Jump to content

Log in or register to remove this advert

dadio

Member
  • Posts

    469
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by dadio

  1. dadi wouldn't call that a "stuntfell", as it was really a very straightforward notch and drop. Though he first heard the term "stuntfell" on this site and is not sure exactly what that means. What made that a bit unusual was that the cut was made from the bucket at about 10-12', where the trunk was 32" diameter. The top was 65-70' tall. The bakcut was plunged, with a slight bypass of about 3" on the back strap release. This allowed the tree to move slightly towards the lay, but then stop, leaving the kerf of the lower backcut open about an inch. Once that happened dadi knew the tree was ready to go with just a slight pull, so he could reposition the bucket for a good camera angle. Threading the needle refers to a tight drop zone only. The tips of the falling tree brushed the tips of both trees to either side on the way down and brushed the shrubs across the street, without doing any damage to trees or shrubs and very little damage to the lawn, as the street took most of the impact. Two pull lines were used, both slightly offset from the lay to compensate for side lean and weight. One was a static line, pretensioned with the pickup truck, with driver ready if extra pull was needed. the other was set with a redirect on a tree in the yard across the street and pulled with the skid steer in the street. The wedge was used to compensate for taking a bit much off the tension side of the hinge with the plunge cut, though ot probably was not needed. Anyhow, it turned out to be a pretty piece of video
  2. dadi had fun with this big oak top.. left the stick at about 10-12' as per customer's request. top just fit, brushing trees on both sides and at the tips on the trees and shrubs across the street.. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZUsYs1XmRA]YouTube - treework big oak top threads needle.mov[/ame]
  3. Not stricktly... bu mostly Corrected again by another teenager!!! as for 3dogs... the vid does come with a long warning.. 24 seconds of don't try this unless you know what you are doing etc... No wings here.. but I do pray
  4. Ya.. I know I should have used a butt line on the oak.. would have spoiled the shot though [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqtb_KAeIZw]YouTube - cherry tops oak swing.mov[/ame]
  5. Monty Python has nothing on you! (its a snake thing)
  6. Love those step cuts.. came up with the idea myself, though doubt I was the first. I like to cut as low as possible to avoid having to make a flush cut before grinding the stump. Making the notch down low into the root flare can be a tedious cut, and you can't trust the grain in the wood down there, as it goes all over the place. So it is better to keep the notch and the hinge above the root flare in case of larger trees or the need for precision falling. So the step cut allows for keeping the notch in good wood, while keeping half the back cut flush. Depending on the situation. we'll either just grind the whole stump as is, or flush cut the other half of the step, and handle that half round, which can usually go through the chipper. My chipper takes up to 17" high and 21" wide, so most halves will chip. Saving the need to flush cut the stump and handle the resulting round was the original thinking in developing this cut. I have found it very useful in controlling the fall as well. If you try the cut, you'll find that it takes quite a bit of pull to trigger the fall. This allows the faller to make the cut and walk away before calling for the pull, a very iseful option in certain situations. The only thing is you have to get good with setting the hinge with a plunge cut. It has to be second nature. What is a mewp? and a bit of an illusion there due to camera angle. those pieces weren't even close to the boom, even though it looks that way on screen.
  7. This is another older video from last year.. we used the GRCS to drift line some pieces from the tree over the garage to the tree over the driveway, and a couple other nice cuts. The bucket was maxxed out, so I had to brush some tips on the garage roof, which fortunately was metal roof with no gutters.. NO HARM done.. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r17mKsfM-jQ]YouTube - Siberian Elm Removal Youtube.mov[/ame]
  8. The dutchman appears at 3:38 of the second video.. If that is waht you were refering to Bob, then good on you for picking up the mistake. I never checked the time after reading your initial post.
  9. excuse me.. it was a ms 200 and I was on the top handle.. I think it is unwise to think you can handle kcikback from that saw with one hand.. It may depend on your position. with any kind of reaching, you'd have very little control to stop a serios kickback.
