First time working off a tight line!!

[rbtree]

Today's tree was a very dead bigleaf maple, about 60 feet tall, 22 inch dbh, 4 leaders about 9-11 inches each, and right over a carport. No access possible with crane or bucket. About 18 feet away, and growing right through a port in the carport roof, is a 100 foot hemlock. 12 feet the other side was a maple.

I climbed the hemlock, and installed a lifeline in the top. I tossed a throw line through the upper dead maple canopy. We had already installed a line in the live maple. We pulled this line up through the dead tree and into the hemlock. In it's middle, we attached two blocks, 3 feet apart, with butterfly knots. One flew a second lifeline, athe other a lowering line. We then tensioned the tight line with fiddle blocks.

Some reasons why we ran the lifeline and lowering line off the same tight line: to save rigging, the maple wood was very light, and I had another lifeline in the hemlock.

I gingerly climbed as high as possible, and tied each of the four leaders off, cinching the leader in three places in case of breakage. On some, I also slung a couple branches to the line in case they broke. Then, I rapped down to about 15 feet above the carport, attached a tag line, which ran to the chipper winch, made a steep sloped face cut, and sloping backcut. When each came off, there was a bit of a shower of falling bark, and small branches.

Here's a few pics, which are not very good. I may later try to draw in some of the lines so you can better see what is going on.

 

[rbtree]

Tight line tensioned with fiddle blocks, tied off with figure eight. (Tied high because we guessed a few feet wrong on where the rope end would end up.) Whoopie sling for portawrap...

 

[rbtree]

Cutting the third of four leaders.

 

[rbtree]

Third leader cut off. John is on the camera instead of the chipper winch, so we had a lull. Which was good, because when this one came off, it broke a 4-5 inch 25 foot long piece on the fourth leader. I rapped to the roof to get clear. Luckily the broken piece came down slowly with the one being lowered and winched. It finally fell off and leaned lightly on the roof. Glad it missed the nearby car which we couldn't move as it's owner was out of state.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

That looks like what i refer to as a "cloths line" DWT.

I will run the DWT up, clip a bunch of light stuff off to it, have it sugged up and cut everything off. Another awy is to rig it off tight near you and just clip pieces on to it as you cut. The loads get lowered down when finnised or weights get to where it is nessesary. I have a few times put a tag on a pulley so that the loads can be controled away from a structure.

Then tie everything onto the running end of my climing line to pull it back to me.