scotspine1

Excellent, good on them. Maybe the locals and visitors to that area can enjoy those woodlands for another 13,000 years. BMW dashboards = sh*te. Wonder how they got the ceramic spikes into the trees? Their info on Faslane Peace Camp is well off the mark, its a lot older than 15 years.

Dont like seeing Sequoias come down, but if its gotta be done then i'd rather it was done by pros like yourself, great job, well done.

Everyone, Thanks for all the positive comments, was a good day to have the camera out. A small village in Stirlingshire, it was Martyn1's job, I was subby climbing that day. Martyn controlling the ropes, good having an experienced climber running the ropes on the ground. yeah, its an oldie but a goodie, clip the wedge cord biner into the spliced eye end of the flipline, you can see it in the second clip in the vid. yep, was good fun in that weather, the lowering device was a large Buckingham Port-A-Wrap III - They've definatley got their own set of problems, sap clogging up the ropes being the main one.

Recent job, obstacles in garden, monoblocked paths, summerhouses, gazebos, fences - rigging. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHYhilgRfss]YouTube - Sitka Takedowns Part 1[/ame]

Nice vid Rod, steep zipline! Looks like proper fun all round, sorry I couldnt make it. Hopefully get to meet you guys at the next event. Did the weather hold out for the day? was working in Lochwinnoch, was pelting down all morning into the afternoon.

Dean The rope is not pulling at 90 degrees to the stem so not all of your 100kg of applied force is being used. You are applying a moment to the tree (rotational force) on a hinge (backcut). You can find what force is really applied on the horizontal vector, from this vector tool = 71kg So the correct answer would be 71 x 12m = 852Kn metres The most important thing this tells you is that the further back you stand from the tree with the pulling rope - the easier it will be to pull over.

Very good point Dean Dean, get what your saying but from what I remember from engineering classes at school you can't mix metric with imperial, it doesnt mean anything. If you'd said 100kg of force is applied 12 metres up a stem the torque at the base will be roughly 1200Kns...about a ton. Very true.

Cricket, Just a few observations mate....... your left-handed right? why not go to the opposite side of the tree and use the saw right-handed for those backcuts? you'll probably be more accurate with the saw, get a better work-position and it'll allow you to dig the spikes into the bark to support the heavy saw for the start of the cut. At 2.53 you untie your mainline and throw it out the way and start cutting without re-attaching it beneath the flipline. Maybe start tieing in twice, you've got your main climbing line with you, might as well throw it round under your flipline as a back up, sometimes having the extra line can get you into a better postion for the making the cuts - sharing your weight between the harness and the spikes if you tie your climbing line into your front D or front attachment point. At 8.00 watch your thumb on the front handle, if your hand goes over for whatever reason and hits that speeding chain its mince...splintered bone mince, bloody stumps etc. At 2.29 you take your front hand off the handle and place it very near the backcut with your trigger hand still in place, probably not a good idea when the chainbreak isn't on. At 2.50 just wondered who taught you to cut a kerf (V) in the top of the stem for an anchor point for your main line. Heard of people falling out the tree when the rope creeps out of the kerf. At 3.35 you start the saw without the brake on, not that big a deal, but your holding the saw with your left hand on the trigger up a tree. Also try to pull the starter handle till you feel it bite before you give it a big pull start, doesnt that saw have a decompression valve? Other people have mentioned other things, Tom D makes a good point on the winch. .

Thanks for posting, helmet cam seems to be working very well, good sound quality, maybe need to angle it slightly downwards when your cutting in the tree so we can see more of whats going on. There's a few things you do in the video that I'd take issue with if you were working for me, if you want me to highlight them just say, if not then thats cool. Cheers for posting. Look forward to seeing the next one.

