Not gonna touch this

[Raymond]

i know one guy who use to undercut em till they stood straight, fell, or flopped over the other way lol, we somtimes he'd put a rope in it after a couple cuts to pull it our way

o course that tree has to much lean to ever come back but i thought i would share that

Yeah when we show up on storm jobs and a lead or tree is like that.
The first thing my help wants to do is pull it to the ground.

I'm like, dude leave it alone. You pull it down now I'll have to bend over.
Just leave it alone I'll bring it down in pieces.

But yeah when it's going straight up it could go bad.

 

[treeclimber101]

Why don't you just leave it there ,whats the odds at the precise time when passing under it , it falls an crushes something , pretty unlikely right, why do today what will sure as hell wait til tommorow .. And guess what else when it does fall you may not even here it if no one is there... trees just like that stand for yrs. somtimes continually growing, so do the " green thing " and use your time more wisely and get hammer drunk ...

 

[Rftreeman]

Just under cut the thing and be ready to run if needed, there's no need to worry about loaded trees unless you need to cut one of them, it should roll or fall off the trees holding it up.

 

[arbadacarba]

Doesn't look like too tough a proposition. Cable it up about three feet up to pull from the far side and do a vertical notch square to the base on the foreground side. tighten up on the cable and do your back cut on the background side. Do a regular undercut rather than a humbolt so the tree has a sliding face and can't dig in as far if it goes straight down. This puts less strain on your equipment.

It looks like you have plenty of places to run a snatch block from on the left hand side. This will keep you quite safe, and reduce the load on whatever is doing the pulling quite nicely. It also looks like you have plenty of places on the right hand side to hide behind a standing tree once the tree begins to go. Having a clear escape route is an imperative whenever you fall a tree, so brush out your route to the base of whichever trunk is in the best position to protect you from any potential movement (including straight back! - happens more times than people expect. ) Think of well anchored standing trees as your allies and you are halfway there in situations like this.

Think it through, look at the tree carefully, and it will come down more easily than you might think.


One thing I disagree on is the use of a pusher tree in this instance. First of all the picture says that a pusher is not needed and secondly, the canopy is too dense to allow any of the potential pushers on the right hand side to get through. You'll end up with one more tree hung up and more of a problem.

Blocking it down is a possibility, but would be far more dangerous to you and would be a waste of good millable wood. Better to sharpen up your felling skills!

Good luck!


( And I fully sympathise on the amount of work you have to do on the road. Every time we get a Northerly in the winter down come the powerlines and out come the chainsaws :bang

 

[slowp]

Slowp... Do you use a little hand held GPS to mark unit boundaries?

Nope. This place has always been behind the times. I was wishing for a Trimble Geo Explorer. You can load photos in them, if somebody knows how, then it'll put your position on the photo. Nope, it is map, photo, compass and muttering. Yesterday, was on a bearing, flagging away, then ran into the spur location too early. Unoriginal language, then some recon, flagging and then tearing down of wrong line. Meanwhile, The Used Dog was swimming in an icy pond, pushing old chunks of wood around like a tug boat.

The one side was easy, follow the old fireline. I've worked here long enough to remember how the broadcast burning went. Firelines were put around the clearcuts to keep the hose from burning up. Every unit had a hose lay around it before the burning.

Oops I have strayed. Nope, I won't cut that tree. But the discussions are interesting.

 

[Metals406]

Nope. This place has always been behind the times. I was wishing for a Trimble Geo Explorer. You can load photos in them, if somebody knows how, then it'll put your position on the photo. Nope, it is map, photo, compass and muttering. Yesterday, was on a bearing, flagging away, then ran into the spur location too early. Unoriginal language, then some recon, flagging and then tearing down of wrong line. Meanwhile, The Used Dog was swimming in an icy pond, pushing old chunks of wood around like a tug boat.

The one side was easy, follow the old fireline. I've worked here long enough to remember how the broadcast burning went. Firelines were put around the clearcuts to keep the hose from burning up. Every unit had a hose lay around it before the burning.