  10. Yes Robert, that was the specific cut I thought was the worst and a mistake he used to make regularly. I was one handing on a crane cut a couple weeks back and as the piece laid back slowly towards the bar, becasue of the lift from the crane, I felt the saw start to kick back towards me. With only one hand on the rear handle, I was helpless to stop the saw, had it wanted to keep moving back towards me. I"LL NEVER do that again!!! That was an extremely helpless feeling.. my life at the mercy of the saw's movement. If you look closely at Pat's cut, you can see he cut an unintentional bypass dutchman on the face of that upright, then reached up and pushed with one hand as he cut with the other until the piece broke. He is big and strong enough to get away with that, but it is VERY poor practice. The bypassed face causes the hinge to sieze and he has to cut through it to failure, as he pushed. Had he cut a proper notch and back cut, he could have put the saw away and safely pushed with both hands. There was a climber in Tennessee that cut his arm off doing the exact same thing. I've tried to talk to Pat about it, as the uncut video showed him regularly bypassing many of his faces on that job, but he doesn't seem to want to hear it. I usually don't get too uptight about one handing in many cases, BUT this is one where it seems totally unnecessary, and it would be better to correct the technique than keep taking chances. Seems like the big strong guys are the ones tha tend to handle the saw with one hand in bad positions, because they are strong enough to get away with it.. That is until the saw kicks, and then its too late.
  11. There was actually only one piece where the butt cmae back towards the climber and he jumped a bit. He had however placed himself behind the trunk and was out of harms way, so it was more of a flinch than a real threat to his safety. On that particular cut, he had asked me to hold it for a moment to clear an obstacle before allowing it to run. Again, when a cut looks a little dodgy becasue it comes close to something, it is often a sign of mastery, rather than incompetence. No one has yet mentioned the error that I had in mind, with a bad cut leading to an obvious safety violation. The piece that got hung up was a lesser error of miscommunication, where I let the piece run as I had been doing on the previous cuts, when I should have held tight and the tips would have cleared the sassafrass.
  12. Pat is a fast and efficient climber, both detail and production oriented. He has a pleasant personality, and is always good to work with. I'd put his productivity up against anyone's. We both have the same teacher, So our styles are somewhat similar. We like to take big pieces when it can be done safely. Often using a near balance point tie off on the pieces to reduce shock loads. Having someone you can trust on the ropes is essential. I ran the ropes on the first tree, then the camera on part of the second and third, then back to the ropes again. He did make some mistakes which I left in the video on purpose, but no one so far has mentioned the one I have the strongest feelings about.
  13. A walk down memory lane. This is one of the first jobs we ever made a video from. All ad-lib.. part 1 of 2, from summer 2009.. a little wordy, but some nice examples of riging good sized bits. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpwDNQwKzFo]YouTube - Efficiency in Tree Removal pt.1 Daniel Murphy 3 Tulip Removals[/ame] and here is part 2 [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-elOeOd4Ak]YouTube - Efficiency in Tree Removal pt.2 Daniel Murphy 3 Tulip Removal[/ame]
  14. Would you beleive me if I told you the marketing rep for Stihl, here in the USA, gave me a couple dozen tee shirts and 6 sweat shirts back in 2004?.. Smart move on her part..
  15. That's fine and I'll say: you use your strandard practice on anything approaching 30" DBH, and I'll use my cut, and my trees will be down 5x faster than yours..
  16. Becasue taking a large piece of equipment requires the cost of transportation and in the case of a large tractor will undoubtedly do far more damage to the lawn and grounds than any added benefit from having the machine on site. My skid steer does not casue ruts in the lawn. Nor do I use it in the woods very often, nor would it do much to move trees that big and heavy. On the big ash the customer was particularly concerned that no heavy equipment was brought into the woods. There was a tight gate on the beech and the locust was leaning over the neighbor's proprty line, so I would have had to ask for permission to use equipment on his property. I showed this technique used on 4 trees, but have used it on 400.. ANd again will repeat, that the faller is in no danger from the falling butt as long as the piece is not tip heavy. So I say, that I do not get in the danger zone in any of those drops.
