dadio

Good eye and quite right... I was quite surprised to see that 75% of the hinge had been accidentally cut through by the tip of that 3' bar, as I swung the body of the saw around when turning from the plunge to a forward cut.. The entire tension side of the hinge, except one little post, was GONE!!! And that big heavy tree had significant side lean.. It's amazing that the tree went to the lay! As far as I can remember, that's the first time I've made a back cut like that, swinging the body of the saw around without leaving the cut.. If the hinge is longer than the bar, I usually plunge in from both sides and leave a backstrap... I was avoiding making a second plunge cut (with that big bar), and got quite careless in doing so.. It took just seconds to blow that hinge out.. Seems like it was a fairly easy mistake to make, and THANK GOD it was elm, or it would not have been free!!!! It was a valuable lesson.

What is even easier on the back is waving your hand and letting a machine do the pulling.. the wedges were just there for a little extra help. I originally used them because the tree sat back. I will normally just signal the operator to give a little more pull on the line if the tree sits back, but we didn't have good visuals, and I didn't want any miscommunication about the pull. So I dusted off the wedges. And once I'd gone to all that trouble, figured I might as well hit 'em a few times and see how much the tree moved. I have found the combination of wedges and a pull line to be quite effective, the few times I used them together, which has only been on backleaners.. I would think it quite a hassle to notch out a jack station, go to the truck and find the jack handle etc.. I can see using it on a big tree, where you need more power/lift than wedges provide, and can't set up a pull line.. That's west coast logging though.. Got any pics of your jacks????

NICE... You win the prize.. at least we know someone is paying attention.. More on that later...

I love that saw........ my first real husky.... bought it in nearly new condition fro $900, from the log loader, a few weeks ago, just before Irene hit... It'll cut big wood three times as fast as my best 66...... I haven't run a 36" bar in 10-15 years... Chain was fresh right out of the box for that gob... I bumped the speed to 104% on most of the cutting, to save a few seconds, which may have thrown the sound off a litte..

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7tCwEFuNzY]big dry elm drop.mov - YouTube[/ame] 4 minute vid showing the removal of a large dry elm.. dutch elm disease got it.. pulled it against the lean into the woods to save the lawn from damage.. Pretty straightforward job...

I did shut down traffic a few times when I was bombing bits from the tree.. Figured it was less than 2% chance of a limb taking a funny tumble and bouncing into the street.. BUT closing the street was easy, so why take a chance.. On the fall, I was 100%, not one chance in 1,000 for that tree to go the wrong way IMO. And thank you for the many postitve posts and especially the support in questioning those that seem to have problem with me... Though obviously I have thick skin, (if not a will for punishment), there are many shy people that watch these threads and get scared when they see that type of nastiness, and so they never post.. It is very exclusionary and tends to keep these boards dominated by very small cliques, when the thoughts of many more could make them so much better.

Equipment includes: 2007 brush bandit 1590 chipper with winch 1989 INternational dump truck w/ 14' forrestry body 2004 Dodge 2500 pick up with cummins diesel towing a 2006 18' trailer with 2006 ASV Rc-50 skid steer with turf tracks 2000 F-250 heavy duty pick up w/ 7.3 diesel towing 2006 rayco 90 stump grinder 1997 GMC 7500 w/ altec LR IV 55' aerial lift 2006 International 33,000 GVW w/ altec LRV60-E70, 75' aerial lift 2004 Rayco super 50 stump grinder Also have 4 other trucks that are dedicated to plowing snow, and a couple old beaters I need to upgrade on this job we we only used the dodge p/u with skid steer and the dump truck and chipper

Actually Ian if you want to know the truth.. there was a drain vent cap under the safety cone next to the big log. Big log was put there with the skid loader to protect it.. I didn't worry too much about protecting the lawn on that job, which is rare for me. Customer had lied to me over the phone, telling me the electric company had removed much of the tree, as a pretext for getting me to lower my price. He had already lied at our initial meeting, about getting a cheaper price on the job.. I refused to come down and so he waited two weeks and lied again. I was feeling pretty angry at the time, so I let the lawn take its lumps..

Actually I AM quite reluctant to use that truck to pull a tree.. I usually use a skid steer loader, which is incapable of breaking these ropes when it is on grass... In this case I was using the truck more as a ground anchor than a pulling machine. We could have set up a MA system and tightened that line up by hand for the same effect.. And the reason I set the second line up which, was tensioned by hand, was for the exact reason that the truck can break a line. I was actually surprised at how little force it took to get the tree to stand up as far as it did. So there was nearly no chance of the truck breaking the line, BUT because it was theoretically possible, the second line was set by hand as a back up.

