Leveraged Pulls on Hinge Pivot

[TheTreeSpyder]

As all ways and always this madman thinks the underrated machine of the simple hinge invoked by our saws can grant more positive and broad range of control, the better it's craftmanship is polished.

More positive, meaning safer, more trustworthy (in good wood); while broader range of use lending more dynamic range of options for ushering this control.

The hinge's strength will be dictated by when it folds; in equal and opposite reaction genre. In felling, (12 o'clock to 3 o'clock)this hinge is tested more and more and should be prepped for that journey. Though in rigging a branch from 3o'clock to 6o'clock,that can reverse and imbue more hinge strength at start for as leverage of same load decreases, giving more controlled, connected ushering.

But, then logically; lifting from 6o'clock to 3o'clock would reverse to challenge against hinge more during journey on same arc and positioning.

okay.......
:alien: :alien:

 

[MasterBlaster]

Huh???

 

[Burnham]

So, KC, are you saying that the more hinge wood you leave, the better your control of the direction of fall? Or just that you slow down the speed of the fall? If the latter, then to what end?

 

[kf_tree]

what am i doing wrong?


this happened twice to me a few weeks ago. i slapped my notch and started my back cut. the stick got to about 45degree's and stopped. i had to nose the bar a bit to get the tree on the ground. it just sat on the notch. once with a pine the other time was a hack berry. i usually cut a pretty wide mouth. it was pretty dam funny to watch.

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

The same length and load will put different leveraged load on hinge, dependent on angle.

The hinge's strength will be dictated at maximum at the point it starts to 'fhold' (point between fall and hold).

If it starts to fhold at lower leveraged load and progresses around the clock to higher leveraged load positions, it will be going from lesser strength hinge/ hinge load to higher hinge load and seperate earlier.

By, forcing to fhold earlier (with more fibre), by lifting from back cut with jack or pulling with line, you can force stronger hinge that will hold on longer.

The longer it hinge holds on, the more control you have over direction and forcing slower speed of fall; given that the faces haven't closed (use wide mouth face). For when the faces meet, hinge must seperate or sieze (siezing is dangerous, and may cause barber chairing; which is also more likely if bottom of 2 face cuts extends farther than top IMLHO).

If you cross the facecuts you will make an inner facecut that supercedes the larger facecuts, invoking dangerous-dutchman (early closing) forces.


Or, something like that.....

:alien:

 

[G.I. tree guy]

Originally posted by kf_tree
what am i doing wrong?


this happened twice to me a few weeks ago. i slapped my notch and started my back cut. the stick got to about 45degree's and stopped. i had to nose the bar a bit to get the tree on the ground. it just sat on the notch. once with a pine the other time was a hack berry. i usually cut a pretty wide mouth. it was pretty dam funny to watch.

kf,The "stick" held or stopped because your notch was more than likely a 45 degree wedge. A open face notch of 70-80 degees would come over further and allow its own weight to snap off easier.

 

[Burnham]

KF, you may have been leaving more hinge than needed for the size stick you were felling. What size stem/spar were you working with? How much hinge wood?

If you wish to have stong hinge control of direction of fall, and don't want to have to wedge until you are pooped, or have it fail to part, try gutting the hinge from the front of the face cut before you put in the back cut. Leave un-gutted wood on each corner, plenty of meat by controlling placement of the back cut, and it'll go over with ease AND control.

My recent C-class recert with Doug Dent was pretty interesting, in that for quite awhile he has been advocating the "bore the backcut" technique for falling heavy leaners in the direction of lean, preventing barberchairing, he has now come to believe that the technique is also great for preventing setbacks when falling against the lean. One must insert wedges on both sides right behind the hinge once enough room in the backcut kerf has been made following the borecut and keep placing wedges towards the back end of the backcut as the backcut progresses towards the rear. To make the wedging over much easier, use the tip of the bar to gut the hinge; that is, at the back of the face cut, cut away a kerf several inches deep, leaving several inches un-cut on each corner. When Dent says something about timber falling, it is worth listening.

