Leaning Trees
Having thrown myself headfirst into tree cutting after hurricane Sandy here in NJ
Myself and newfound tree partner just about killed ourselves on our first three jobs.
Thousands of leaning trees here. Ive always cut trees sence a kid, big tree felling, taking down trees with backleans, climbing with homemade ropes and dads deadly
Old homelite.
Never had to deal with leaners. So for starters we underbid the job. Guy must have been laughing to himself at the quote and uttering" Rookies" we had billboarded on our foreheads.
To make a long story short, we were working with an 017, 021, 029 and my new 311 purchased that morning. Also had a bunch of cable pullys, chains and not so heavy duty lines.
So we start making the wrong cuts. We notch the underside then attach a cable pully tothe other large tree it was hung up on. Partner starts making a face cut, pinches the bar, tree breaks and drops 2 feet with the 029 bar resting 8 inches into the ground bentlike a banana. We dig out around the sides to pull the case bolts off and get the head out of the way. Run down to the hardware store and pick up another 20 inch bar that we destroy about an hour later.
So we get back to breaking things. Bend the cable pully handle and now stuck tight to tree. Oh well. So we just pick up a heavy duty chain and lob that over and around"just to be on the safe side".
So our next cuts were the reverse of the first. Face notch, bore cut, backcut. Now with all these cables and chains the tree can only fall in one direction right? No. So we are about to get this unhung now. We move the saws about 40 feet away and do the finishing cuts with the 021. So we are on our toes, make the final finishing cut. Shes MOVING!!!!!! OH NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! WRONG DIRECTION!!!!
So instead of tree dropping down to the ground another two feet, the top rips loose from tention and falls away from lean and onto the saws we had safely moved away driving the 029 into the ground and into a milluon pieces. Lands 5 inches from the 311 I bought that morning. Thank god. So we just bust out laughing because everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
I thought long and hard about taking down leaning trees after that. Kinetic energy can be a real b****! Almost killed myself on the next job cutting a tree that had a fork forced onto the ground between to larger trees. One cut rips the saw out of my hand at full throttle and forked limb springs 6 feet outside of cut. Had I been on the other side the saw would have been planted between my to eyes.
I am gratefull to be alive. Spiritually changed. I love this work. I just know you cant ever predict mother nature and need to be thinking 110% of the time about every possible thing to go wrong because it can and eventually will. This comming from someone that used ti commercial fish mainly longlining in the Bearing Sea. This is just as brutal in the body and just as dangerous. Certainly gets the blood pumping again.
