One guy I was surveying for was watching me chainsaw trees off a property line, and asked if I could help him with a problem tree at his house. I went and looked and he had a 24" dead pine tree between his house and separate garage he needed taken out. There was 10 feet between the two buildings.
Told him I would cut the tree if he'd sign a waver freeing me of any liability. He said he would, so I wrote it up, and he signed.
Dropped that tree dead center between the buildings.
Got a bit more practice after Hurricane Harvey down here. Mostly big oaks. They pose further engineering issues because most of the time they don't grow straight up, like a pine. You have to factor in the offset weight and what it does with gravity. Some, I wouldn't even try.
I haven't taken down all that many trees, and most I have were to clear our property before we put up any structures so there weren't a lot of things that could have gone wrong.
I have had some hands on tutorials from guys who work trees for a living. One of them pointed me to the below which he said was the best YouTube on the subject. The skinny guy in it was killed by a tree so you know it is legit.
Prefer trees that fell themselves, but that doesn't always happen.
Escape route, muy importante!
Very true. I look at every tree situation differently too. Nobody has a real video of how to fell trees. They have videos of how the fell THAT one.
Good point.
If I'm dropping trees, 99.9% of the time it's firewood for the cabin. Trees being dropped in the woods so other than not getting hung up - there's little other consideration. I do a face cut, come in from the back and let her fall. Select trees that "naturally" want to fall in a decent spot. I'm not manipulating where they land too much.
So for me - it's basically about getting it on the deck. Not necessarily "avoid the swimming pool and house please" like a pro arborist needs to do.
I have some exerience in cutting down trees, starting back when I was young and we were using a crosscut saw. I was a teenager before we got a gas powered saw. I alsot cut a lot of trees, while working on a survey crew for the ADOT. formly known as the AHTD. I have cut down oak trees in the mountain's of North and West Arkansas using a brush hook( what we called them) Kaiser blade/ditch bank blade that size or larger, try that some time, but that was what we had to work with. My point was going to be that we never cut them that high off of the ground. Had a neighbor that was selling some pine trees cut by machine, that they were docking him for butt swell on the logs. Main point is nothing is like it used to be. l miles
Pretty much spot on! I fell at least 100 trees a year and have gotten fairly decent at it. Majority are dead Ash Trees thanks to the Emerald Ash Borer. Have put some pretty big trees into some small places. If possible I try to always shoot a pull line into the tree for some mechanical help just to help insure it goes exactly where I want it. Biggest mistake I see is people making the back cut too deep cutting out too much holding wood leading to an uncontrolled fall instead of properly using wedges OR putting too much pulling pressure on a tree while backcutting which can lead to barberchairs etc
Pretty much spot on! I fell at least 100 trees a year and have gotten fairly decent at it. Majority are dead Ash Trees thanks to the Emerald Ash Borer. Have put some pretty big trees into some small places. If possible I try to always shoot a pull line into the tree for some mechanical help just to help insure it goes exactly where I want it. Biggest mistake I see is people making the back cut too deep cutting out too much holding wood leading to an uncontrolled fall instead of properly using wedges OR putting too much pulling pressure on a tree while backcutting which can lead to barberchairs etc
I always hated cutting dead trees worse than any other kind.
Pretty much spot on! I fell at least 100 trees a year and have gotten fairly decent at it. Majority are dead Ash Trees thanks to the Emerald Ash Borer. Have put some pretty big trees into some small places. If possible I try to always shoot a pull line into the tree for some mechanical help just to help insure it goes exactly where I want it. Biggest mistake I see is people making the back cut too deep cutting out too much holding wood leading to an uncontrolled fall instead of properly using wedges OR putting too much pulling pressure on a tree while backcutting which can lead to barberchairs etc
I always hated cutting dead trees worse than any other kind.
These big dead ash trees are a real treat! Felling them whole or cutting from a bucket and dropping pieces are about the only "safe" ways of removing them as I would never climb one and you cant rig off them to lower pieces due to unknown stability of the rigging points. Not to mention they shatter into a million pieces when they hit the ground! Dusty as hell when running through a chipper as well!!
Use several wedges on large stuff. Too cheap to buy a $2,500 fifty-ton tree jack. A lifetime faller once suggested I buy a jack and waxed eloquently for half an hour on all of its benefits. When I came back bitching about the price, I asked where/when he'd purchased his. Response was, "Oh, I've never owned one."
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