I think the way i was standing probably saved me from seriouse injury. Im pretty sure it got my whole left side. The tree It sent me cartwheeling "15" feet through the air according to the boss who was backing down the road that I landed in. He thought I was dead, so it may very well have just hit my noggin for me to be spinning like such.There was no pain anywhere but there. I dont see how it didn't break something..I woke up in the dirt wondering why the chainsaw was off, and why it was 15 feet away from me in my periferie. When i looked over at it all i could see was a pretty white light. I tried to finish the day. The next swath was bordering some very large powerlines to the paper mill a few miles away. I tried to gun a face cut, couldn't even see my kerf let alone the sight. I couldn't see if the tree was heavy on one side or if it even had limbs on it. I decided stop while I was living.
So yeah, i don't think that eposide made me smarter, maybe just little bit wiser. It hasent happened since. Not to that intensity. Live & learn. Im sure its still here where I spoke about my habit of not getting away from the stump. What did you guys tell me? Dont do it, for the most part. What did I do? Well I didn't listen. One good cross ways piece of locust and 2 torpedo poplar limbs is all it took there have been a number of sticks to clang a shoulder or knock a hat sideways. But that big poplar limb was too heavy for one person to even pick up. That one I think got catapulted into a tree behind me. Cause it was like a good 10 seconds befor the lights went out. The locust woud have killed me im sure of it. It grazed my back. KO. When i came to I was scared to try to move for fear of something not responding. The bigger of the poplar torpedos put my tin hat into my head. 5 staples from that. The smaller one hurt bad enough to be scary but not scary enough not to be angry about it. I feel like another good one to the head may be the last one. Thanks for trying though.
tramp bushler
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We all get ( learning curves ) unfortunately ! Thos s still post inghere have lived thru them . Hoqever, my body isnt the same as if I
tramp bushler
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Hadn't got hurt. the thing is, when a tree chucks a guy through the air, He doesnt have any control of anything. And as u indicated , not getting away from the stump far enough can get u hurt or killed. Thats what killed John Clark, Gary Thill and a few other guys Ive cut with Its what brokw Duane Loqe's neck twice . the 2 nd time it ended his carrer. And there are a bunch of other guys , myself included that had far too close a call. . Gary Thill did get away from the tree that got him but he was on horrible ground and couldnt get far enough away.
. A guy doesnt want to just blindly run away but rather have a plan and work the plan . Its best to have a good tree to hide behind. I say this for the benefit of any new guys , lurkers and as a reminder for the old hands.
. A guy doesnt want to just blindly run away but rather have a plan and work the plan . Its best to have a good tree to hide behind. I say this for the benefit of any new guys , lurkers and as a reminder for the old hands.
Not logging just a little firewood cutting, But what did I do wrong, besides misjudging the limb load?
I had this train wreck of a red oak to fall. It was right on the fence line and property line. Saturday, I successfully got the broken top down and off the remains of an old pump house that was partially supporting it, without further damage. No real skill there, just a lot of thought and sequencing. Anyway, I went to fall the stem today. I first cut the overhead stuff that might hurt me leaving only a shortened small limb to the far right (far left in picture) and the main branch that forked - the larger left was in a white pine and the smaller right was in the clear, but both were to the right of the fence. I sighted it down the middle of the fork and cut the left side hinge hoping to give it some more persuasion to roll a bit to the right. But despite limbing the white pine on the way down, it rolled to the left so much so that the fork landed square on a fence post elevating the trunk end. I cut the trunk free leaving it on the left of the fence and the top in the brush on the right; all without hurting the fence. Other than the white pine, it ended up looking like a magic trick but it was all unintended. Please check out my stump and let me know if I could/should have done something different.
Thanks, Ron
Original condition:
There's a pump house in there:
Cleared out to see better:
Up close of broken top:
Today's job (pump house in foreground and fence on each of stem):
Stump shots:
Tapered hinge -about 3" wide on right side: (The butt is pretty much on plane with its original falling position - parallel to the fence but on the left side ; this picture is after I cut it free from the top.)
The stump is level so this shot is a little deceiving but you can see on the stump and the stem where I partially overcut the undercut in the center from about 4" in on the near side to about 3" from the far side and where I went back in to take out the far corner (bar was shorter than the width of the required cuts). I didn't think anything about cutting the middle as I left uncut wood on each side. Turned out that some of the far side was punky. Is my "overcut" undercut what threw things off? Or what?
Poor Pine:
I had this train wreck of a red oak to fall. It was right on the fence line and property line. Saturday, I successfully got the broken top down and off the remains of an old pump house that was partially supporting it, without further damage. No real skill there, just a lot of thought and sequencing. Anyway, I went to fall the stem today. I first cut the overhead stuff that might hurt me leaving only a shortened small limb to the far right (far left in picture) and the main branch that forked - the larger left was in a white pine and the smaller right was in the clear, but both were to the right of the fence. I sighted it down the middle of the fork and cut the left side hinge hoping to give it some more persuasion to roll a bit to the right. But despite limbing the white pine on the way down, it rolled to the left so much so that the fork landed square on a fence post elevating the trunk end. I cut the trunk free leaving it on the left of the fence and the top in the brush on the right; all without hurting the fence. Other than the white pine, it ended up looking like a magic trick but it was all unintended. Please check out my stump and let me know if I could/should have done something different.
