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<p>I have had days like that. Sometimes they lasted into a whole
week... Those of us who work with machinery and nature understand
totally how that can happen in the span of a few minutes. My luck
would be the chainsaw gas wouldn't run the tractor. I had not
thought of taking the saw off the bar. I will store that in the
fuzzy memory bank for future use...<br>
</p>
<p>I can guarantee that a Bois DÁrc tree will try to get revenge
even after it is burned and buried. Those roots that can run 100
yards and start another sprout that will trip you when you are
trying to head off a cow. In the fireplace, the wood is so dense
that a small pocket of moisture in the wood can turn into an
explosion. It seems like they come back from the grave...<br>
<br>
I bought a 70hp Morbark Chipper last year to get rid of a bunch of
these Hackberry trees that sprout up and ruin the pasture. I got
concerned about safety due to my balance issues when feeding the
machine. I also am concerned about hiring someone to feed the
trees into the chipper. I got the John Deere skid steer back
home last night. Next project is a grapple to feed the chipper
with the skid steer..<br>
Cecil<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/15/2019 7:07 PM, Dean Vinson
wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Dean Vinson<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Saint Paris, Ohio<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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