Oops I have strayed. Nope, I won't cut that tree. But the discussions are interesting.

So should we have a "Get slowp a GPS--Arboristsite fund raiser?"... Hmmm, it would make your life easier... But we wouldn't get good stories of compasses, swearing, the Used Dog, and flagging tape.

 

[madhatte]

I'm with the Snatch-Block contingency. I'd want to get as much tension off before cutting as possible.

Also: Trimble GeoExplorer GPS units rule. I use 'em every day. If you can afford it, get ArcPad. You can do layers and edit projects in the field. Oh, and the USFS is developing a great little cruise package called TwoTrails. I'm currently beta-testing it. I hope a stable version is released soon. It integrates FSCruiser, CruiseProcessing, and that timber theft program into a GIS. Best of all, you can dump the raw data as .SHP and open it in ArcPad right in the field!

 

[Humptulips]

Slowp,
I agree with you. Leave it where it is. What would be the point in making some scary cut or some kind of off the wall holt with a buch of rigging you probably don't have. You can get to work with it where it is so get to work.
And yea you're going to pull that with a pickup. Some people don't have a clue.

 

[Raymond]

LOL Check it out...

Send me two round trip plane tickets to Washington and back to KC.
Have a 12 pack of Miller Lites on ice, a grill ready with some good steaks,
not some cheap crap and a couple good side dishes.
And My wife and I will make the trip. And I'll drop that pine for ya.

 

[slowp]

Send me two round trip plane tickets to Washington and back to KC.
Have a 12 pack of Miller Lites on ice, a grill ready with some good steaks,
not some cheap crap and a couple good side dishes.
And My wife and I will make the trip. And I'll drop that pine for ya.

The tree is not a pine. It is a Western Hemlock. Hemlocks are heavy things.
Very heavy. Firewood cutters do not like them. I do not like them. They are simply heavy.

The wind will take care of it, --eventually. The wind is free.

 

[Raymond]

The tree is not a pine. It is a Western Hemlock. Hemlocks are heavy things.
Very heavy. Firewood cutters do not like them. I do not like them. They are simply heavy.

The wind will take care of it, --eventually. The wind is free.

Let Wendell get it, I hear ya.

 

[Philbert]

Send me two round trip plane tickets to Washington and back to KC.
Have a 12 pack of Miller Lites on ice, a grill ready with some good steaks,
not some cheap crap and a couple good side dishes.
And My wife and I will make the trip. And I'll drop that pine for ya.

Raymond,

You are starting to sound like some of those CraigsList offers. BTW, that was first class airfare, right? How about the hotel accommodations, car, and the rental saws?

Philbert

 

[treeclimber101]

How about my great idea and say :censored: that tree ,ignore it and one day it will be on the ground , drink some beer and enjoy your free time I think it makes a good deterent nobody will want to come your driveway ...

 

[slowp]

I returned. And, much to my embarassment, it is not a hemlock but a Doug fir.
My Bad. Here's some pictures. To get good pictures, some trees around it should be dumped.

Here's the bowed over tree. Perhaps our windy night last week unbowed it a bit?

 

[Junior]

Looks a little spooky to me...

 

[Raymond]

The magic word here is "Undercut"
It wont go wrong... just sayin'

 

[Rickytree]

I know that from the pic's you can't see or tell exactly how big the tree is or the situation but what if you were to cut the bottom free then attach a rope and pull the bottom out, or down the laneway?

 

[Cletuspsc]

Cut it up and wad it with another. . .. .safest (not really) and the most fun to do. Heck who dosent like smackin a tree over with another.

 

[windthrown]

If it were on my property I would cut, drag and drop it. Looks more dangerous to leave it like that than the effort and risk of cutting and dragging it to the ground. I have done that to several Douggies and grand firs. Cut the base, and then wrap and drag out the base with long chains or tow straps with a tractor.

 

[Raymond]

Cutting it at the base is what bothers him.

He's cool with ripping it down the road, he just don't wanna cut it.