Giving the tree and/or some limbs a tug with a truck or similar reveals something about its condition. No guarantees but I'd rather go in cutting if it withstands a good hard pull beforehand.
Way too high. Most of the time for pulling over a tree, you don't need that much leverage, let alone on a dead tree.
I have been clearing trees on our woodlot since 1972. That tree for me is a no brainer. It has a good lean to it. Notch it and drop it. I surely wouldn't worry about how many inches of hinge to leave. That tree is coming down by its own shear weight. I would back cut that until i see a gap opening up then get out of the way. I wouldn't waste my time putting a rope or a cable on it. I have cut down dozens of standing dead timber. Not once have I ever seen branches fall off of a tree from chainsaw vibrations. They do fall off when hitting other trees on the way down. This is just my .02 cents worth. The front two rows of this pile was last weeks dead Ash trees loaded with dead branches. Of which no branches fell off by themselves. As of this afternoon the front pile is stacked full all the way to the big Maple on the left. That canopy in the rear is 20 feet long.Hello,
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here is an interesting question to ponder over turkey and football.
The Forest Service guidelines specify a falling hinge thickness of 10% DBH as a maximum. The 10% number works out pretty good for trees under 20" or so. But what about a 48" tree? 10% is 5 inches which sounds like a near impossibility to wedge over, especially if the tree is dead and has no lean or weight. Think about trying to break a true to life 5" x 48" piece of wood. Think about a huge dead, dry piece of red oak.
Here is the situation: The tree in the photo is right next to a hiking trail and has been dropping widow maker limbs onto the trail. Due to this the trail section monitor has asked me to evaluate the safe removal of this tree. The tree was supposedly alive a couple of years ago until the town put a sewer line in the vicinity of the tree and damaged the root system.
As a disclaimer I have not laid eyes or hands on the tree as of yet. I do have it on good authority that the DBH was actually measured at a little over 48". The diameter tape was only 12 foot and that was the end of the tape!
For mitigating resources/measures we have access to rope rigging and a Tu-17 Griphoist so this could belay having to wedge the tree over.
Your thoughts?
View attachment 1222720
48" is absolutely massive
Yeah but you're just tougher than I amCome on now! I did a 50" dead ash (30 years before EAB) when I was a 20 y/old , bar 24"/Homie . That was with my Dad's homie SXL .
It was a dual top. I cut one notch and bore cut each side. Whole tree split. 1/2 fell. Did the same with the rest.
That tree would fall into the field, dead stuff up top be careful of.
Yes, Still no movement. Appears that this tree is rotting from the outside in. The core is the only thing left holding it up.Did you give it another "tug" once you'd made the face cut?
Given the state of that trunk, maybe it was best to walk away, seems there is a multitude of issues with that tree, sometimes, just sometimes, it's best to play it safeWell, the day arrived with some surprising and not forecast light rain and drizzle. Luckily most of it had passed by the time we got to the work site.
Initial assessment of possibly falling this tree acreoss the field (aka sewer line easement) could have possible thrown debris into a neighboring parking lot on the far side of the easement so that was a no go. We finally decided that the best falling direction was along the ROW.
We had a volunteer with a tree access device (air cannon) and we put a regular bull rope over some of the higher, smaller limbs and managed to break and pull a few of them down. We noticed that it didn't take much force to start the tree twisting a bit.
We set the griphoist in the lower crotch about half way up and proceeded to put some tension on the tree. The tree didn't budge with 2000 lbs pull.
We then took to the lower trunk with an axe to try to determine just how much sound wood remained in the trunk. There seemed to be a fair amount of sound wood on the side toward the intended falling direction so I decide to put a face cut in it to see hat we had going on in the location of the hinge.
The results of the face cut were not promising. This is a red oak tree and as you can see there is very little sound fiber (red wood) at the apex of the hinge. The rest of the face cut although not rotten was punky wood and not good fiber.
That was a 56" tree before we started removing the bark. For a normal face cut the minimum hinge width should be about 45". Due to the decayed outer layers of the tree we were already significantly under that at about 36". According tho current USFS guidelines the No-Go criteria specifies a minimum 30% good fiber at the hinge. This was borderline.
However, the real kicker is that due to the available saw bar length we would have had to bore through the middle of the hinge to clean out the center to do the back cut. Based on the other condition signs of the remainder of the trunk we decided to walk away which I believe was the correct decision.
Below are some photos of the condition of the trunk.
View attachment 1226777
View attachment 1226778View attachment 1226779View attachment 1226780View attachment 1226781
Except for that now it's even more compromised than before, making it far more of a hazard.Given the state of that trunk, maybe it was best to walk away, seems there is a multitude of issues with that tree, sometimes, just sometimes, it's best to play it safe
Good job Lads
It's still standing though! Although yes it does need to come down pretty fast,Except for that now it's even more compromised than before, making it far more of a hazard.
Enter your email address to join: