dadio

There was some discussion on another board about pruning and cabling and whether it is appropriate to make reduction cuts, rather than thinning cuts. This video provides a good example of the way I do things, which is to make reduction cuts, as I believe that will reduce more weight on the branch tips, (where the leverage is greatest), reducing the most stress on the tree's structure for the least amount of wounding and loss of leaves. Here's the vid of a mature Norway Maple prune and cable.. the tree was in decline, and it was only after I saw the extensive sun scald that I asked the owner if another tree had been removed nearby. He said that yes indeed another larger tree had been removed. This must have been south/west of the tree shown here, and my guess is that it was done in early-mid summer.. anyhow here is the job.. once again there are no shots of the work actually being done, just a before, during and after with discussion of why and how cuts were made etc.. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDKTXJc8mcE]YouTube - ‪prune and cable declining maple.mov‬‏[/ame]

There were only two limbs (less than 8% of the canopy) that were not touched. I thought it was explained on the video that they were left untouched so that they would acquire apical dominance and the tree would therefore direct its majority of growth into those two, while stunting the growth of the remainder of the tree. This was done to deal with a tree that was too big (wide) for the space it is in. The crimson maple tends to grow wide and lack a good leader. I was trying to "correct" this... And whoever thought the upper canopy was not pruned, is mistaken. I pruned every other limb on this tree.. That was most apparent when seeing the tree in person, and far less so on film... That is why pruning is so hard to show on video.. If you can look at a small picture of a tree's before and after and see a noticeable difference, then the tree has most likely been butchered.. With many other species and conditions of trees, even this much pruning would be butchering..

That is a valid concern and I AM constantly warning my clients not to remove lower limbs on their trees (elevate), because of the tremendous value these limbs have of shading the root zone and trunk. The importance of these lower limbs is effected by the way the sun falls on the area, with the amount of southern-western exposure of large portions of the trunk and root zone and the shade coming from the surrounding tree canopy and being concerns. The older and less healthy the tree, the more care needs to be taken. I would expect this to be much more of a concern in the US than in England due to the long hot & dry summers here. On this particular tree, we did open up the side by the house A LOT (southern exposure), and I think there is enough shade on the trunk and limbs to prevent sun scald. It seems like sun scald is more associated with western exposure, as those long hot afternoons in July and August can be brutal around here. The root zone is not much of a concern, as the tree overall has plenty of shade on that area, and is only going to grow more of those large dense leaves. Though its not a bad idea to ask the clients to water the tree once a week in the dry spells..

a secret one! LOL...

You got that right!

Well of course.... I did think a bit about the cut and bucket position before making that first cut. It could have been made with a narrow notch, under 20 degrees, which would have insured that it came down flat, or even but first. That was not however needed for this piece, as the limb was so long that it simply could not get enough rotation (from that height) to cause the but to kick back towards the bucket. Which ties in nicely to the thread title. Sometimes bigger is safer. There is also something unusual about the cut, which no one has mentioned....

We run a different way.. One groundie stays with the mewp op or climber at all times and the skid steer grabs the entire piece and feeds the chipper, mostly in one piece... So as soon as the piece is untied, the mewp op can tie off the next one and start cutting... That particular job was done for a landscaper who was re-grading the entire backyard, so turf damage was not an issue, but in general this skid steer is very light on lawns, with little or no damage. On particularly wet, soft or sensitive areas, we'll lay mats for turning or bridging.

The stubs were later pruned to target cuts, and I thought that was explained.. the power pruner was used to remove the limbs initially before the tree was climbed. That was a quick way of making some room etc.. they stubs were recut to target cuts when the tree was climbed.. The format of the video was confusing, especially of you did not watch the whole thing.. And I don't climb when I can use the mewp. I would not have been taking such large bits if I had been tied into the tree.

