FS fallers

[slowp]

The Curse of the Hooktenders! They usually don't have any wedges and also have to use The Crew Saw! The last guy had a saw with a bent bar. But I felt safe being nearby because the tree had a definite lean and he was sending it that way.

Did I mention that we don't have fresh donuts when we go in and drink coffee? This is a rural area and we don't have a bakery because of septic/sewer issues. We have to rough it and have Hostess if we want donuts.

:hmm3grin2orange:

 

[Greenbay]

For the faller classes and diameter restrictions, A is just like an apprentice and have to be supervised. (not necessarily having someone right over their shoulder but have a higher class feller in the field with them) B's can work without supervision and supervise A's, while cutting up to 24" dbh. If they are working with C fellers they can normally cut bigger than 24" but sometimes run their plan by a C feller. Same with A's they can cut more than 8" but the main thing is always to know your limits and don't cut if you think it's too risky.

 

[Humptulips]

unless your boss explains that if you don't cut it then the hooketender will have to,and since you're a cutter and much better, you'd better cut it, so the hooktender don't get killed.

Some trees are too dangerous, period. But... rare. Sometimes you can think about or look at an individual tree many many times before you get to it, eventually you figure it out- the safest way to do it, like a puzzle, with serious consequences. Don cha know.

My experience, I would get all the tough ones and I'm not just talking about dangerous. Bad lays or a lot of dirt, runaways and bad leans near a line or creek, even seen em left because of bees at the stump.
Why does this happen? IMHO some fallers are just lazy, not all but some. Nobody takes responsibility for watching these guys strips and as long as they cut cheap they keep a job. They don't get canned until they create a huge SNAFU. I could tell you about a few of them, like the time I ended up cutting over 300 trees in an 80 acre unit or the guy that fell for 2 days worth of timber down the hill into standing timber and never bucked a single tree. This was 5 and 6 foot hemlock and white fir so they weren't moving without bucking. I can't even count the number of root wads I bucked off.

Don't give me this curse of the hooktender stuff. It's CURSE OF THE TIMBER FALLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, I'm calmed down now.Hey, I've seen some of the best cutters around but seen some bad ones too.

 

[slowp]

When I worked here before, and the mill had it's own logging crew, they made the fallers come back and work the landing. It seems they had not bucked or limbed the trees properly, and the chaser needed help.

One unit that was yarded this year was felled the wrong way and the yarding crew had a beastly time getting the logs out. But, I'm still leery of hooktenders!

 

[John Ellison]

My experience, I would get all the tough ones and I'm not just talking about dangerous. Bad lays or a lot of dirt, runaways and bad leans near a line or creek, even seen em left because of bees at the stump.
Why does this happen? IMHO some fallers are just lazy, not all but some. Nobody takes responsibility for watching these guys strips and as long as they cut cheap they keep a job. They don't get canned until they create a huge SNAFU. I could tell you about a few of them, like the time I ended up cutting over 300 trees in an 80 acre unit or the guy that fell for 2 days worth of timber down the hill into standing timber and never bucked a single tree. This was 5 and 6 foot hemlock and white fir so they weren't moving without bucking. I can't even count the number of root wads I bucked off.

Don't give me this curse of the hooktender stuff. It's CURSE OF THE TIMBER FALLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, I'm calmed down now.Hey, I've seen some of the best cutters around but seen some bad ones too.

Yep, for some fallers a Russian coupling is S.O.P. They think that the yarders can just rip them right off. Or the only ones that are bucked clean thru are fell out of the unit and take a four choker tag. At least a season in the rigging ought to be a requirement for timber cutters.

 

[Ivan H.]