Thanks, Ron
Original condition:
There's a pump house in there:
Cleared out to see better:
Up close of broken top:
Today's job (pump house in foreground and fence on each of stem):
Stump shots:
Tapered hinge -about 3" wide on right side: (The butt is pretty much on plane with its original falling position - parallel to the fence but on the left side ; this picture is after I cut it free from the top.)
The stump is level so this shot is a little deceiving but you can see on the stump and the stem where I partially overcut the undercut in the center from about 4" in on the near side to about 3" from the far side and where I went back in to take out the far corner (bar was shorter than the width of the required cuts). I didn't think anything about cutting the middle as I left uncut wood on each side. Turned out that some of the far side was punky. Is my "overcut" undercut what threw things off? Or what?
Poor Pine:
Looks and sounds like yer hold wood just failed, ya did most everything right, except maybe cut a little to much hold wood off the one side, but yer dealing with a damaged tree, and some times this is the result.
Me being me, I probably would have taken a little smaller undercut, and left more hold wood, then beat wedges until I was bright red and moist... then the hold wood would have broke anyway.
Me being me, I probably would have taken a little smaller undercut, and left more hold wood, then beat wedges until I was bright red and moist... then the hold wood would have broke anyway.
NL,
Thanks. This thing has bugged me so much that I reconstructed the crime at lunch today. I believe you are on the money - hinge broke too soon. My bar was too short (a 33") and I was too lazy to climb the fence so in attempting to reach the far side on my face cut I accidentally set things up for an unintended Dutchman when the far side holding wood failed which apparently caused a stall that broke my tapered hinge resulting in loss of control of the fall. The limb weight was enough to make the stem roll to the left. What I was missing in my earlier analysis was the premature breaking of my hinge. I was too focused on thinking the overcut should have actually help move things to the right; it didn't occur to me until your post and my visit to the stump today that the stall from the overcut must have caused my hinge to break prematurely.
You can see in the fourth picture a dead limb that was directly overhead which is why I wanted to cut it without beating it over. I did have two wedges in place side by side though. If I had to repeat this, I think a less sloppy face cut would have been sufficient.
Ron
Thanks. This thing has bugged me so much that I reconstructed the crime at lunch today. I believe you are on the money - hinge broke too soon. My bar was too short (a 33") and I was too lazy to climb the fence so in attempting to reach the far side on my face cut I accidentally set things up for an unintended Dutchman when the far side holding wood failed which apparently caused a stall that broke my tapered hinge resulting in loss of control of the fall. The limb weight was enough to make the stem roll to the left. What I was missing in my earlier analysis was the premature breaking of my hinge. I was too focused on thinking the overcut should have actually help move things to the right; it didn't occur to me until your post and my visit to the stump today that the stall from the overcut must have caused my hinge to break prematurely.
You can see in the fourth picture a dead limb that was directly overhead which is why I wanted to cut it without beating it over. I did have two wedges in place side by side though. If I had to repeat this, I think a less sloppy face cut would have been sufficient.
Ron
I had a similar hinge-breaking incident a few years ago cleaning up after a storm. I cut a sycamore, a species I was unfamiliar with, and found the wood dense and wet and the fibers short and brittle (it was a cold winter day) and its broad crown ripped my hinge right off of the near side. It bounced the tree off a cement wall, did no damage, and made me re-think that tree a few times. Looking back, I should have left a way fatter hinge on the side that tore off and nipped the far side so it would pull toward me when it went. The fiber behavior was what got me. I expected it to be less brittle. By contrast, on the same cleanup project I cut a hickory whose fibers were so long and strong that I couldn't get them to break. I wedged and wedged and nibbled and nibbled and in the end got it to go over when the hinge was only about a half inch thick and the wedges were stacked 3 high. When it tipped, it was in slow motion, and pulled almost 3 feet of fiber out of both the stem and the stump. That one I should have gutted. Ah, well, that's how we learn.
Knots will get ya too.
Had more then a couple go funky because of an old hidden knot (cottonwoods mostly).
I the now immortal words of D. Douglas Dent examine your stumps, especially the ones that went wrong, learn to read them and understand what went wrong... (more or less anyway, at least how I remember it...)
Had more then a couple go funky because of an old hidden knot (cottonwoods mostly).
I the now immortal words of D. Douglas Dent examine your stumps, especially the ones that went wrong, learn to read them and understand what went wrong... (more or less anyway, at least how I remember it...)
Getting to low on a hard maple or white/red oak will get you too. The grain gets real wavy where the butt flares close to the ground and that stuff is weak and unforgiving.
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Skeans
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If you're cutting with a short bar take the tip until you feel a lip then back bar it you're even across your sight cut.
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Skeans & Co., thanks for the tips. The more I think about what I did the more foolish I feel. I cut so few trees and have all the time in the world to do them; I should be more careful and observant. Ron
D. Dent wisdom is best paid attention to. I always take the time to fret my mistakes and try not to make them a second time. I left one particular extra-ugly stump as-is so that I could look at it when I needed humbling... but the grounds guys ground it out awhile back so whatever lessons I've learned are all I'm gonna get from that one. No matter. I've got plenty more mistakes left to make.
