It was a good presentation. Many of the wannabes should get to listen and watch it. Several guys in the audience were introduced as equals and one of them had started falling around here before chainsaws were used. He showed a video of the falling of the snag that turned into the pile of toothpicks posted in this thread. The snag was 11 feet in diameter and he was excited to get to fall it because he figured it would be the last really big tree for him.
He stressed how one has to take time on the face cut. In the video, he was stopping and checking with his sights. The tree was actually pinching his saw while doing the horizontal face cut. This is kind of humorous--he explained that he used his small saw to start the cut. The small saw had a 40+ inch bar on it.
He explained how he had (and it was in the video) actually lie down on the ground to get the sloping part of the face cut in. He also explained controlling the speed of the fall by making a large face cut. Plus it was a humboldt. The snag had a lot of rot in it and started going over before he was done with the back cut. At that point, he swiped off his hardhat to take a good look, yelled at everybody, threw his saw out of the way and got the heck out of there. That part of the video is Blair Witch like as the camera person is running too. The tree goes where it was supposed to go.
He and the other fallers explained about their pride in their work. They talked about falling being more dangerous now because where they were falling 8 to 10 trees per day, fallers in the smaller diameter timber of today are exposed 100 or more times per day and do not have the experience of bucking logs before learning to fall.
Admission was free and it was a good show. I had hoped he would show the falling of that snag.