I spent the weekend clearing windblown pine trees in a plantation. The small ones were fine, but the bigger ones were quite hard, and I’d appreciate some advice from the assembled company.
The plantation is pretty dense as it wasn’t thinned enough when the trees were about 10 years old, so if we get windblow, the trees lean on the next door one, gradually pushing them down like dominoes. Generally they never fall flat, as they are all hung up on each other. The “initial” tree is the easiest, as that is the closest to horizontal – I simply slice it up, cutting from the bottom of the tree with the top of the bar. So far so good. As you get towards the last tree in a group of leaners, they get more vertical, and that is where the problems start.
I’ll use the biggest problem I had as an example. A 60ft doug fir, about 20” across at the bottom and dead straight was leaning on its neighbours at an angle of perhaps 5 degrees. The root ball was clearly lifted from the ground, so it had to go. A conventional “notch/backcut/hinge” technique did not work – it moved to about 6 degrees and damn near pinched the saw as the hinge started to collapse due to the weight on it. Eventually I got it down by cutting a notch in the top side of the trunk about 3 feet further up, then undercutting – this allowed the 3ft length to “fold up”, and it was easy from then on. However the second cut felt pretty dangerous mainly because of the huge weight of the tree bearing down. Does anyone have any ideas?
On the saw specifics, I can report that putting an 18” bar on my 046 was the best thing I’ve done – the weight is sensible, and it cuts soooo fast. That is a great combination.
The plantation is pretty dense as it wasn’t thinned enough when the trees were about 10 years old, so if we get windblow, the trees lean on the next door one, gradually pushing them down like dominoes. Generally they never fall flat, as they are all hung up on each other. The “initial” tree is the easiest, as that is the closest to horizontal – I simply slice it up, cutting from the bottom of the tree with the top of the bar. So far so good. As you get towards the last tree in a group of leaners, they get more vertical, and that is where the problems start.
I’ll use the biggest problem I had as an example. A 60ft doug fir, about 20” across at the bottom and dead straight was leaning on its neighbours at an angle of perhaps 5 degrees. The root ball was clearly lifted from the ground, so it had to go. A conventional “notch/backcut/hinge” technique did not work – it moved to about 6 degrees and damn near pinched the saw as the hinge started to collapse due to the weight on it. Eventually I got it down by cutting a notch in the top side of the trunk about 3 feet further up, then undercutting – this allowed the 3ft length to “fold up”, and it was easy from then on. However the second cut felt pretty dangerous mainly because of the huge weight of the tree bearing down. Does anyone have any ideas?
On the saw specifics, I can report that putting an 18” bar on my 046 was the best thing I’ve done – the weight is sensible, and it cuts soooo fast. That is a great combination.