Here is a 92 second video of some work from last week. Big is in the eye of the beholder, so some might and some might not consider this big. I think it can be important, when working from a mewp at full extension, to cut a piece big enough to keep it balanced or butt heavy. I do it all the time.. set the lowering line with a pole saw and cut low enough to keep the piece somewhat balanced and let 'em swing out slow and easy, or keep the tips clear. Couple nice falling cuts thrown in for some more crash and bang! Hope you all are watching full screen [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GQJkRcsoCo]YouTube - ‪is bigger better .mov‬‏[/ame]

Glad and somewhat surpriesed that you enjoyed it. There was no one available to run the camera, so I had to shoot the video and do the pruning.. The power pruner (never did like that name.. I call it the chainsaw on a stick), was only used for the initial phase of cutting to remove low limbs and tip back the lower branches.. After that the tree was climbed... I do not always remove crossing limbs, especially when they are big limbs, but was fine with doing so onthis young tree.. Personally I find the heroics more satisfying to produce on video, though I do have another similar video coming of a larger tree that was pruned and cabled from the mewp..

Seems like there is very little discussion or demonstration of prunign techniques on video and video forums.. So I was wondering if this one would generate some interest.. My guess is that it is just too slow to keep most arbs' attention... See what you think.. This video shows "before, during and after", the process of pruning a young maple. The tree was getting too big for the space and shading the lawn heavily. No actual cutting is shown, juts shots of the tree. There is a lot of talking about the pruning process that may be helpful for newbies and those that want to learn some pruning basics. The rest of you are sure to be bored by all the chatter! NOTE: because of the species, youth, vigor of this tree, a very large percentage of the green leafy material was removed, MUCH MORE than would be acceptable for the vast majority of trees. With pruning, normally less is more, but the client needed this tree cut back hard to fit the space and allow for a lot more light, and this particular tree could handle it well. [ame] [/ame]

Seems as though there was a lot of inefficiency in his technique, both cutting and tying off that piece. I doubt it was a real work situation As has been pointed out, he could have bombed the piece. He might have even been trying to show what not to do to a trainee watching from the ground. He was just too chill and not action enough for a real work situation.. Looked like he might have been answering questions, asked from the ground.. The main point is that it is easy to make fasle assumptions, especially when there is a language barrier.. People make up stories and then get all worked up about them. How attached to your stories are you? One other point.............. what makes you all call that a "Step cut"... Definition of terms is crucial if we are going to have an intelligent discussion.. That is not what I call a step cut, and have never heard it used to define the cut shown here. So what do you mean by a "step cut". I had never heard the term used in any literature or on the boards before I used it to describe an extremely low back release back cut. Since then I found out that the term has been used to describe a gob which is carved out to look like a set of stairs..

The speedline was only designed to keep the buts from swinging out well after they left the cut. What kept the butts from pushing back over the cuts before they dropped was the cuts themselves. That is what they were designed to do.

if you take a closer look.. you'll see that none of the adjacent trees were damaged.. sometimes its tough to tell on the small screen, BUT you can always hear the snap of breaking limbs.. In this case there were none..

Not exactly.. you weren't there so please just trust me.. there were only three cuts.. the reason the two big ones came off sooner is becasue of the width of the notches, not the weight.. the last one looks like a wide humboldt, but its not, its a narrow notch, with a partial snip creating a steep downward plane on the front of the face. See Gerry Beranek's "Fundamentals fo General Tree Work", pg 306-307.. the reason I left the notch wider on the smaller cut was becasue it had some side lean and I wanted to make sure it went to the lay. I was not worried about that one, as it was so much smaller than the other two and couldn't do much damage if it went wrong. If it had been speedlined, it would have stayed to the lay.. I probably should have cut a narrower notch on that one, but it worked out OK. I was prepared to have to kick it off, and was still hoping that the tips wouldn't catch enough to swing the butt so far forward.. It is possible that the two bigger ones would have still fallen to the lay,if they had not been attatched to the vertical speed line, BUT I was not going to take any chances, especially with the big one (first one)... the speedline guarenteed the desired results... the whole operation was quick and easy. I don't understand how anyone thinks that it could have been faster or better to climb and rig smaller pieces. Much of that would have had to be lowered out, as there was a beautiful little dogwood in flower directly underneath the big lead.. I also do not like putting the ground crew in harms way, working on a hill in the woods, especially since this is tick season, and lyme disease is a constant threat here. The back lead was completely dead.. I certainly didn't want to climb that if I didn't have to..