My experience, I would get all the tough ones and I'm not just talking about dangerous. Bad lays or a lot of dirt, runaways and bad leans near a line or creek, even seen em left because of bees at the stump.
Why does this happen? IMHO some fallers are just lazy, not all but some. Nobody takes responsibility for watching these guys strips and as long as they cut cheap they keep a job. They don't get canned until they create a huge SNAFU. I could tell you about a few of them, like the time I ended up cutting over 300 trees in an 80 acre unit or the guy that fell for 2 days worth of timber down the hill into standing timber and never bucked a single tree. This was 5 and 6 foot hemlock and white fir so they weren't moving without bucking. I can't even count the number of root wads I bucked off.

Don't give me this curse of the hooktender stuff. It's CURSE OF THE TIMBER FALLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, I'm calmed down now.Hey, I've seen some of the best cutters around but seen some bad ones too.

You do know bees can kill people.

 

[Humptulips]

You do know bees can kill people.

Hook tenders are people too. Sometimes you get sick of cleaning up other peoples messes. Try this, do your job and don't leave it for someone else.

 

[joesawer]

Hook tenders are people too. Sometimes you get sick of cleaning up other peoples messes. Try this, do your job and don't leave it for someone else.

I know exactly what you mean. I have often had to go clean up after other fallers, it sucks cleaning up some ones mess after they have cherry picked it or just left a mess in general.
I really don't mind getting a few here and there that they left because of safety or skill level issues, but I hate climbing through a jackstraw in order to cut one out of every 5 or 10 trees and trying to get their hangers down. The bad thing is that some people just don't understand why it should pay extra to clean up behind some half baked wanabe.

 

[Ivan H.]

Hook tenders are people too. Sometimes you get sick of cleaning up other peoples messes. Try this, do your job and don't leave it for someone else.

That's true ,but if the bees get after you no one's going to keep cutting. their going to run You either got to smoke the bees out .the forester probably don't want you to put chemicals on them. The fallers should do their job,they make good money,but I don't know any fallers that like bees.

 

[hammerlogging]

humptulips, I can imagine what you've been left behind to deal with. Hard to find good workers these days? Is it really harder these days than in the past?

I've been on crews where I would cut 70% of the timber but if another faller would come in they would sneek straight to the gravy I'd been saving for a day I needed/deserved it, like to get ahead, or cause I wanted to really cruise/flow that day, then not enough even finish around the edges nitpicking out the hard stuff, left for me. Do these people know how sorry they are? I think some know they act like this, others do it subconsciously. Or am i the stupid one, for saving gravy stands?

Bees- if its really a problem I've always gone back to that tree first thing in the morning before they can stir (cold) or kill em one day and go back to the tree the next. But I was raised right (and it seems to have mostly worked, except, for instance, getting into this line of work). But, I'm talking about yellowjackets here.

I agree about a cutter working the rigging to know how to make a job better for all. What I like to see most, is a team effort. Its all about getting the wood on the truck right? Anyone workling with atleast one other person needs to be doing their job, but also, nearly tied with this primary function, needs to be facilitating the work of others. I hate the selfish/lazy mentality.

 

[slowp]

What I run into, are smallish trees left standing. I'll go try to catch the fallers and find out why--I'm really curious when the good guys leave them. They explain, I look and learn, and I'd rather see those trees left standing than hung up. The smaller stuff being cut here is limb locked with a leave tree every once in a while, and they'll leave them if the trees are along the boundary, where there aren't any trees to drive the cut tree over with. Once there was an explanation, I understand and it isn't a big deal. I do not care to have to wander all over the place to keep out of the way of hangups.

There is definitely a problem when I find chunks all over the place. That cutter needs more supervision and shouldn't be working alone. Unfortunately, private industry seems to be doing the same thing as the FS, hiring fewer people and not much on the ground training for them.

 

[tek9tim]

i got a friend who's a class A faller here in TX and he's with a crew workin' on the blow down and clean up in the houston area...

got a phone call from him to see how things were going

then the subject of dogs on the 441, 460, etc.came up

he said those guys take the dogs off...

way to make yourself work harder once that chain
gets the least bit dull

Funny, we put bigger dogs on ours.

Leave it to the government to come up with something like this. So what do you do when you come to a tree out of your class? Quit for the day. Looney!

