Lombardy Fell Incident

[Timber Man]

I was agreeing with you 😄 possibly in a roundabout rambling way, RAMS are a backside covering exercise at the end of the day, my point is/was there will always be people who think they know better, I'm not innocent I have screwed the pooch on occasions, one thing I have noticed with willow and poplar felling is how many people won't finish the cut as they start to move early compared to other trees leading to them barber chairing or twisting off or stopping half way over in some cases.

 

Oh ok, my mistake, I am a faller, its what I have done for a lot of years, and personally I would have taken that tree on as a fell, but on my terms as the faller.

A lot of timber loses its holding ability when the sap is up,poplar will split as easily as ash, particularly with sap up.

One of the biggest mistakes so many arb boys make in felling is cutting too high and removing toes. The best holding timber is always at the very bottom of a tree.

[Tom D]

Oh ok, my mistake, I am a faller, its what I have done for a lot of years, and personally I would have taken that tree on as a fell, but on my terms as the faller.

A lot of timber loses its holding ability when the sap is up,poplar will split as easily as ash, particularly with sap up.

One of the biggest mistakes so many arb boys make in felling is cutting too high and removing toes. The best holding timber is always at the very bottom of a tree.

 

thats very true, something I teach all my guys. That said I still wouldn't have taken that on in that wind with that setup. when the pull line is not perfectly in line with the direction of the fell it pulls harder on one side of the hinge compressing the other side, this may have been a factor here.

[Timber Man]

thats very true, something I teach all my guys. That said I still wouldn't have taken that on in that wind with that setup. when the pull line is not perfectly in line with the direction of the fell it pulls harder on one side of the hinge compressing the other side, this may have been a factor here.

 

Personally I wouldn't have wanted to pull it with that truck, full stop, but despite that it was actually being pulled towards the road when it was already weighted in that direction, a hinge cannot hold long enough under those circumstances long enough for the tree to come over the top. Once it leaves the hinge it takes the nearest way to the floor hey, that's gravity.

Assuming there was room the tree should have been gobbed at an angle away from the road, ..it may have been ,I cannot see from the vid, but if it was pulling from there was pointless, it would only snap out.

Gobbed at an angle away from the road and pulled from a slightly offset angle, enough to tip and swing it.

[csservices]

Oh ok, my mistake, I am a faller, its what I have done for a lot of years, and personally I would have taken that tree on as a fell, but on my terms as the faller.

 

A lot of timber loses its holding ability when the sap is up,poplar will split as easily as ash, particularly with sap up.

 

One of the biggest mistakes so many arb boys make in felling is cutting too high and removing toes. The best holding timber is always at the very bottom of a tree.

 

 

Agreed I'm not a climber I was a grounds man and before that have done a lot of felling over the years, always take my stumps as low as possible on the felling cut saves messing later 👍just been and looked at the video again and to be fair I would have felled it but in those conditions with only the truck to pull it I think I would have wanted the pull line via a redirect off the tree in the right of the pic behind the truck.

[Timber Man]

Agreed I'm not a climber I was a grounds man and before that have done a lot of felling over the years, always take my stumps as low as possible on the felling cut saves messing later 👍just been and looked at the video again and to be fair I would have felled it but in those conditions with only the truck to pull it I think I would have wanted the pull line via a redirect off the tree in the right of the pic behind the truck.

 

For sure, a redirect is good providing you can get the right height to pull , positioning the truck to pull may have been a problem here, hard to tell from the vid.

In this particular case in my opinion the rope was set far too high for the distance the truck was away from the tree hey? If you look at the angle of rope it is very steep, actually lifts the back of the truck quite a lot before it picks up momentum.

[oldwoodcutter]

Whenever I get up close to a Lombardy pop, with a view to felling it, one of the first things I do is try to judge how rotton it is at the base. As we know they are devils for rot, and this may have been so here, with an inexperienced man gobbing and cutting in soft cake. But as I said in my earlier post, there are so many other factors spelling disaster here.

[Mick Dempsey]

The wind being the biggest.

[Timber Man]

Whenever I get up close to a Lombardy pop, with a view to felling it, one of the first things I do is try to judge how rotton it is at the base. As we know they are devils for rot, and this may have been so here, with an inexperienced man gobbing and cutting in soft cake. But as I said in my earlier post, there are so many other factors spelling disaster here.

 

I agree, and if its not visibly obvious bore a saw in, then have a rethink.

[Ty Korrigan]

Bad luck for him is when someone filmed it. I'm glad no one followed me around with a camera for the past 20 odd years.

 

I saw some drone footage of you and SWORE BLIND you ripped the bark on a cut.

You'll never work North of the Loire for that one mate!

Ty

[carlos]

am i right in thinking that he had to come in from both sides to make the back cut and that he should of done the last cut on the other side of the tree in order to leave the maximum amount of hinge on the tension side? hope that makes sense!

carl