For clarity, the truck did not do the pullig.. there were two control lines AKA guy lines, AKA right angle lines.. The first line is double braid with 10,000 lb tensile, run through a block and tied off to the pick up. that was pretensioned by the driver listening to my command. I watched the tree, got as much lift as wanted and told him to stop. The true blue was set up with a 6:1 MA system and tensioned by hand with 4 men pulling on the line. Max force on the tree estimated at about 2,000 lbs. Max force on the rope estimated at about 1000 lbs. If you listen carefully in the video, you can see that when the true blue was tensioned by hand, it caused the line that had been pretensioned with the truck to go slack, showing that there was significantly less than the estimated 2000 lbs on the line tensioned with the pick up. The pick up was then pulled up again by verbal command until the tree just started to move slightly. Leaving an estimated max of 2000 lbs on that line. The truck was then used as a ground anchor.. it did not move .... What wasn't shown on the video was how much the tree was stood up.. might have moved 8-10'... At that point I knew there was no change of losing the tree to the side-weight. If it had gone differently, I might have closed the road temporarily.. The tree was then fairly well balanced, and only needed a little persuasion to get it going to the lay. That pull was done with a skid loader, which was off camera.

On the contrary... the hinge held all the way to the ground.. you can hear it if you listen closely

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejigE-meM20]tower lane leaning ash.mov - YouTube[/ame]

DO the Russians get a pass on one handing a climbing saw at face level and above? Or lack of PPE on the ground crew? He was one handing a the saw repeatedly, while using his free hand to balance himself. He needed the extra balance because he wasn't wearing spikes.. that's unnecessarily dangerous IMO

Video shows a young woman learning to footlock on her first recreational climb. I was impressed with how fast she learned. She had the technique down in a matter of minutes.. There's a short 9 minute version of just the footlocking, and a longer 28 minute version of the entire climb. Some might consider this low action/boring, but there are a few good climbing tips for novices in the longer version.. I showed it to a young man interested in getting a job in the industry and then learning to climb. He was pretty excited after watching it, so it might be worth bookmarking to show to the real newbies.. Here's the 9 minute version. There are very few edits. You can see she pretty much learned how to footlock in just a few minutes. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP9KzVLcOxk]pyt learns to footlock short version.mov - YouTube[/ame] and this is the 28 minute show if the entire climb: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi70w28SuJA]PYT learns to footlock.mov - YouTube[/ame]

Giving this one a bump too.. once again to whomever thought they'd never seen me climb.. I was recovering from a running injury to my foot at the time.. We got on the job day 1 at 1 pm. I hadn't been in the spikes for over a month and was afraid the pressure would irritate the injury so I went without spikes that afternoon. Next day I wore them and it turned out OK. Took two full days to get that tree out of the backyard, up the hill, and hauled off.. I had contracted a day rate climber to come in for the tree, but after seeing it, he was a no show... It all worked out though.. As I recall there were only 5 gob cuts made for the entire removal...

just wanted to give this thread a bump for whoever it was that said he'd never seen me climb.. You can't make me out on the first tree, but I climbed all three.. My days of steady climbing are pretty much over now, but I can still do it when needed..

YOu sir are a fist class idiot and I AM finished with this converation!

get your terminology straight.. we JUDGE it all the time.. we MEASURE it very rarely..

first tree: big tulip by porch.. the LZ was between a small dogwood and the large beech tree... I hedged the fall towards the beech, because minor damage on the beech could easily be fixed, whereas a big tree like the tulip could easily destroy the dogwood.. dogwood is not easy to spot in the video.. as it was there was one 1" limb on the beech that got broken.. the tulip had full sun, no competition and had an extremely wide canopy.. shorting the fall by 6 or 7' was needed to protect the dogwood.. second tree. medium pine by street wires. there were utility lines going to the house, which would have been taken out by the entire tree.. again not easily seen on video third tree: large tulip spar: clearly visible is a large wound on the base of the tree.. the client had filled the cavity with rocks and cement, whcih wwere removed to the best of my ability, but I still used the stump grinder to shave off the offending material before making the flush cut fourth tree, maple across road, had a combination of decay in the base, making the hinge untrustworthy and neighbors trees across street with limbs brushing during the fall.. not seen on video.. I can;t believe I just did that.. that has to be at least 10x now!

You weren't talking about any of my other vids... you were talking about the pine top barber chairing, which was impossible due to the lashing lines.. obviously the integrity of the internal pine fibers was imossible to trust.. however it is fairly easy to judge the force involved with weight and lean of the tree.. and when do we ever "measure" force in a falling situation? You're mind is full of fantasy.. That said, I do need to get a dyno.. I AM confident that the pull on that line never exceeded 20% WLL, which would be about 1,400 lbs..

OK..since you are so insistent.. which particular cuts are you wondering about?.. give the times and I'll give the reasons....

I clearly state that in the second paragraph.. "this technique has been used and taught by loggers for generations".. interestingly there are many well repected logging and arborist instructors that now teach that this technique does not work or work reliably.. they teach to use the adjusted gun method only, which makes no sense to me! Do you know of any other writing on the subject that is more complete???

if you don't know or use the tapered hinge, then you have no business critiquing my work. I wrote the book on it... see TCI mag July 2004..

do you think I would have gone to the trouble of climbing and dropping them from the hooks, when I could have cut from the ground? Use some sense... there were reasons that may not have been apparent on video.. if you don't have the sense to see that, then I don't have the patience to humor your stupidity.

I was thinking the same thing .. no way could that tree have been 80'.. But I measured it, the top that I cut was just under 40' and the final stick was just over 40'.. there was an overlap between the piece that blew out and the top I cut, of 20' or more, where the trunk split.