What now?? Hung tree didn't come all the way down... !!

[Bosty Dave]

Hello!!!

This is going to be fun....

We own 9 acres of "old" woodland that has been neglected for the last, what, 40 years and we have permission from Forestry Commission to lop and fell and generally tidy everything up, even though a lot of the trees are covered by TPOs. We're not going to go made, but we do need to reduce the canopy thickness to get rid of the large number of "roman candles" (mostly Ash) that cover the site.

 

There are a number of very old ash (3'+ trunk diameter) that have, lets say, "issues". 

 

One of these is the subject of this first post. Trunk diameter is well over 4', and at some time in the last (10?) years, half the tree split away and fell, and as it went it left the other half hung up in a sycamore next to it. Each of these are, at a guess, 70'+ high. 

This morning, on our daily walk around, the ash was creaking and groaning at the base of the split, so we got brave (!) and decided to try and bring it down.

 

I cleared around the trunk and on closer inspection, there was about a 10" section of the trunk that was holding up the entire tree and that looked rotten and dry.

 

So I cut into it...... (safely, from behind the trunk, with a clear escape route)

 

It came away and plunged down and swung away from the base of the trunk, then got stuck in the ground and stayed wedged in the sycamore.

 

Wedged in the sycamore

 

Bottom nailed in the ground

 

 

So now what do we do??? No way am I going to try and salami slice the base, thats suicidal. 

 

And dont say "I wouldn't start from here", we are where we are

[Doug Tait]

Have you any option to pull it down with a winch of some kind

[slack ma girdle]

Winch is your only option, and i don't think a manual winch will be up to the job.

Can you not just leave it,  aerial dead wood is a valuable habitat.

[Mesterh]

Yeah, that looks like a bit of an awkward one to say the least!

 

I think you're going to need a fairly decent winch to pull that over. Other options imo are to climb the syc and cut the ash out, a bit dodgy or fell the syc, also a bit dodgy. Or barrier it off and hope for some gale force wind.

 

Good luck, be sure to post how you tackle it please.

 

[Bosty Dave]

Phew!!

 

Thanks. Using a winch was where we got to as well - there's another big sycamore on the other side of the gully that this has gone into that we can anchor from, probably 30m away, and if the top of the ash is as wedged as we think, then a pull on the bottom of the trunk "should" lift it clear and over the gully before the top comes free.

 

Maybe.

 

For the sake of £90 for a days hire for a 5 tonne pull, its gotta be worth a go.

 

We cant get anything bigger than a 4 tonne digger into the woods, so anything we do is most likely going to be manual.

 

I'll let you know how we get on, might be a while as it looks safe for now and we've got other stuff to finish before we get back to this. 

[daltontrees]

Awkward... the safest place to work on it might be form above, climb the sycamore and take off as much of teh ends as you can then on the ground put a sink on top of the butt and then cut directly up to it, it may be possible to get the sharp end off it that way. Then winch (not plough) from the highest position you can find?

[Dan Maynard]

Hard to see how wedged it is, but the other option to pulling the butt away with the winch is to create some rolling action that may bring it down. Can either wrap sling around the stem and pull to the side, or throw line a rope in higher up.

 

Also, don't want to state the obvious but worth reading up on where not to stand during winch operations, especially if using redirect block

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, Bosty Dave said:

For the sake of £90 for a days hire for a 5 tonne pull, its gotta be worth a go.

You could buy and old tirfor for that. How far away from NW Surrey are you?

 

If you can put in a back cut 4ft up a flip flop winch would probably do you with 30 metres of 10mm wire rope but not work for a novice.

[monkeybusiness]

A winch and more importantly someone who knows what they are doing to get that down, not difficult with the right knowledge and kit but pretty dangerous if done wrong (there are some dodgy suggestions in this post IMO). 

[ChrisNewport]

There is a guy on here with a leather jump suit, motorbike helmet and a ladder thats not afraid of getting into tricky jobs, he may pop along with advice but its a while since we last heard from him.