Gypo Logger
Timber Baron
Oh, never mind! You didn't explain it well enough in laymans terms. So Shut TFU and take a pic!
Oh alright!
A Felling Question
- Thread starter MustangMike
- Start date
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Oh alright!
gomoto69
ArboristSite Operative
Sloping back cuts are just wrong, and just advertise you don't know the proper way to fall a tree. I'm not trying to criticize, but it looked to me that the big tree in your second video got cut right off, and it simply fell into it's heavy side, the side with all the limbs, which luckily was the way you wanted it to go. I may be wrong as it wasn't clear in the video, but it was free of the stump by the time it was maybe 30 degrees over. One thing i would suggest, and this was drilled into me by the very good faller who taught me, look up! Glance down to be sure you're on target and not cutting your holding wood, but then watch the top, up there is what will kill you! If you carefully watch the top, you will see it move the direction it's going to fall before it actually goes over. If it's going to set back, you will see it, and you can stop and try to wedge it over. If it's going to go the right way, you can see that too, stop and check your holding wood! Couple more blips of the throttle or a tap on a wedge an over she goes!
Trx250r180
Saw polisher
Wedges do not push in a slope cut as good as they lift the tree in a straight back cut
gomoto69
ArboristSite Operative
I think the biggest danger of sloping a backcut is that you don't get a clear picture of how much wood you're leaving for a hinge. If your undercut and your backcut line up vertically, you've cut the tree off, even if there's 2" or 4" or 6" of space between them. Cutting straight towards the undercut from the back gives a clear view of how much hinge you have left. I hope i'm explaining that ok. As soon as a tree is cut off, gravity takes over and you have lost all control of the tree. Two most important things when falling a tree, don't cut it off and look up!!
Gypo Logger
Timber Baron
Once a tree is committed to its fall, you can cut all the holding wood you want, this is a good thing as the tree will roll, this reducing butt shatter and fibre pull. Mostly reserved for falling hardwood veneer.
gomoto69
ArboristSite Operative
Ya you can give her a few braaap braaap's once it's committed, but i like to make my exit before it's over very far, as in your first video, don't wanna catch that on the chin!
Gypo Logger
Timber Baron
I get thru Falkland every once in while, have a few friends there. Hope we have some trees left if it doesn't all burn down this summer. We can always pick mushrooms. Lol
gomoto69
ArboristSite Operative
Shaping up to be a dry one alright, i've watched fly hills burn twice, once in 1972 when i was a little guy, again in 1998, i hope i don't see it a third time! Cheers!
You talking about an 'angled' back cut - the type used to slide the stem sideways off the stump sometimes?
You cut the hinge off in your vid, if your getting fibre pull your face cut / belly is too deep or shallow angle, I forget the actual numbers but most fatalities in manual falling happen within 6 or so meters of the stump, if you've cut the hinge off your staying too long at the stump & not giving enough time to retreat a safe distance.
Tansk
jughead500
Sasquatch
Be careful cutting tulip poplar.they have a slight tendency to barber chair.
Not that i've had one crack on the stump but out of bucking out 12 logs out of 2 trees a few months ago i cracked 4 logs down the center.don't know if it was the time of year or what but they popped like a shot gun.
Not that i've had one crack on the stump but out of bucking out 12 logs out of 2 trees a few months ago i cracked 4 logs down the center.don't know if it was the time of year or what but they popped like a shot gun.
HuskStihl
Chairin'em for the sound
That second vid was Brad Snelling, not gyppo.
There's not much chance of finding one of them down here, maybe an ornamental tree in suburbia.
Tansk
Trx250r180
Saw polisher
Brad is Gypo's stunt double on u-tube
I never remember seeing many of them, but over the last few decades, they seem to be everywhere, and they grow very fast.
As so often gets pointed out, there are many different situations in tree felling, and I can assure you that some of them require extra precautions to reduce the tendency of a tree to jump backwards off the stump as the tree comes down.
