[AT] Knowing when to call it a day

Stephen Offiler soffiler at gmail.com
Sat Nov 16 05:38:35 PST 2019


Hi Dean:

Good story.  Gotta know when to call it a day, and where lethal equipment
is involved, you want to err on the side of caution for sure.  I've still
got all my limbs and digits but I'll admit I've probably been lucky rather
than smart on occasion.  As age sets in, it gets easier to quit early.

Most of the trees I drop are small to medium cherry or maple around 12" to
16" BH (standard measure "breast height" diameter at 4-1/2' off the
ground).  Somewhere along the line I latched onto Terry Hale's videos on
Youtube.  This poor guy is about as dull and monotonic as any speaker I've
heard, but the info is gold.  I'll provide links.

I now treat most of my trees as leaners whether they actually lean or not.
Hale describes wide-mouth shallow notches, and a plunge cut to avoid
barberchair.  Tractor reference, I also use a 100' cable to pull them
down.  I leave my hinge a bit thicker than you'll see on the Hale videos,
to add a bit of stability, but I'm on the tractor 100' from the danger zone
near the stump when it comes down.  Strategic notch and hinge help the tree
break clean and drop down off the stump as you want it.

Leaners:
https://youtu.be/tGLV4AcyYXw

The whole thing:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtnDIbN3p4tJ87KFd8w0JcQ/videos

Best regards,
Steve O.


On Fri, Nov 15, 2019 at 8:07 PM Dean Vinson <dean at vinsonfarm.net> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> AT at lists.antique-tractor.com
> http://lists.antique-tractor.com/listinfo.cgi/at-antique-tractor.com
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.antique-tractor.com/pipermail/at-antique-tractor.com/attachments/20191116/4a9e7409/attachment.htm>


More information about the AT mailing list