That was the virgin job for the headcam and somehow it got lost before it took its first shot. I thought I was wearing it and it just disappeared. The manual said tie a small lanyard to it in case it gets dislodged, but I didn't think it was necessary since this was going to be a straight up and down with little movement through bruch etc.. Hopefully it was found during clean up, and maybe its just not in the cards..

Yes... because the tips were going to catch on the adjacent trees, twhich was going to cause the buts to swing out under or even past the tips, leaving the piece to then drop in any direction for a full 360º, and possibly falling straight back at the climber. that first top was somewhere around 15 meters.. so using a vertical speed line on the buts, prevented them from swinging out away from the tree, and thus kept the tips oriented towards the desired lay. On the second cut, which was much smaller, I decided to not bother with the speedline beacause the piece was not tall enough to hurt much of anything, should it have gone off the lay.. and you can see what happened.. the butt swung out and the top ended up going off 180ºto the lay, right back at the tree.. That would have been a problem if we didn;t have a skid steer loader on site to fish out the butt of that cut..

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWRoASX9Q4c]YouTube - floating holly vertical speedline oak tops.mov[/ame] had fun with this oak removal yesterday...

Looks like they disabled your audio.. probably was owned by WMG (warner music group).. there is a way around that.. you have to dispute the claim with youtube.. write this in the reason: Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use they should put it up immediately... Nice little trick...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAFKOQsaG_0]YouTube - big john FH feet.wmv[/ame] I just came across this old video clip of Big John Grier climbing, probably around 2003.. he would pull this move from time to time.. He was a machine.. He just got his commercial pilot's license.. I don't expect to see him in the saddle again..

I did not make an estimate in terms of lbs in thinking through the rigging system.. Only thoughts were is this (truck) strong enough to lift the tree up, and are the overhead rigging points going to hold and are the tie off points on the tree balanced and strong enough to hold. I knew I was well within the ropes capacities, though probably outside the 10% SWL recommendations. PUtting two ropes and pulleys in the system helped reduce the weight on each, but I was actually more concerned about the overhead anchor points failing, than the rope, which is why I went with the double blocks. Yes I know a couple guys that wear chainsaw resistant pants, but it is far more common to see no leg protection worn by most workers here in the USA.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM52FXtF9LY]YouTube - maple off roof.mov[/ame] with some discussion of falling cuts

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8v2o2cLMXfI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Taking the dead top of this cherry out with a plunged step cut allows the climber to safely descend and get out of LZ before tripping the hinge.. [ame] [/ame]

he cut an unintentional bypass dutchman on the face.. though he denies it, there is no doubt about it.. can be clearly seen when he tries to push the remaining spike over by hand.. that type of binding, and resulting babrie is caused by an overlap in the two face cuts..

Ya it works... My friend showed me that one working a monster hurricane in North Carolina in 89.. He'd leave the brush on the tree, then use a similar vertical cut.. with the right kind of canopy, the weight gets distributed evenly across all the brush, and the tree slides right down the roof, til it gets straight, and with a little help will go over backwards away from the house, right over the stump... In the right situation it does no additional damage to the roof... and of course it wouldn't be used if the roof wasn't already messed up and in need of replacing... We took one tulip of a house that had been totalled .. the entire house was knocked out of square.. Never left the ground.. no crane.. just a little magic dust and a big saw.. ps I posted with same vid on the climbers forum last year..