Spydy, I'm guessing you want to maximum control of direction and to slow down the movement of the falling stem for cuts in the tree. Is that right? For felling cuts where slow fall is not desired (punching through other tree crowns, for example) you will be better off with making sure the face cut is wide angle...even go to a birds' mouth face to get the tree commited to its' direction until very late.

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

Easy to make tree go fast, and agree for punching thru stuff is the time to use it; just as if punching through on right side only, would use Dent/tapered/triangle hinge wide to right side (Like offside left lean, use same strategy for right push as left lean across hinge). Just as a full across buried kerf inside hinge can jump tree off stump before it hangs up between obstruction and hinge, but can be dangerous, as all dutchman forces, especially with the immense leverage and lean in felling. Also , using Dent's theories and not felling direclty into the lean, with hinging, can allow slower fall, as maximum force is directly into the pull of gravity, and hinging to fight that to the side consumes part of that force.

So, i try to exercise/ learn slow, controlled fall on all else; to enable broader range of control. And be able to take bigger stuff with less problems.

i think Mr. Dent is the man! His 25+ year old book, that i bought cuz it was cheap, and had good title in arbo selection, had me baffled for so long as i went back and forth, tol it over years , trying to figure what the heck he was saying and how to remember all of it. Finally i noticed, that chapters apart, that the bucking patterns and felling only looked differnt, cuz they where turned. And distilled out that it was all about how the hinge fit into the tension and compression of the spar, and any offside pulls. Dent on Hinging Thread .

Here is a drawing i made a while back. I would not recomend 'center punching' a hinge with strong offside pull; for the mental model i work with, says that would reduce the amount of resistance in hinge to offside lean. As a climber i've taken them into the tree at all angles, lifting etc.; tracing the same forces, handling them the same way. Dent is the man! If sweeping to the side in non'lifting rigging, the offside calculation is always the same-down!

In the picture, i show the front of Dent's 'bible' with 'hinge stalagmites' on one side and the tree feller facing them; like 2 soldiers that conquered immense offside lean. You get stalagmites that high, shearing out of the tree; they done some werk! Perhaps more than the whole crew that day!

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Ken, I would lean (ha, Im so funny!) towards having an uneven part in your face cut. So it closed before the hinge failed.

I enjoy jacking a leaner with wedges after doing a bore cut. With having the GRCS I don't do it too often any more, we can pull a tree anywhere we want with that ting, and using redirect pullies, Pull many of them from one winch point.

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

i look at that uneven face (or block on flat face) a dutchman type strategy, in that it is an early interuption in face, to push to opposite side(it all seems to come down to pushes and pulls). So, if uneven face, it would go on the side of lean's pull, or opposite side from brushing trees push, high wind push etc. during felling; to fall squarely into face against these offside pulls. OffSide pulls are ones that pull across flow of hinge, supplying the check on third dimension in scenario.

i think that the force created by you torqueing a 12x1 device is unreal! And just all that pressure and your results, prove that it makes a super hinge in respoonse i think! i'd imagine that i'd have to get at least 3 normal menz on a 5x1 to equal the 12 JP force! Then, you have that ratchet deal, that can hold pressure where you rest, or you could wind up to impact into; not quite as easy when no ratchet, and full strain all the time for men!

i think that any hinge level adjustment (wedge, dutch, hinge itself, high line is not part of set), with offside pull, tourgue and create a tapered hinge (hinge and wedge tear from their side first); which for best control of side lean, depends on back pressure across the total hinge length, which center punching violates. It does this in 2 ways i think, by cutting fibre block short, and by not tapering cut fibre to maintain as much pressure as possible.

i think a dutch interuption in face of any type is a rebounding force, that to maximiz it's effect, you have to slam forward as hard and fast as possible, hence the danger in the extreme leverage and weight as in felling.

i think if you use the fibre in the hinge to balance the offside pull across the hinge, all you have to do is pull the spar forward. If you eliminate the all ready in place fibre, keeping the tree from going where you don't want it to go to begin with, then there is off balance from the lean to side; that means with every crank of GRCS some of the force has to go to fight that imbalance, then the rest to pull forward. Just like pushing around something totally balanced, or off balance, where you're spending sometimes more effort balancing than progressing. There is nothing like a balanced load for better use of energies, coupling with other 'trix' etc.

