Removing weeds at the S.D. Zoo

[jomoco]

This is some old footage of me removing a couple little Australian weeds at the San Diego Zoo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQOUEdSp3Pk

The primary crane is a 120 ton hydro crane. (sweet)

The staging crane is a little 15 ton. (handy

I have alot of footage of this job but getting it compressed enough for uploading is a problem. Any advice or tips on doing it would be appreciated.

jomoco

 

[ckliff]

Interestingly, there is a forum dedicated to videos...

BTW - nice hat. :jester:

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Nice helmet..

I notice you keep a bit of holding wood and I do not see a complete bypass cut. Do you have the crane tear the load off? What types of forces show on the scale?

 

[jomoco]

Nice helmet..

I notice you keep a bit of holding wood and I do not see a complete bypass cut. Do you have the crane tear the load off? What types of forces show on the scale?

Good eye there JPS.

Actually I believe the particular cut you're referring to (the second pick shown) was a funky combination of both brush and a large trunk section of wood combined, and you are right, I purposefully left enough hingewood to allow it to go over slowly and orient itself on the choker and crane, then I cut all the remaining hinge wood, dropped down a bit and signaled spool up for a smooth graceful pick of an otherwise unwieldy and large section of the tree.

I knew I was in for some grief from you guys for not wearing my hardhat, but as I stated, this is old footage taken prior to my purchase of the Peltor ProComLite radio system I now use. On the day of these removals I had a choice between my hardhat or my old headset radio system to communicate with the crane operator, obviously I chose the headset radio.

Actually I'd like to know if any of you veteran climbers have ever used what I call a holding cut on vertical or near vertical standing wood? The back cut goes almost all the way through but stops a bit short, then I drop down about an inch or so and make my small finish cut in the lower remaining wood.
This allows me to attach my saw to my saddle and then use both hands to pop the cut section of wood off by pulling it in the direction of the small finish cut in a brisk manner and throw it down in a controlled manner.

Interestingly this same technique can be used in very large vertical trunkwood by leaving a bit more uncut wood on your backcut and dropping down about 6-8 inches on your lower finish cut. Of course your choker must be oriented on the backcut side beforehand. This allows you to drop down well below the danger area, then signal the crane to spool up slow and safely watch as the cut section is slowly popped of by the crane as you watch safely from the opposite side of the cut sections path.

I've been told that this technique may be unique to me, the only other climbers I've seen use it were all copying my method. But I've alwats felt that surely other old climbers must have used it as well, though I've never read of it, or seen it. It works just fine in small to medium vertical wood from a bucket as well. I've even reached the point where I can use this technique in almost lateral wood by increasing the distance between the two cuts, but I wouldn't recommend it for beginners or over extremely high value targets.

Try it in vertical wood, it works like a charm!

jomoco

 

[Tree Slayer]

WE use that cut all the time on small stuff that you want to handle.it is basically a jump cut but on vertical limbs. not sure if there is a name for it.

 

[jomoco]

WE use that cut all the time on small stuff that you want to handle.it is basically a jump cut but on vertical limbs. not sure if there is a name for it.

No, not quite, a jump cut is almost exactly opposite, a small to medium backcut on the lower or opposite side, and dropping back 2-3 inches for a large fast finishing cut on the upper side to effectively compress and jump the cut piece.

I'm not saying you don't successfully use a cut that holds the wood in place until you can handle it with both hands as I do, just that mine is the exact opposite of a jump cut, particularly on lateral wood.

jomoco

 

[LarryTheCableGuy]

It kinda looks like that one was actually outside the zoo or was that along the old road that went down to Worley's trailers?

.

 

[jomoco]

It kinda looks like that one was actually outside the zoo or was that along the old road that went down to Worley's trailers?

.

As I'm sure you know Larry, there are two service entrances to the zoo, this entrance comes into the east side of the zoo through Balboa Park, and yes it leads down to the Worley construction trailers.

jomoco

 

[LarryTheCableGuy]

Actually there are a few others...

.

 

[Tree Slayer]

No, not quite, a jump cut is almost exactly opposite, a small to medium backcut on the lower or opposite side, and dropping back 2-3 inches for a large fast finishing cut on the upper side to effectively compress and jump the cut piece.

I'm not saying you don't successfully use a cut that holds the wood in place until you can handle it with both hands as I do, just that mine is the exact opposite of a jump cut, particularly on lateral wood.

jomoco

I said basically a jump cut. I no how to make the cut. It's not rocket science

 

[Ekka]

Why did they remove these Australian koala food and carbon sink trees?

 

[booboo]

"Actually I'd like to know if any of you veteran climbers have ever used what I call a holding cut on vertical or near vertical standing wood? The back cut goes almost all the way through but stops a bit short, then I drop down about an inch or so and make my small finish cut in the lower remaining wood.
This allows me to attach my saw to my saddle and then use both hands to pop the cut section of wood off by pulling it in the direction of the small finish cut in a brisk manner and throw it down in a controlled manner."

