I felled a big black locust on my shed...

[cnczane]

This happened fall of 2022. I had successfully felled a number of the too-tall locusts (80') in an area of the property next to my outbuildings using a pull rope with pulleys, and had rigged a 27:1 pull rope about 30' up for the last one which was closest to the shed, only 4' away. I even had made a "push-jack" by slipping a rectangular tube with a toothed, angled foot welded onto one end over the end of one of those long tall farm bumper jacks. So I had push and I had two helpers for pulling, and they were pulling through a re-direct pulley to be out of the line of fall. At the last moment--isn't that always the way?--I decided to change the 27:1 pull back to 3:1 so the pullers wouldn't run out of pull rope before it started going over.

Remember watching the first 'pro' video you watched, emphasizing "the plan?" I remember thinking, "Yeah, yeah, let's get to it!"

The pro video talks about walking around the tree, establishing things like paths of escape. If I had done that, which I didn't because it was open all around it, I might have noticed that the tree was not round cross-section, but elliptical/oval. I thought I had everything covered with the pulling and pushing, but my face cut--which I had made without examining the tree all-the-way-around--was much too deep for the broad side of the oval, and thinking I'd already cut a half dozen "just like it", I made the back cut too deep--and the hinge was too thin and snapped while the tree was still vertical. There aren't many things scarier than seeing an 80' stem start "walking" on the stump... Right away I realized that the redirect meant nothing because the tree was out-of-control, and it turned out the 3:1 pull was nowhere near enough for the pullers to be able to influence the fall.

Mercifully, as the tree slowly spun on the stump it tipped over onto the shed. I was already toting up the destruction costs when the tree stopped, hung up in another standing dead oak on the opposite side of the shed, saving it.

It could have been much, much worse, but as it was, it cost me $1,000 to have professionals remove it without further damage. The damage to the shed was a half-trunk-diameter-sized indentation in the roof--which landed precisely between two trusses--requiring banging the crushed waferboard back out and reinforcing it and applying some repair shingles, all the time cursing myself for being so over-confident. When I actually thought about it, I realized I'd actually felled maybe 20 trees in my lifetime, if that.

I got a proper scare, and don't approach felling with the same attitude as before. "If you're not scared, go away and come back when you are."

 

[Mad Professor]

 

[cnczane]

You really should look up the word.

 

[Del_]

How do you rig for a 27:1

 

[cnczane]

Essentially, create a 3:1, which is a pulley attached to the pull rope on the tree, the rope then going down to a pulley at the base of a distant tree which it passes through and goes back up and through the pulley on the rope. If you count the "ropes" attached to the pulley attached to the rope, you'll count 3.

A 3:1 requires 2 pulleys. Now, attach a second pulley to the pull rope coming out of the first pulley attached to the rope, run that rope down to another pulley at the base of the tree and back up to and through it to get a 9:1. Repeat for a 27:1. There's a special attachment "plate" sold for this purpose by logging stores. You also need to rig a "pull capture" to hold the "purchase" (the movement "so far") so that if needed, the pulleys can be reset to continue pulling.

A good way to think of it is, when I want to make the rope in my hand easier to pull, I can attach a pulley as high on the rope as I can, and another pulley at the base of a distant tree tree and run the rope as described to get 3X the pulling power on the rope in my hand. (In fact, I have to think about it this way since I don't do it that often.)

The problem with amplifying the pulling force is that it takes 3X as much rope to move the tree as a direct pull. Meanwhile the distance between pulleys is being reduced as you pull. When any pair touch, you've done all you can and you have to reset. I didn't want to reset in the middle of a pull, but then didn't have enough force.

In retrospect, I _could_ have constructed a Very Long 27:1 setup on the ground before throwing the pull rope into the tree and hoisting it up in place.

FOR THAT MATTER, it occurs to me only now that (since I described the 3:1 as being "for the rope in my hand") I _could_ have brought the pull rope down to a pulley at the base of a different tree, a re-direct, and then rigged a 27:1 to a third tree to pull on _it_, on-the-ground AND in-a-safe-direction. Resetting the pulleys would not involve "reaching as high as you can reach." You'd still need purchase capture.

There are good online videos for this, especially by rescue squads.

 

[fields_mj]

I had a large limb fall out of a silver maple and land on my garage earlier this summer. The limb was about 40' long and roughly 12" across at the base. The base was still snagged in the tree which was about 15 ft from the garage. The fork where it broke and hung was about 8ft above the garage roof, and amazingly it didn't do much damage to the roof. One branch poked a baseball sized hole through the roof above the overhang on the front of the garage. Easy repair. I had my 14yo son give me a hand cleaning it up so that I wasn't having to go up and down the ladder every 5 minutes. I had the limb all cut up to the front edge of the garage in a couple of hours. Easy peezy. Since it was in the upper 90s that Saturday, we decided to call it a day and come back the following Saturday to finish getting the branch on the ground and cleaned up. My 34' travel trailer sits beside this tree, so the following Saturday I pulled it forward about 20' to get it out of the way. A couple of cuts later and the end of the branch was on its way to the ground exactly they way I anticipated. What I didn't realize was that the height of the base of the branch was about 18" taller than the remaining length of the branch meaning that the branch was not long enough to reach the ground. As it approached vertical, I realized the error of my ways. It proceeded a little past 90 degrees before finally breaking off and falling roughly 18" to the ground. At that point the recently freed end (ie the HEAVY end) of the branch was free to swing back towards the overhang of the garage, picking up momentum as it went.






I was extremely lucky. It made contact with the garage door, but not enough to leave a mark. Realistically, this repair involved a pair of 12' 2x6s, a sheet of OSB about 10 pcs of siding, a couple sticks of J Channel, some nails and some time. Could have been a lot worse.

 

[fields_mj]

Occasionally I volunteer with a group that does storm clean up. Last winter we went down TN to help clean up after a tornado went through. On one piece of property, the only thing the guy had was a house trailer and a new 7x16 enclosed trailer. The enclosed trailer was completely un-touched. It looked like it was only a couple of weeks old and I remember thinking how fortunate the owner was because at least he had a dry place to store any personal momentos they were able to salvage from the house trailer which was a total loss. The top of a large tree had snapped off and landed on the house trailer. Thankfully, neither he nor any of his numerous pets were injured. The other half of the remaining tree was about the only thing left standing on the property, and I'd estimate that it was a little under 3' across at the base. The enclosed trailer was inaccessible because of all the debris between it and the road and driveway, but it also wasn't in the way of anything.

We were working on the property across the street (up hill) and I watched as an older guy on another crew started working on the standing tree. It had a 5' tall wooden fence that ran right against the trunk on the down hill side. That one panel of fence against the trunk was the only thing that remained of the fence. Rather than rip the fence out of the way so he would have clear access to the tree, he used a step ladder to make the face cut and back cut above the fence (roughly 6' from the ground). He moved the ladder and started making the back cut, but didn't bother using any wedges. Mind you, the remaining tree was still probably 100' tall, but it had very few branches on it and most of those were pointing mostly upwards instead of reaching out horizontally. It wasn't a big pole, but it wasn't far from it either. The tree had a slight lean towards the house trailer (directly away from the face cut) and finally rocked back and pinches the bar. Now they try to launch a 1/4" rope up into the very top of the tree to use as a pull rope. After finally getting it snagged (and I do mean permanently snagged) about 3/4 of the way up, they back off and try to pull the tree over with an old suburban. the rope was about 15' too short to reach the old truck, but they were able to come up with a piece of chain to make up the difference. It was enough to free the saw, but they quickly snapped the little rope. At this point I walked away because I didn't want to actually see anyone get crushed or otherwise maimed by either the tree or the saw. After I walked away, apparently the guy made a new back cut and cut completely through the hinge wood. Remember that nice 7x16 enclosed trailer that was likely the sum total of its owners entire financial net worth? Yup, the tree spun on the trunk roughly 90 degrees and dropped directly down the center of it turning it into an aluminum taco shell.