Back again gents.
We have a long weekend here but sadly I've only been able to fit in one day of cutting due to a wedding (not mine) and a mate of mine coming to visit that I haven't seen for a long time.
Had a phone call from the manager/worker on this property the other day and it looks like he's done a bit of felling for me. He was very apologetic about "cutting my lunch" (his words). Quite funny actually as he had a guy there with a 25 tonne excavator doing some other work and asked if he'd like to come and push some trees over. This guy has a smaller Farm Boss Stihl with 20" bar (not sure of the model) and said it was working it's arse off on trees like this. I wasn't there to see it but by all accounts with a few very poorly aligned cuts the excavator had no issues pushing over some of the heavy leaners I had to leave last visit.
Anyway, have a few photos and a couple of vids. I dropped a few trees without a problem but as is typical this time of year the wind started to pick up about 8am which made some trees more difficult than others. I also failed to see an irrigation valve as it had a very small Casuarina tree growing around it. I only noticed it AFTER I'd aligned the felling cuts. With some hesitation and some careful "Mark I" eyeball measurements I proceeded to fell the tree and missed the valve by a bee's willy. In all honesty I was lucky...
This was another run of large trees - the boundary tree rows aren't half the size the North/South centre rows are...
The 390XPG was running fine again (not sure what was up last weekend). It only dawned on me Saturday morning that I hadn't touched the tune on it since I bought it off Brad - even though I'd given it a bit of a pop up. It was revving to 14,000rpm and stalling too easily for a saw this size - in all honesty the pop upped Dolmar had more torque. After dropping the revs to 13,600rpm it has a lot more torque and way faster throttle response. It's now a completely different saw and far more usable with longer bars and grabbier chain...
I also decided to cut down 1/2 a stump to make it easier to fell one half of a bifurcated tree. Verticle cut first which wasn't an issue. Of course while not concentrating on the horizontal cut so I can remove part of the stump it dropped on the chain at full noise. Those who have used powerful saws and had the TOP of the chain bite will realise you simply don't want any part of your body in the way when the saw tries to eject itself at warp speed out of the cut back at you. I copped the handle fair in the guts and it reminded me of my 3120 in Tasmania when it nearly crippled me. This hurt too and it took a few minutes of me doubled over to get back to work. You can see in the photo where the chain grabbed and bit into the wood...
That hurt, lots and still does 2 days later.
There is also some really nice grain in some of these trees. Pity it's not good for much. For the first time ever I actually saw water SQUIRTING out of one of my felling cuts. I wish I'd have videoed it...
You'd feel awful too 
