jomoco
Tree Freak
I woke this morning with a very grumpy attitude, got unjustifiaby snide responding to Thillmaine's excellent thread on dueling cranes and OSHA, and in a very general sense was a complete jerk until I got today's job safely on the ground and cut up. It wasn't until I left the job waving at very happy clients that I realized that risking my life makes me downright grumpy.
It was a moderately large dead kellogg oak in the laguna mountains east of here.
Because the tree had a spiderweb of power, phone and cable lines restricting my safe DZ to less than 90 degrees, rigging off the dead tree was a must.
I knew the tree was hollow and full of aged silver hangers and branches that had clearly died 3-4 years brfore this tree died a couple years ago.
It was a case of dead and deader above utility drops. The only advantage this nightmare removal offered me was a lean over the pole and drops I wanted to avoid. That may sound crazy, but it isnt to me.
Knowing I had to rig this tree(no crane access) and wanting to exert the bare minimum of shock loading on it meant the preferred loading stress would be 180 degrees off the lean over the pole, exactly where my 75 degrees of DZ was. This is the direction I speedlined the entire tree that wasn't cut and chucked that way by hand.
When I'm doing dead trees I think of myself as a spider tiptoeing up the tree trying not to jar it whatsoever until serious weight has been removed from the leader that I am tied into, to me that means cutting and chucking in small pieces atleast 3 times my body and gear weight.
In this tree I cut and chucked all the hangers after tying them to the tree. Once this was done the speedlining went smoothly with all dynamic forces applied away from the lean.
Once I had a 70 foot fat stick left in the air, I tied a bull line to it, came down, locked the hubs on my old 84 toy 4X4 climbed up the hill about 90 feet away from the stick, tied my front G eye hitch off to a big ponderosa pine, played my 12K pound winch line off the back of the tooltruck about 30 feet to the bull line.
The stick stood straight up nicely and fell precisely inline with the winch line with me cutting with a 394 husky, and my buddy on my truck's winch control.
And despite being bitten about 20 times by the fire ant colony in the hollow base of the tree, I left the job wondering if potential danger to me as a climber makes me so serious that I turn into a knit picking tyrant who needs to chill out?
I don't think so, I think it has kept me alive for 34 years in this biz. All I can do is apologize after I come out of my trance.
What do you guys think?
Do dangerous trees affect any of you this way?
Are you too tyrants about your means and methods when it's your azzes up there on the end of a line?
I know it makes my dinner and beer taste a little better than usual tonight.
jomoco
It was a moderately large dead kellogg oak in the laguna mountains east of here.
Because the tree had a spiderweb of power, phone and cable lines restricting my safe DZ to less than 90 degrees, rigging off the dead tree was a must.
I knew the tree was hollow and full of aged silver hangers and branches that had clearly died 3-4 years brfore this tree died a couple years ago.
It was a case of dead and deader above utility drops. The only advantage this nightmare removal offered me was a lean over the pole and drops I wanted to avoid. That may sound crazy, but it isnt to me.
Knowing I had to rig this tree(no crane access) and wanting to exert the bare minimum of shock loading on it meant the preferred loading stress would be 180 degrees off the lean over the pole, exactly where my 75 degrees of DZ was. This is the direction I speedlined the entire tree that wasn't cut and chucked that way by hand.
When I'm doing dead trees I think of myself as a spider tiptoeing up the tree trying not to jar it whatsoever until serious weight has been removed from the leader that I am tied into, to me that means cutting and chucking in small pieces atleast 3 times my body and gear weight.
In this tree I cut and chucked all the hangers after tying them to the tree. Once this was done the speedlining went smoothly with all dynamic forces applied away from the lean.
Once I had a 70 foot fat stick left in the air, I tied a bull line to it, came down, locked the hubs on my old 84 toy 4X4 climbed up the hill about 90 feet away from the stick, tied my front G eye hitch off to a big ponderosa pine, played my 12K pound winch line off the back of the tooltruck about 30 feet to the bull line.
The stick stood straight up nicely and fell precisely inline with the winch line with me cutting with a 394 husky, and my buddy on my truck's winch control.
And despite being bitten about 20 times by the fire ant colony in the hollow base of the tree, I left the job wondering if potential danger to me as a climber makes me so serious that I turn into a knit picking tyrant who needs to chill out?
I don't think so, I think it has kept me alive for 34 years in this biz. All I can do is apologize after I come out of my trance.
What do you guys think?
Do dangerous trees affect any of you this way?
Are you too tyrants about your means and methods when it's your azzes up there on the end of a line?
I know it makes my dinner and beer taste a little better than usual tonight.
jomoco