Of the passive force strategies (dutch face, hinge fibre reflect force thrown at them, and self adjust to it); the hinge works on slowness, with less impact and more time for adjustment; and what ever force that takes, is taken from the falling force itself.

i think when you have to slow crank a tree all the way to the ground, you just forcerd the hinge to be so strong at the start, that it had the strength to hold on as the leveraged load increased (and face allowed), quite a feat considering the forces!

So i see super power in that GRCS, but not everyone has one yet; but we know you're tryin'!

:alien:

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

There is no arguing with JP's repeated success, that is quite a piece of gear he has.

But, i think that the first factor in force is direction. So if you are pulling with line straight against something wanting to go 45 degress to the side, every inch you werk to pull; a portion of that effort; initially goes to saying 'No, come this way' to the spar; then the rest of your effort goes to pulling in that direction.

So if the fibre in the hinge, can do part A (adjusting direction); all your effort then is focused on drawing the spar down! Perhaps in it's generous power range, that is only a few more turns or clicks on GRCS. To the rest of us, it's a lot more werk making up for those turns with other methods!

Also, you can take these strategies in the air to rig branchings; that submit to the same laws and saws. Just by learning them on the ground, and turning them sideways in the air, they also work for bucking. Same strategy making a face to the target, and crafting hinge arraingement with respect to the tension and compression in the wood and how they relate to the hinge/face.

This in no way means throwing away ropes, GRCS, wedges and dutchman lifts; i just think this no gear, already in place and werking fibre method is first line of defence in good wood. Also, that it's study is very pertinent, to assessing how damaged fibre by saw Or Rot ; can effect a fall, before ensuing with final back cut. Or even, how the fall can be affected, if you hit an unseen pocket of decay while backcutting, as you feel the saw slide through to easily on one side suddenly!! And immediately must calculate to run or quickly adjust pulls in the hinge, with running saw buried in backcut.

We live in 3D, many times 1 dimension is length or height; leaving not 1 but 2 dimensions of directional pull to consider. Also that understanding how this fibre positioning works is pertinent to understanding how natural falling with straight hinge, wedge lifts, and dutchmans, for they all refer back and depend on how the tensioned fibres (those oppposing lean most, being farthest from it, by leverage)work with these strategies; as they all depend on the hinge fibre and make a tapered hinge type pattern on their own! i think nature forces that, as the most natural, easily potent control that she has produced and has had in place for years keeping the tree from going towards it's lean; so we can choose to enhance the focus of control by removing some of the other pulls in the hinge, instead of disarming that control, so we can replace the control of the lean! IMLHO!

:alien:

edit-Sometimes what you can fell from the ground and where depends on how much concussion the ground would take. So a slower, directed fall could be constantly exercised for these times that it would make a difference in how much had to be topped, or even climbed at all (less climber time and risk). This can also avail at getting the whole head delivered to the road, for less cleanup! Falling away from gravity's maximum pull (by less than 90 degrees) can also help lessen force. So the only time i really slam a tree (or branch) thru is when i need that force to break thru something. The rest of the time, i practice my range of control over the speed (toward slower end); to have it ready and 'sharpenned' skill, for when i need it. Mostly by just slanting the bar, and thinking about what i'm doing! Then folding these daily lessons into bucking, and rigging. So i do tend to lean (okay not as funny as whenst JP says it, or as effective!) away from dutchy face lifts (accept maybe swing dutchman); for there maximum and true power lies in slamming the faces hard, so the rebounding force powers into and out of the dutchman face adjustment, for maximum use of that strategy. IMLHO.

:alien: :alien: