Actually, I had thought the tree was hollow, and with this having been two trees growing together, I was afraid two things would happen. One that it would barber-chair and two, that the trees would separate while I was making the back cut. That was also the reason for the chain at one level and the tow strap further up with it's placement put around both trunks shortly after they grew apart. If you noticed, when I pulled the trigger (released the back strap) the tree did move in the right direction because I had two ropes cinched tight on a single come-along attached to the base of another tree in the target area. The actual target was about 10 feet to the right. I could have pulled it tighter, but, I was still thinking the tree was hollow and I needed as much of a controlled fell as possible and didn't want it to break off. The back cut did open a bit due to this, so it was evident there was little to no pressure on the trigger.
Those two wedges were to hold the back cut open in case it closed once I pulled the trigger. Once pulled, I tapped the wedges in further to maintain the opening, but not really to drop the tree. I kept hearing small cracks which was the reason for some of the pauses and if you saw at the end, I heard the crack I was waiting for which was not audible at least to the camera and then went to a safe spot about 10 feet from the tree.
Having a couple of much larger wedges would have been ideal, but when I looked locally at the TSC and the bog box stores none were available and would have to be shipped in. So I made use of what I had on hand. If the tree hadn't fallen after using those small wedges, I had figured I could just use part of the wood from the face cut and went from there, or I could have walked around and went to the come-along and winched it over. That was a big risk but if I had to, I would have went ahead with it.
At the base it measured out to 35 inches across though where I made my cuts it was about 26 inches across. The height of the tree ended up being 72 feet, give or take a foot measured from the stump to the crown while it was on the ground.
When I started bucking up the trunk, not more than a foot above where I made the felling cuts, the trees separated.
Anyway, that's why I did what I did! I'm sure most of the guys here could have easily done a much better and faster job, but I'm not going to speed through it taking a chance of possibly making a fatal mistake.