Hollow Dead Trees

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xtremetrees

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This oak was hollow for about 30 feet of the stem.
It branched over the shed and house. It was so dead when I roped the limb over the shed (background) the top broke and fell into a million pieces on the house. We had to blow the roof off. I did not predict it to be this dead and the top to break at the forces of my rigging. Im glad I targeted the limb over the shed first. Very dead trees are not limber at all. They react like steel when force is put on them.They are very stiff until they break I try to avoid that but some times it happens.
 
Mike Maas said:
It's much easier to work the tree from the outside, trying to crawl up inside a hollow tree doesn't allow enough room to work.

Probably easier to make bore cuts from the inside though :dizzy: and you can use a shorter bar.
 
Mike Maas said:
It's much easier to work the tree from the outside, trying to crawl up inside a hollow tree doesn't allow enough room to work.
Keep trying though, you'll get it figured out.

Great picture...a keeper.

First time I worked for a real tree company and was making my first climb for them I was pretty nervous. I was ready to start up the tree and the boss looked at me, spit his tobaccy and asked, "You climbing inside that tree, boy?"

I had my spurs on the wrong feet. :dizzy:
 
Haha thats funny. Down in the swamps of south GA there are alot of Cyprus(SP) that are hollow and ole time loggers would sometimes stand inside of the trees and fell them, or so I've heard. In Waycross, Ga. there is a musuem that has a coon dog trapped inside a hollow spot he had treed a coon into it and got trapped, Ive never seen it but at the ole folks home there in waycross is the second largest live oak on the planet or so they say ive never seen it either.

Pan you wanna help me out Tuesday on the 40 foot ****y trap. You could cut it in 1 place and 4 35 inch pines should fall to the ground.There are no obstacles underneath. Sounds fun dont it.If not I'll employ 3 ropes on the job 2 of which ill be tied into.
 
Its the hollow trees that scare me the most.I'm not really sure why I'm still alive because of them really. But then I think of beetle killed pines over the power lines. One year we cut over 1000 of which all were over the powerlines, we'd go back a week later and the trees we hadn't cut failed at the base.I met my first free climber on that job. Yep he never used a rope in fact refused to learn ropes at all and they called him cowboy fer real. At least you know a pine tree is pretty dead when it looses its cones-needles-bark mostly in that order--but with hollow trees you just never know how dead they are because the trees grown around the hollow spot. I think a cylinder of growth is pretty strong thou.
I pay close attention from the ground up looking for hollow spots. I'll even circle the tree to look for hollow spots that I dont see going up.
I wish more tree folks would price dead trees high. I'll price them so high I dont get them and pray tell for another tree. Dead trees their booggery. I would'nt do a tree this dead again, but I'm older and wiser and I'mma live for another tree if I pass um by.
 
xtremetrees:
I've heard accounts of loggers on steep ground doing some of their cutting while inside hollowed out larger trees. While I have no first hand accounts of this, I believe it to be true based on a safety dementia that afflicted many cutters a couple decades back.
For some neat photos on cutting burning hollowed trees please see a thread that I'll start in a minute labeled "cutting burning trees".
 
xtremetrees said:
Pan you wanna help me out Tuesday on the 40 foot ****y trap. You could cut it in 1 place and 4 35 inch pines should fall to the ground.There are no obstacles underneath. Sounds fun dont it.If not I'll employ 3 ropes on the job 2 of which ill be tied into.

I am already committed Tues. AM but may be able to get with you in the afternoon. I will email you.
 
smokechase II said:
xtremetrees:
I've heard accounts of loggers on steep ground doing some of their cutting while inside hollowed out larger trees. While I have no first hand accounts of this, I believe it to be true based on a safety dementia that afflicted many cutters a couple decades back.
For some neat photos on cutting burning hollowed trees please see a thread that I'll start in a minute labeled "cutting burning trees".

in beranek's book, he sometimes talks about having a person wait in the hollow and watch for the bar to come through. :eek:
 
Sizzle:
We see that you made it up till past midnight, West Coast time.
Which of Beranek's books?
Fundamentals or the new one?

I suppose it's not too early in the year for a couple cheap shots.
Is the person in the hollow a friend or not a friend?
Have they been advised on which direction the bar is allegedly coming from?
What happened to just taking the time for the faller to look all by hisself?

I do prefer Beranek's Fundamentals from what I've read so far, (weak on diagrams for the newbee but still very understandable), as it covers a lot in a plain speaking manner. I agree with and I really like it better than Dents.
The more recent Beranek book is not intended as an educational vehicle so much, but it captures a place and time and inspires.

I still would suggest that being inside a tree being cut on is about a good as job as driving a gasoline tanker in Bagdad.
 
smokechaser, ya i pushed past midnight alright, you?

the book i was refering to was his new one, High climbers and timber fallers. I'm unclear if watching for the bar in the hollow was actually a joke to play on someone. Apparently, the noise of the tree poping is pretty loud inside the tree hollow, giving the person inside the impression that the tree is falling, which causes them to run out in hysterics.
 