  17. Put up a vid and we can all evaluate the pros and cons of your recommended technique.
  18. That's all well and good, setting up a ground anchor army manual style is a great advantage when needed. That would probably take 10x longer than needed for these trees though.. The pic posted refers to a winch on the back of a skidder or tractor.. that's not something you are going to bring out to do one tree in a residential backyard.
  19. That looks like a training manual for logging.. Far different than residential tree work. You just can't call in a skidder w/ 50,000 lb winch, when a tree blows over in someone's backyard.
  20. You and I are in a different business... Those jobs comprise of 1 tree in a backyard.. NO WINCHES ALLOWED!
  21. Let's not get personal if you please...
  22. Plunged vertical snap cuts tripping widowmaker: I put this video together on a rainy morning to show some more examples of the benefits and use of the plunged vertical snap cut. The 3 trees here are large, 26-33” DBH, with the first ash being well over 100’ tall. Also note the very first short clip is a slow motion replay of the still camera shot of the “tripping a widowmaker” video on the hung tulip spar. Many viewers thought the drop caught me as unanticipated. That is a misinterpretation. It was really the cameraman who was not ready for the drop. His camera motion was quite sudden and jerky. However the still camera reveals the calm, cool, and collected look on my face as the piece drops and I step back and look up. Also note at 3:42, on the slow motion replay of the second cut on the big ash drop, you can see a large hanger falling just after the piece drops. It is these and other overhead hazards that pose the greatest threat to the faller, and NOT the “spear cut” butt of the dropping tree. As long as the piece is not tip heavy, the butt will fall reliably straight down, and slightly forward, away from the faller. Also note that leaving a top strap does little to slow the piece down when it is attached to the stump. It is only after the tree is off the stump that both sides of the cut can move and allow the tree to rip down in a slower movement. There it is a judgment call as to how much top strap to leave, depending on the forces affecting the drop and the characteristics of the wood fibers. I was forced to release all the trips on the ash and beech, by cutting the top straps, as I had left too much wood on the top straps in those cuts. Note however, that this is still acceptable and puts the faller in no more danger that tripping it from the bottom. On the second cut of the large ash, you can clearly see I was able to actually take a step back from the tree when I reached up to release the top strap with a high cut. Releasing the top strap by making top cut from one side, then the other, rather than reaching from one side, allows the faller to stand just a little farther back from the tree. Also notice the one of the best benefits of this technique is that it prevents the bar from getting pinched, no matter how the forces are causing tension and compression in the wood fibers. And it is just faster and easier than using many other suggested methods. I’d love to see a video demonstration of a face and backcut with wedges, or key cut on trees this big and heavy (or any other recommended method). Words are cheap. Put up some video and show your recommended methods in action. The only down side I can see to this technique is the tendency of the saw to kick back a bit during the plunge, especially as the tree gets straighter. That is why it is important to get used to plunging on simple bucking and falling cuts. This is not the time to learn to use the plunge. Also note, I have refined my cutting technique a bit since some of these cuts were made, and would not cut them quite the same today, though the basic merits of the technique are still well demonstrated. [ame] [/ame]
  23. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8g__syN4_I]YouTube - remote trip tops[/ame] 3 minutes.. some nice bits..

About

Arbtalk.co.uk is a hub for the arboriculture industry in the UK.  
If you're just starting out and you need business, equipment, tech or training support you're in the right place.  If you've done it, made it, got a van load of oily t-shirts and have decided to give something back by sharing your knowledge or wisdom,  then you're welcome too.
If you would like to contribute to making this industry more effective and safe then welcome.
Just like a living tree, it'll always be a work in progress.
Please have a look around, sign up, share and contribute the best you have.

See you inside.

The Arbtalk Team

Follow us

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.