SW Nebraska GTG Pics Part II

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We need to get all the cottonwood haters to come down! We could open their eyes! I think Ill start a new social group the cotton wood burners club! LOL

So where are you located ? Your sig is "NE Where the Big Cottonwood Grows" Is that Nebraska or the Northeast? In each that is a big area. Heck maybe I will ask ST as he knows all.

Bill
 
OK, so you start a thread as the OP and add 8 Pics. Then you reply to your own post and add more Pics, etc., etc. Just keep replying to your own thread in increments of 8 and you can have all the Pics that you want. I'll have to remember fascinating technique... :monkey:

That is how it works.....:)
 
Part I;
What a wonderful get together this turned out to be! Carl met me a gas station and lead me to the wilderness site, about 200 yards from the Republican River, just south of Cambridg, NE. Glad I brought my Ranger 4x4. We decided to lay the saws down in a row for inspection:
FirewoodandSaws.jpg


Then Scott and Sid showed up and the row became a semi-circle:
AllTheSaws.jpg


In all, I counted 25 saws, and at one time or another, they all ran. Edwin (that's me, the cameraman) took the award for the oldest saws--his 1976 Stihl 041 and 1977 McCulloch PM 610. Scott's big saw, a Sachs Dolmar 133 was then put to the test to drop the biggest cottonwood tree we could find. The objective was to cut table top cookies. First he cut a perfect wedge:
WedgeCutRemoved.jpg


And here's Scott at work on the felling cut, positioned perfectly above the wedge. You can't see it well here, but water was shooing out of the tree nearly 15 feet as he made this cut:
FellingCutSetPerfectly.jpg


The tree dropped perfectly with a crash but only after everyone yelled, "Timber!" Time to measure the trunk:
MeasuringtheTree.jpg


I believe that's a 36" bar. I counted 110 annular rings, so figure the seed germinated back in 1900. The last 20 rings were really close together. Now it was time to make 6" thick tabletops out of the trunk. Here's Carl taking his turn:
CarlCutsaHugeCookie.jpg


We crowned Carl the king of giant cookie cutting. His were almost dead on square across. Now go to Part II for the conclusion (8 images maximum per post). :cry:
 
More from part I;

By popular demand, here are a couple of more Pics showing Scott's procedure for dropping the big cottonwood tree:
The start of the wedge cut:
SteveMakingtheWedge2.jpg


Sometimes you need to spend a little time making sure that the wedge is cut and removed to perfection before you start the big felling cut on the opposite side. This drop was not a piece of cake. Note that the tree appears to lean slightly opposite the wedge:
SteveMakingtheWedge3.jpg


Now the wedge can be safely removed:
WedgeCutRemoved.jpg


Finally, the felling cut. Now the tree finally starts finally to fall. It was a perfect drop.
TreeStartstoFall.jpg


Here's the gang working on the felled tree to be sure it stayed put while cutting all of the table tops:
WorkingonThatBigTree.jpg
 
Ed , another fine job of picture taking and narrating. Don't mind troll, he's just an old man that has nothing better to do than be a critic to everybodys threads and posts. I appreciate the fact that we had someone in our group who could document and share our gtg with everyone.:cheers:
 
Nice pics, guys! Looks like a great time. That was a mighty large cottonwood!

Oh, and thanks to Sawtroll for adding part 1 pics here. :cheers:
 
I somehow missed this thread before I went to Texas for a week.

Those are great pics, Ed! I am glad you did such a good job, since I managed to forget my camera.

That was a great gtg and I hope that we can continue having one once in a while.

That cottonwood was awesome! I have never seen a tree that big get cut down. It was a blast cutting the giant cookies. That big saw of Scott's is a beast. I think there was enough water running out of that tree to water most of Arizona for a month!:jawdrop:
 
Oh! That's right! Chucky wasn't using a safety chain on his Poulan and cut his left leg off while he was cutting cottonwood. Now I remember.
 

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