When you say bellow is it sometimes called a gator as well? need a new one for my chipper. Be interested to know how you get on changing it. On the subject of tipping trailers, I have a Bateson 263....today after tipping a load I pressed the control button to go down....it went down smoothly then suddenly dropped very fast about 2ft like the hydraulics had disappeared altogether, it then continued to sit back down as normal. I tried to tip it again and it was fine, went back down fine as well, anyone got any idea of what happened with the sudden drop? the 263 -

Someone was talking about letting pieces run to absorb the shock in another thread. Its not easy, takes a lot of experience of judging weights, forces, knowing your equipment and a good set of thick rigging gloves. Someone also said in the other thread to make the pieces smaller if you in doubt of the groundie's ability to control the rope running through the lowering device. The pieces in this vid were all taken small for that reason. In the first set it was a trainee groundie's first attempt at using a Portawrap (Buckingham), he was being guided by an experienced climber on the ground. Overall the results were pretty good. In the second set it was an experienced climber (Martyn1) doing the lowering. But it was the first time I'd worked with him so everything was rigged out small. Dont know how other people work, but I always tell the groundie how many wraps to put on the Portawrap. Think some of you've seen this footage before, anyway, hope it helps - [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_7ZzIgT6xQ]YouTube - Let it run[/ame] ps, check out Reg Coates Youtube videos for good examples of rigging. YouTube - Recoates's Channel

Nice footage, thanks for posting. Think you'd see a lot of people drop out the industry if we had to work like that today.

Martyn, got some video footage somewhere of a trainee groundie's first attempt at rigging a small top and some sections out, also got footage of the first day you worked for me as a groundie letting the pieces run, will dig it out and post soon.

thats true, scientists are great, if they can make penicillin out of moldy bread maybe they can make something out of you

I agree Tony, Did you hear about the homeopath who forgot to take his medicine? .............he died of an overdose.

Its a fall arrest device, used in industrial rope access - like ladder climbing. Wouldn't go anywhere near a tree with it if I were you. Where did you find it?

Good old fashioned Windows Movie Maker, very easy to use.

Thankfully all the timber and branches are staying onsite, little bit of tidy up - clear the stream etc/cut timber a bit smaller.....the best kind of jobs

Last weekend's job.....some footage of five large Hybrid Poplars being felled. The trees had become too large for the area they were growing in - shedding limbs on houses which were located about 15 ft away from the trees which were growing over the houses. Four of the trees were felled from ground level, only one had to be climbed and topped out due to underground utilities in the felling zone. It was expected that the last tree's butt end would flip up, back cut was made, feller moved out of the danger zone then winched over using a Tirfor. Hope you enjoy.......vid is 2 minutes long - [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPXtwHxwETU&feature=channel_page]YouTube - Poplar Felling April 2009[/ame] .

No, I reckon its left tensioned because these guys are experienced enough and familiar enough with that tree species they're climbing on to know it wont break with all that side shock loading. Its a good video as it also shows why you should never position a Portawrap/Lowering Device in any other tree other than the one your removing otherwise you'll create excessive and unnecessary side loading like in the vid (even if you let the top run). In the vid they've created a big force thats trying to pull the stem over. I never use speedlines for that reason. It would've run well away from the lower guy, look at the vid again, FWIW I'd never be involved in a removal that required having two climbers in that area of stem....even when training an apprentice climber.

I'd have taken the tension out of the speedline, dropped the top into the block.....let it run the shock out.......then re-tensioned the speedline and run the top down the speedline using the lowering rope as they do at the end. Cant see much else wrong with it.

Its a good idea to tie in twice when using a saw, not because you might cut through one of the ropes but because it allows for much better work positioning. Didnt realise this but its not DbRT as I said before its DdRT for Doubled Rope Techniques both static (footlocking) and dynamic (regular friction hitch/prussik system). Its explained very well here by Mark Adams, one of the technical gurus at Treebuzz - http://www.treebuzz.com/pdf/CC_Aug07.pdf .

Do you mean tying in twice from two separate anchor points when using a saw?

For me DRT means nothing at all, think it might be a rock climbing thing. DbRT means Doubled Rope Technique the way 99% of us climb most of the time for work position with a single rope and friction hitch making a continuous loop which you make smaller when you ascend and longer when you descend. Only use SRT for ascending into the canopy, rope over a branch tied off at base using a running bow, using Petzl's right and left hand ascenders to ascend the rope. Sometimes footlock a doubled rope using the ascenders joined together. Never heard of RADS - sounds very suspect, like rickets or something. There's a guy on here called softbankhawks who climbs SRT all the time for work positioning using the Unicender, as far as I know only him and a couple of others in America use this device for work postioning they're pioneers apparently. .

You guys were right, its a heavily thinned Cupressus macrocarpa (Monterey Cypress), the homeowner did it himself and it wasn't the first time, it'd previously been thinned like that before.