Special Pre-Season North East Tennessee MAC Report
Last Wednesday night a little PM800 action.
A nice white oak.
What can happen when you stall in the cut. Small hickory.
There are situations where I really appreciate a long bar. Managed to slowly lower the chair from a relatively safe distance should it have broken.
By Thursday evening my arms were covered in a rash from the sumac vines on the white oak. A small price to pay for time in the woods.
Today PM800s and 1010S
It was a beautiful day today mild temperatures with the occasional breeze in North East Tennessee. Blind Squirrel Falling had a light schedule – limb, buck and skid the hickory and fall a large white oak. If Blind Squirrel had more help, even just one more, a name change would be in order. I am thinking something along the lines of Three Stooges Logging.
We used Brian’s PM800 and 1010S on the hickory. I told him one day his 1010S was going to go missing. Unfortunately, he knows where to look. I really enjoy that saw. Its short bar always takes an operator adjustment for me, but it is a sweet saw. The hickory went well enough that we added another oak to the schedule. I don’t have any pictures of it.
Brian wasn’t feeling well so he decided to call it a day. I pointed out that I didn’t want to tackle the large white oak without someone there to watch my back. As always, Brian stepped up and indicated that he was up for one more. Anyway, we took on the tree below and cut it about 4' high in keeping with the LO’s minimum 3’ stump requirement. The plan was to leave the smaller tree as its natural falling path would be into the street. Using my PM800, I cleaved the two trees apart. Made a narrow bore cut and then I made the face cut. Satisfied that everything looked good, I reinserted the bar and began to finish the back cut. I kept at the cut as the fall began to prevent a barber chair. Unfortunately, the fall stalled. With a little head scratching and investigation, we discovered what appeared to be grafting of two limbs on the trees near the top. We tried to wedge it over but made small progress. We tried to get a line in the tree but with my lack of athleticism and Brian’s bad shoulders, we couldn’t. My 1 ½” wrench was too heavy for me to reach the necessary limb and two 8” crescent wrenches were too light to pull the line down. We debated thinning the hinge further, but it was so thin that I was already regretting chasing the cut. After a lot more head scratching, Brian half jokingly offers up why we don’t try to pull it down with the vines. What the heck why not, things can’t get any worst, and we can’t leave things as they are. So Brian cut loose three vines. We wrapped them together securely with a short tow strap, hooked the strap to a cable that ran through an anchored snatch block and then hook the cable end to the dozer. With some skepticism, I slowly reeled the winch in and eventually the tree came down smashing everything in its new found path. We decided to leave the bucking to others, or at least for another day.
If you look close, you can see the grafted limb about 1/5 down the picture on the smaller tree.
The stem was 29" at the cut and is 22" forty feet out. Pretty heavy. It fell in the direction of the pull. We didn't have an anchor point in line with the planned falling path.
Be safe,
Ron