BlueRidgeMark
Addicted to ArboristSite
Well, okay, probably not for the pros. But I found one that works for me. I had a few pines to take down behind my house, and two of them were leaning towards the house more than I liked. Maybe you pros would have just wedged them over, but I wasn't going to take that chance. I wanted a rope up there to persuade them to see things my way.
However, I have neither climbing gear nor bucket truck to get me up to the treetop to secure a rope. I DO have a throw bag and line (thank you, Bailey's), which I've thrown up in a few shorter trees, but today's victims were about 60 feet. A bit much for my throwing arm!
So, do I buy a Big Shot just to do two trees? Well, I'd LIKE to, of course, but money aint' that good these days....
So what to do?
Simple, I commandeered my boy's slingshot!
Not a regular slinghot, but one of those "launch a water balloon into the next county" slingshots. It worked great.
Here are three of my boys getting ready to launch (click to enlarge):
Here's the moment of launch (another tree), and the line has just gone taught due to being caught under the launcher's leg. Somebody wasn't paying attention on this one!
This worked very well. The boys were able to get the throw bag up where it needed to be. We had two bad launches, the first one that went WAY over, and the one pictured above with the line caught.
Here's the result:
With the slickline up in the tree, we pulled the rope up, and down the other side, then tied it off. I used New England Safety Blue, and the Maasdam Pow'r Puller (again from Bailey's) to put some tension on it. This is a VERY slick set-up!
You can see that it wasn't much of a tree. 12 inches at waist high, where I cut it. I grew up loving pines, but these Virginia pines are just plain ugly. And, it was a bit close to the house. I needed to open up the back so we have something of a yard, and to let more sun get to the house. You can see the mold problem. More sun, more air, and fewer trees pumping out moisture is a part of my battle plan. Plus, we wanted the open space for the kids to play and some sun for the vegetable garden. Don't worry - we still have PLENTY of trees on the property!
So, what do you think of my Poor Man's Big Shot? I'm sure the real Big Shot would be more accurate, and you don't need 3 people to use it, but for us Weekend Warriors, this is the bees knees!
All in all, it was a good day. The last two Saturdays, I dropped 8 trees (one smallish oak, a cedar, and 6 of our nasty Virginia pines), and had the boys do a post-mortem on each stump, to see if they could see what I did right and what I did wrong. They did pretty well. One of the stumps was pretty bad, as I was very tired and sore (tennis elbow) and shouldn't have been cutting at that point. But it went where I wanted it, so it ended well.
Oh, yeah, here's a shot of the awful carnage:
However, I have neither climbing gear nor bucket truck to get me up to the treetop to secure a rope. I DO have a throw bag and line (thank you, Bailey's), which I've thrown up in a few shorter trees, but today's victims were about 60 feet. A bit much for my throwing arm!
So, do I buy a Big Shot just to do two trees? Well, I'd LIKE to, of course, but money aint' that good these days....
So what to do?
Simple, I commandeered my boy's slingshot!
Not a regular slinghot, but one of those "launch a water balloon into the next county" slingshots. It worked great. Here are three of my boys getting ready to launch (click to enlarge):
Here's the moment of launch (another tree), and the line has just gone taught due to being caught under the launcher's leg. Somebody wasn't paying attention on this one!
This worked very well. The boys were able to get the throw bag up where it needed to be. We had two bad launches, the first one that went WAY over, and the one pictured above with the line caught.
Here's the result:
With the slickline up in the tree, we pulled the rope up, and down the other side, then tied it off. I used New England Safety Blue, and the Maasdam Pow'r Puller (again from Bailey's) to put some tension on it. This is a VERY slick set-up!
You can see that it wasn't much of a tree. 12 inches at waist high, where I cut it. I grew up loving pines, but these Virginia pines are just plain ugly. And, it was a bit close to the house. I needed to open up the back so we have something of a yard, and to let more sun get to the house. You can see the mold problem. More sun, more air, and fewer trees pumping out moisture is a part of my battle plan. Plus, we wanted the open space for the kids to play and some sun for the vegetable garden. Don't worry - we still have PLENTY of trees on the property!
So, what do you think of my Poor Man's Big Shot? I'm sure the real Big Shot would be more accurate, and you don't need 3 people to use it, but for us Weekend Warriors, this is the bees knees!
All in all, it was a good day. The last two Saturdays, I dropped 8 trees (one smallish oak, a cedar, and 6 of our nasty Virginia pines), and had the boys do a post-mortem on each stump, to see if they could see what I did right and what I did wrong. They did pretty well. One of the stumps was pretty bad, as I was very tired and sore (tennis elbow) and shouldn't have been cutting at that point. But it went where I wanted it, so it ended well.
Oh, yeah, here's a shot of the awful carnage:
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