I finally got around to taking Ekka's challenge and took the camcorder to a job to see of the falling direction could be altered with the backcut.. I know that may seem funny to a lot of experienced faller, kind of like dropping a leaf to see if it will fall to the ground... BUT Ekka even cited an article that argues that the lay will not be effected by the angle of the backcut...
So here are the results and they were surprising... White ash, straight enough trees, flat grouond, insignificant wind, open face notch... the two trees, that were pulled with pull lines, fell in perfect line with the notch.. Pull line was pulled in the direction of the notch... The one tree that had a slight head lean and no pull line, fell perfectly in line with the backcut, which was some 12-15º off the notch..
SO that does prove without any question that a tree can be steered with the back cut, just not exactly sure why the difference. It might be that the direction of pull determines which side of the hinge (on white ash of nothing else) will steer the tree... My belief is that the better a species hinges, the more ability the faller has to steer with the backcut..
More later.. though Don't expect to see the video any time soon..