I use that cut all the time, not sure if there is a name to it. Works great chunking down vertical poles, allows me to shut the saw off, hang it, and use 2 hands for control of the wood. Been doing it that way for 20 years.

A variation of it works great on horizontal or flat angled pieces too. The 2 cuts are made perpendicular to the branch, with more distance between the cuts than on a vertical piece. Then just snap the piece off with both hands and toss it wherever you want it to go. I used to do a lot of bucket work and this was an easy way to chunk stuff down with pretty good control and not a lot of time spent rigging. It's a bit harder to do climbing, just because your reach is more limited, unless you're in something where you can get your body below the piece being taken, like in a conifer. Not the best approach over high value stuff but for controlled hold and throw it's quick and works like a charm.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

To me it is a bypass or snap cut on a large scale.

Having one side well past the center of the log makes it easier to rock the piece to make the snap.

I like to make the deepest cut on the side that will be easiest to handle the saw.

Sometimes I will make 2 curf wide box scarf to give more "wiggle room"

 

[jomoco]

Why did they remove these Australian koala food and carbon sink trees?

As I recall the wood lathe building under it was about to be refurbished, so they removed the trees prior to refurbishing such a fragile bldg.

The zoo lost hundreds of big eucs during the Lerp Psylid outbreak that tore through SoCal about 6-7 years ago killing thousands and thousands of red gums.

I did some very interesting research on the Lerp Psylid outbreak at that time that may be of interest to euc men here.

As I'm sure you know, the lerps develop through their larval stage under a white sugary cap on the leaves of eucalyptus before maturing into winged adults and flying off to plant their eggs on fresh trees as the cycle repeats itself weakening and eventually killing the trees as the photosynthetic leaf area is depleted.

It is my understanding that in Australia these Lerps are pretty much kept in check due to a bounty of natural predators there indigenous to the Australian environment.

Not so in SoCal, atleast initially. In an effort to fight the Lerp outbreak here a natural predator was imported from Australia, an almost microscopic wasp that has apparently multiplied in sufficient numbers now to check the lerp onslaught.

However I did a bit of Lerp mitigation research of my own using numbers to fight numbers. My preferred parasite was also an import, but one who was already here in their billions, the Argentine ant. It was my thought that these new Lerp invaders were somewhat unknown as yet to the ants, so I decided to create a sort of bread trail between the ants and the Lerps and see if any predation occurred, a sort of ringing the ant's dinner bell if you will.

I went to a local nursery and bought three 5gal red gums completely infested with Lerp Psylids, so much so that they were more white with lerp caps than green with leaves, then took them home to a 1 acre hilltop.

I then took a wagner power paint sprayer, loaded it with corn syrup and sprayed a circular trail from the ground around the three containers, then up each individual container and stalk into the leaf structure.

The next day I got home from work and sure enough each tree was crawling with Argentine ants. The next day I took a magnifying glass and watched the carnage from up close. While most of the ants were after the syrup, I noticed that a few were also attracted to the lerp dome caps and were prying them up off the leaves and carrying the helpless larvae down and away to the ant hive for communal dispatch.

Within about two weeks each of the infested juvenile red gums were lerp free with nothing but a scattering of white caps beneath them.

Long story short, I told the nurseryman about the treatment, which I called parasitic baiting, convinced him to buy back his container trees and treat the rest of his stock as well with my method. It worked well.

I then contacted the local CalTrans tree maintenance division, and talked the head of it into letting me treat a grouping of infested red gums on the Lake Jennings exit off Interstate 8 (my exit) which I did. At the same time Caltrans was treating a grouping of infested red gums up north on freeway 78 with chemical injections of some sort from Bayer Corp. Their treated trees died my treated trees lived, and are still alive.

I contacted the local county ag officer that I knew personally from years of seminar attendance and told him of my research results and suggested he get the word out. He told me they were too busy concentrating on the wasp introduction program, but that he'd get back to me when he had more time

I treated a few more freeway groupings for CalTrans, which all survived, but they mysteriously went with the Bayer chemical injection route.

The Lerp outbreak is over, but I still question whether it was the wasp program being effective, or the billions and billions of Argentine ants finally catching onto the fact on their own that there was food under them there lerp caps that finally turned the tide of the Lerp onslaught here in SoCal.

What dayu think Ekka, tell me about the Lerp Psylid in Australia, is it, was it a problem?

jomoco

 

[Ekka]

That was very interesting to read, the ants are already there but haven't cottoned on to the idea of eating them.

I think NSW has a serious problem associated with it and Bell miner birds are part of the problem.

These birds called Bell Miners farm them, and if you know of these birds they're extremely aggressive to other birds and territorial, so natural predators to the lerps are culled, this phenomena is know as BMAD (Bell miner associated dieback).

Here's a link, which has plenty of info and also goes through to special working groups.

http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/npws.nsf/Content/bell_miner_dieback_strategy