Yeah, it's like Greenbay said. What it comes down to is that the Gov. doesn't trust people to have decent enough judgement as to what they can fall, so they have a tiered system. Year after year, people prove they lack the proper judgment. Of course, most accidents/fatalities are with 14-18 inch diameter trees, regardless of the faller's qualifications. I think it's a pretty decent system, but maybe that's because I'm a supervisor and I don't like to think about some of my people cutting big trees, or because I'm a C, it's all up to me as to what I cut. And yeah, when I was a B, I felled and bucked stuff that was bigger than 24", without a C faller around. BUT, only if it was really simple, and my risk of getting injured was really low. If I did injure myself, I would have been all on my own for fixing myself up since I was performing outside of my scope of experience/qualifications. Most (ok, maybe just half) agency fire crews have at least 1 C-faller on them, so if there's something big/nasty they come across, there's usually somebody who'll do something about it. There's nothing I love more than firing up a saw somebody else packed into (and will be packing it back out of) a hole to fall a big tree. Makes the cat herding all worthwhile.

 

[Humptulips]

That's true ,but if the bees get after you no one's going to keep cutting. their going to run You either got to smoke the bees out .the forester probably don't want you to put chemicals on them. The fallers should do their job,they make good money,but I don't know any fallers that like bees.

Don't really mind the bee thing as much as others. I've seen the time when I had to fall the tree, choke it and then run to the landing to unhook it. Only thing that made it worthwhile was thinking about the scalers when they rolled the load out at the mill. Ah, the evil hooktender comes to the surface.

 

[Ivan H.]

Your definitly right .You would think the company look after there crew,and where is the forester when allthis is going on?Your right about the bees to,there not as aggressive in the morning when it's cooler.

 

[HolmenTree]

Back to the original question of running dogs. Back in my cut and skid days in small/medium timber, we ran no dogs on our 70cc saws,just got in the way when limbing. With a properly sharpened chain the saw sucks into the tree while falling anyways. We had a Swede instructor from Husqvarna demonstrate the 6 point limbing technique to our crew once. With no dogs on his 266 he was pretty amazing in handling that saw. But then we realized loggers in Sweden are paid by the hour and we in Canada only worked piecework. Our 6 point technique was backblading the tree's limbs with the skidder and clipping the stray limbs and then the top with the saw.
Today in my tree service jobs I always run dogs, different kind of work.

 

[Humptulips]

In my hooking days I hated to see a saw on a side without a good set of dogs. Those wimpy dogs really suck for notching stumps.

 

[smokechase II]

bigger

The bigger the timber the bigger the dogs need to be.

A simple thought is where the dog free cutting is advocated the strongest is where the timber is the smallest. Scandinavia.

Also with the open face technique on the slanting cut on the face the use of dogs is occasionally difficult. Depending on what side you are cutting.

Moderately thick bark can be a good reason for the longer spikes too.

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

Most of that six point limbing technique that Holmentree mentions simply has no place on a big stem that is being walked out and knots bumped from a standing position.
Did someone mention bar length?

 

[Ivan H.]

What I run into, are smallish trees left standing. I'll go try to catch the fallers and find out why--I'm really curious when the good guys leave them. They explain, I look and learn, and I'd rather see those trees left standing than hung up. The smaller stuff being cut here is limb locked with a leave tree every once in a while, and they'll leave them if the trees are along the boundary, where there aren't any trees to drive the cut tree over with. Once there was an explanation, I understand and it isn't a big deal. I do not care to have to wander all over the place to keep out of the way of hangups.

There is definitely a problem when I find chunks all over the place. That cutter needs more supervision and shouldn't be working alone. Unfortunately, private industry seems to be doing the same thing as the FS, hiring fewer people and not much on the ground training for them.

Probably.

 

[056kid]

A saw without dogs or diggers as my co-worker would call them is just not a saw!!!

 

[forestryworks]

a saw without dogs is alot of work!