This is exactly how I do it. I gun the face, pull the face out with the dawgs, clean up any lingering dutchmans, and then score the bark from one corner to the other across what will be the backcut. If I screw it up while I'm only scoring bark, it's not going to affect where the tree falls. Once I am satisfied with the backcut-to-be, I commit: pin and go, down side first, slap a wedge in to keep the kerf open as soon as possible, and maybe another hung by the corner as a bobber (thanks for the tip, Cody!) I was teaching DNR guys a few weeks ago and they had never seen most of these techniques because they are strict by-the-Forest-Service-book types; I got exiled to teaching the foresters so that I wouldn't taint the firefighters' "one size fits all" method. It was a pretty good couple of days, really. The head trainer thought you could only do a Humboldt by back-barring. He about flipped when I turned the saw upside-down! He flipped even more when I finished the cut one-handed from the other side of the tree to demonstrate both the safety of this method and how much easier it is than wrestling both saw and facecut around to do the standard USFS 30/10/60 Saginaw cut.