As you pointed out yourself, hitting things on the way down can cause that to happen. So can a standard open face cut with a flat back cut on a very tall, narrow tree, particularly if wedged over center. As the tree proceeds to fall, there is a huge amount of thrust required to accelerate the falling tree sideways. All of the force that moved the tree away from its vertical position (except for the straight down part of the movement) came from the holding wood on the stump. If the sideways thrust on the stump exceeds the holding power of the stump, it will jump backwards...every single time. Generally, it is pretty easy to keep that from happening.
This is all basic physics. Like you said, when the cut is not done to prevent that from happening, it was done wrong. Suggesting that there is no backwards thrust applied to the stump is equally wrong. (tree climbers know all about that backwards thrust; we feel it every time we cut the top out of a tree and the standing spar bounces all over when that thrust is released by the falling top. See video here.)
I just consider a sloping back cut to be a waste of chainsaw time. It makes the cut unnecessarily long, and does not really do anything that cannot be done with a superior method. I personally think sloping back cuts are popular for folks with dull saws or weak arms; this allows some gravity to help them push the saw through the cut.
I very seldom use a felling wedge, and use a sloping back cut even less. But you are right, a sloping back cut does little to correct any other mistake; particularly a lack of experience or understanding.
Deets066
Firewood hack
Do you rope them?
It only took one time that a tree sat back on me, now I never fall a tree without a wedge, unless it's a head leaner
gomoto69
ArboristSite Operative
A humbolt undercut helps keep the tree from coming off the stump backwards. Having a tree fall and hit something causing the butt to fly up, i witnessed the effect that can have first hand. My first week learning to fall, green as grass! I got pinched in a tree, maybe 14" diameter. My boss was falling not far away, so i went and got him to cut me out. He cut it about chest hight, half way down it hit a snag leaning between 2 trees, and the butt flew up (just like in your video), catching my boss in his chest, lifted him up and threw him about 15 feet back, i was shocked, trying to remember some first aid, expecting blood an broken bones at least! Thankfully, he got up, swearing, brushed himself off and carried on back to his work, scared the crap outa me! Never a dull moment when trees are falling!
Rope it over? Only if I need to, although I consider it much easier and more secure than using a wedge.
I have a keen eye for tree balance, and I typically undercut the center of gravity on a tree with a deep face cut. I can easily set a rope, and I have all sorts of equipment to pull a tree if I need it. The hinge can fail, the cutter can make a mistake, too. In addition, we are usually cutting down some unhealthy compromised tree, so counting on a hinge and a wedge isn't that good a plan.
I was training a climber a week ago; we were sending down a 26" cottonwood. We had climbed and removed the branches that weighted the tree toward the fence we were obliged to miss. It was still leaning a bit to the west, and we wanted it to go to the SE. He wanted to put a rope on it and pull it over with my 9500 bobcat & winch, but I told him to just cut it down. I explained that we had a nice brisk wind in the direction we wanted it to go, and that it didn't matter if he dropped it the wrong way, so long as he missed the fence. He made a crappy face cut (not deep enough), then did a poor job on the back cut. He finished most of the back cut on the easy side, but was afraid to go around to the treacherous downhill side of the tree to make the hinge narrow enough to let the tree blow over. He was also rather reluctant to hang out on the side the tree was leaning toward, having almost cut the entire hinge off on the easy to reach uphill side.
The wind picked up a bit more, the back cut opened up a little bit, and I told him to deepen the back cut quick on the treacherous side. He did, the tree went the right direction, and all was well.
It took him too long to cut down the tree, and it was a prime candidate for the wedge technique. Too bad the dolts didn't even own a wedge so that they could use it. I also used that little lesson as an opportunity to explain to him that he really should have had a wedge on the job, too. You see, I have nothing against wedges and I insist that my crew always have at least three on every job, along with my splitting axe to drive them. In this particular case, I had hired a bunch of barely qualified hacks to help me finish a job, and they did a fine job of hacking down the trees that I needed cut down.
If the tree had gone the wrong way, it would only have been joining the several dozen other trees in the creek bottom that we had already cut down. In this particular case, I was just using my judgement to send a W leaner off to the SE with nothing more than a nice breeze. I would not have taken that chance next to something expensive.
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