Xtreme...was that dead tree a laurel or water oak? I have cut a lot of them for my firewood business and it seems like a large percentage of the water and laurels are like this once they get a little older. Teh city arborist calls them "overmature" And they do get scary once they are dead. I had climbed up one can I was going to cut the top out so I could drop it without hitting the house, that I realized I would put myself in jeopardy of falling to my death as close as that cut would have to be to my lifeline, so I broke as many branches off as I could and tried again a few weeks later. We actually pulled the thing over setting the tagline. So the good Lord was watching over a foolish young firewood cutter who thought he knew more than he did. Be careful..I will.
 
DJ, It was a water oak. By the name of it me tends to think its the cause of the rotting inside but I am unsure.

How did treemen survive back in the day without a throwball ? fact is they didnt friend so use them throwballs everyday.:)

Pan Did you recieve my reply TY fer the offer I look forward to climbing with you bro.I have been called the gadgit man so bring your tree killin stuff..It is the ole time veterans on this site keep me safe.
 
xtremetrees said:
Its the hollow trees that scare me the most.I'm not really sure why I'm still alive because of them really. But then I think of beetle killed pines over the power lines. One year we cut over 1000 of which all were over the powerlines, we'd go back a week later and the trees we hadn't cut failed at the base.I met my first free climber on that job. Yep he never used a rope in fact refused to learn ropes at all and they called him cowboy fer real. At least you know a pine tree is pretty dead when it looses its cones-needles-bark mostly in that order--but with hollow trees you just never know how dead they are because the trees grown around the hollow spot. I think a cylinder of growth is pretty strong thou.
I pay close attention from the ground up looking for hollow spots. I'll even circle the tree to look for hollow spots that I dont see going up.
I wish more tree folks would price dead trees high. I'll price them so high I dont get them and pray tell for another tree. Dead trees their booggery. I would'nt do a tree this dead again, but I'm older and wiser and I'mma live for another tree if I pass um by.


A cylinder of growth IS pretty strong, and in hazardous tree assessment there’s a formula for determining strength loss in a tree by measuring the ratio of strong wood to the decay column. Obviously, this formula is a general rule of thumb under ideal conditions, and common sense and the ability to assess other factors that may affect strength loss must be considered, such as:

If the tree is dead, or if more than 50% of major limbs are dead with a history of decline, species of tree, proximity of decay to main branch crotches (especially V-crotches), leaning trees, basal cavities, size and density of the crown (sail effect), how protected the tree is from wind, girdling roots, root decay, and any other factors that may adversely affect the tree’s structural integrity.

The F. A. Bartlett Tree Expert Co. uses a 33% strength loss threshold to determine whether a tree is hazardous and thus should be removed. For hardwoods you can usually drill into the tree with an 1/8-inch drill to determine the amount of sound wood. But with softwoods the transition between sound and rotten wood is more difficult to ascertain, and an increment borer, auger drill, or shigometer is preferred. Since the decay isn’t usually uniform, multiple sites should be drilled, and the resulting thicknesses of sound wood are averaged.

The formula for a tree without a basal cavity is:

(diameter of decay column)^3 / (diameter of stem)^3 x 100

So, for instance if you drill a few holes in a 15-inch Sugar Maple (with no open cavities) and the average sound wood is 2.5 inches thick, then the strength loss percentage is 29.6,

(10 x 10 x 10) divided by (15 x 15 x 15)

and since 29.6% has not exceeded the threshold of 33%, the tree is NOT considered a hazard tree.

Of course, other factors that affect the tree’s structural integrity (as above) must be taken into account as well. There is also a variation of this strength loss formula for trees with open cavities.

Anyway, to me this illustrates, as xtremetrees noted, that a “cylinder of growth is pretty strong.” But having done storm damage work, I’ve come to believe that the more you know your individual trees – how strong the wood is, how shallow-rooted they are, what kind of abiotic and biotic stresses are specific to that particular species of tree, etc. – the better off you are at assessing whether a tree’s going to fail or not.

And then of course there’s always that nagging unpredictability factor. How many times have we just stood back and looked at a downed tree and said, “now what the heck made that tree fall?”
 
Having cut up a lot of these water oaks and laurels for firewood and having cut a few down, and watched the real pros take many more down...here's what I have observed....they either have the heart rot right close to the base of the tree, with or without a cavity...or toward the top. In any case, when a laurel or water oak shows significant decline...especially if it's an older tree, you can be pretty sure that heart rot is somewhere in that tree. I started paying attention because I noticed that the top would often snap off of these trees even in not particularly severe afternoon thunderstorms. What's really interesting is that the top in the trees with heart rot near teh trunk, or the base...in trees with rot near teh top is often perfectly sound...and after the top snaps off, the tree can go on living almost indefinitely if there is enough foliage left to carry on photosynthesis. Are they safe...I've seen a lot of climbers go up them, and none drop out and die, but I would hate to make that judgement as a newbie...leave that to Chucky and those mathematical formulas.
 
pantheraba said:
Yep, check your PM...gadgets sounds like fun.

Murder Death Kill?
HUH?


Chucky, Thanks for your obvious experience comming thru.
Last month I saw a climber dump over 2500 lbs on a 24 inch hypoxilin cancer on a excurrent pine. He practically roped the pine in half. I expected the pine to fail at the canker but it didn't. Dude worked it out the bucket but I would have roped it.. NOT!:blob2:
 

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