A good book for felling techniques? (PDF)

[Mad Professor]

A good book for felling techniques?

I have been using saws all my life and have fell a good number of trees but never on a large constant scale. Mostly for firewood and storm/diseased tree removal. My tools are hand tools, plenty of saws, wedges, chains, cables, ropes, etc. But only some smaller farm tractors for moving things

I need to start the management of my small woodlot as I now have plenty of free time but little resources to hire a logger. The area in question will have lots of salvage lumber as the EAB has arrived and I can use the lumber around the farm as well as the cordwood. I also plan on thinning and releaseing some crop trees and shelterwood. The current canopy is well covered and I'm not looking for a harvest now but mainly stand improvement with what timber I do harvest being used onsite on my own mill. I do have a forester/logger friend who is helping with a management plan.

In the mean time I want to educate myself on safe felling techniques. especially when first opening up the canopy. One thing I may do is vollunteer some time with my logger friend and do some of the grunt work in exchange for education. The land in question is pretty level and consists of northern hardwoods.

Can anyone recommend some books to download and spend some evenings educating myself? No internet at home so videos are not an option.

Thanks in advance.

MP

P.S. Have downloaded this but it's geared toward PNW woods : WCB fallers_buckers.pdf

 

[Jed1124]

Jeff Jepson
To Fell a Tree

 

[madhatte]

I don't know of anything I can recommend that's available online, but if you don't mind dropping a few shekels, Amazon should be able to provide gems by the likes of D Dent and G Beranek that I can recommend heartily.

 

[rwoods]

http://www.baileysonline.com/Forest...ional-Timber-Falling-Book-by-Douglas-Dent.axd

Ron

 

[northmanlogging]

D Douglas Dent, Professional Timber Falling, you'll have to buy it in OG form...

Story Publishing Backyard Lumberjack, while the name is slightly offensive it does have good stuff in it.

Youtube... Hotsaws101, Regcoates, tarzanthomas. youtube is invaluable, though you did mention you don't have internet access at home...

Get lots of information from lots of different sources, yer local loggers will know their way of doing things, but their way isn't always the best or the right way.

 

[Mad Professor]

Thanks for replies so far everybody.

I am looking for something I can download. I read most of the BC fallers book last night and learned a lot

What I will be working with is not much open canopy, at least to start with and it will be thinning, salvage, and stand improvement.

What gives me the scare is trying to find the best place to open things up to start without hangups and/or stuff coming down overhead.

 

[northmanlogging]

find the biggest cull you can and send it through the biggest hole you can find, start from there, work your way out and away. After the first couple of monsters go through it makes life a bit easier.

Also go through and take care of any standing rotten junk that is near where you are working.

And lastly humboldts are the way to go for thinning, big fat undercuts, A the face naturally acts as a stop so the tree is less likely to slip back, B it allows the butt end to "drop" and give an extra shove when trying to get through to the ground.

While a standard or Saginaw is arguably quicker and more accurate, the safety bit trumps speed and accuracy (though I would argue it depends on who's cutting)

 

[Westboastfaller]

IDK, he wants to learn safe practises,
Things go progressively not prematurely.

I will help you out with advice on opening up in a bit here or PM you

 

[Marshy]

D. Dent's book is a good read. I'm in the technique part of it right now. I got that and Jeff Jepson's book for Xmas. I don't know if they can be bought electronically.

 

[Mad Professor]

Thanks folks!

I may volunteer (VERY cheap grunt labor) some ground work with two of my friends (both 20+ years professional) just to learn some.

If anyone comes up with a pdf pass it on.

 

[Mad Professor]

I've found a few PDFs so far that are helpful, but mostly reinforced what I know so far. I will work on my face cuts/hinges more carefully and will make sure I'm more careful with snags.

One of the things I know I'll need to do is use some cabling/chains to help with things that don't want to go the correct way. I've done some of this before but need a better setup for a snatch block so I don't have to pull towards the direction of the fall. This will also come in handy with hangups, I think.

 

[BranchManagr]

What I will be working with is not much open canopy, at least to start with and it will be thinning, salvage, and stand improvement.

What gives me the scare is trying to find the best place to open things up to start without hangups and/or stuff coming down overhead.

Professor. the "Enquiring Mind" wants to know how things have progressed from the theory into the practice?
I have found that hangups are not a problem if you want the tree to strip the other trees of their foliage on the way down AND you don't get hurt in the process. (You might even force a hangup to have the weight of 3x trees do the stripping). It saves so much time bucking & trimming the logs of unwanted branches.

 

[Fulcrum Tree Felling]

The Jepsom book is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Bar none