[AT] Knowing when to call it a day

[Dean Vinson]

I had some free time this afternoon so I went out to cut down another big
osage orange tree, this one out in an old pasture.   Being an osage orange
it had two big trunks, each maybe 12-16 inches in diameter and both of them
leaning away from vertical, and lots of tangled branches that sprawled out
every which way.   Some of those sprawling branches had gotten to the point
of encroaching on the pasture fence, so I loaded up the wagon with the
chainsaw, chainsaw gas, bar oil, and log chain, fired up the Farmall Super
M, and headed out to work.

 

Took most of an hour to get the first trunk successfully cut down and sawed
up into manageable sized pieces.   Not really that big of a tree but man do
those things have a lot of sprangly little interlocking branches that you're
constantly fighting and having to cut up into smaller pieces just so you can
move them even though they don't weigh very much.   When I was finished with
that first trunk, I noticed the sun was close to setting and I thought "I
should call it a day and go get cleaned up right now."

 

But heck, I'm already out there, already all suited up in PPE, so I decided
to go for the second trunk.   Notched it about waist high on the side toward
which it was leaning, cut from the other side, and it fell most of the way
over but came to rest on its branches and didn't break cleanly away from the
stump.   [Would have been smarter to bore-cut most of it, now that I think
about it.]  I moved out away from the stump and started sawing off the outer
branches where I could reach them, but the chainsaw ran out of gas.   After
filling it back up I went to tighten the chain tension, and while fooling
around with that managed to burn the knuckle of one finger on the chainsaw
muffler.  Might have uttered a minor curse word.

 

I went back to continue working my way around the fallen tree, cutting where
I could, but there were a lot of heavy branches out of my reach extending
high up in the air and I worried the tree would roll over toward me if I
kept cutting away what I could reach while the trunk was still hanging
precariously off the stump.    So I decided to cut a short section out of
the leaned-over trunk right next to the stump so it could fall free, and I
could then work on getting everything safely down to ground level from that
end.   Since one end of the trunk was resting on the stump and the other end
was resting on its branches I figured the heavy end near the stump would
want to drop down, meaning the underside of the tree would be in tension, so
I cut a notch on the upper side and then began sawing up from the underside.
Turned out I'd guessed wrong and the underside was in compression, and the
saw kerf closed and bound up the chainsaw bar tight as could be.
Definitely brought out some curse words.

 

I separated the chainsaw from the bar (learned that lesson once before),
leaving the bar and chain hanging there in the partially cut tree, and went
to get the Super M and the log chain.   I hooked the chain to the
farthest-out end of a decent-sized branch way out far away from the stump,
intending to pull the whole thing around so it'd drop away from the stump
and release my bound-up saw bar, but just then the Super M sputtered and
died, out of gas.  I hate to overdo the curse words, but temptation was
strong.

 

By then it was starting to get dark and my gas cans were a long walk away,
but I had about half a gallon of chainsaw gas left.   I poured that in the
tank, started the tractor back up, and pulled the top of the tree around.
Sure enough, the trunk dropped cleanly off the stump, so I shut the tractor
off, celebrated my hard-fought victory, and went back over to reclaim my
chainsaw bar and do some final fast cutting just to show that tree who was
boss. only to find the bar driven straight down into the ground like a tent
stake under the weight of the trunk.   Guess it's time to call it a day and
go get cleaned up.

 

Dean Vinson

Saint Paris, Ohio

 

 

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