diagonal notches?

[imagineero]

This one probably wont make any sense at all without pics. I should put in nice and early that I'm more of a tree climber than a tree faller thesedays, and I make my money off residential removals.

Couple months ago I was up a cedar with the branches pretty far out over the house. When you get a species with nice holding wood and you're high enough up, you can fold the branches down, then nip them off the tree for a straight safe drop. Species that snap out make things more interesting. This cedar was snapping out all over the place, so I ended up having to rope a lot. While up there, I started thinking that if I cut my notch diagonally on the branch, I'd have more holding wood. Of course, the backcut would have to be diagonal too.

So I tried it, and it actually worked pretty good. The more holding wood you need, the more diagonal you make your cuts, until it gets to the point where you're maybe only 20degrees off being parallel to the branch. Unsurprisingly, the branch kind of rolls/twists more than folds. Where you put the notch takes a little practice, especially if the branch isnt evenly weighted. I end up putting the notch almost on the side rather than underneath, and it always goes on the weighted side, otherwise when you make the back cut the branch will close down on your saw.

So I did it for the whole tree, roped of course.

Then I did it on another tree.

And another tree.

And another tree.

And i found its quite predictable and you can put a lot of swing into it. I'm finding myself doing it more and more, but I'm still experimenting so I've only done it in situations where there are no targets underneath. I started doing it just to get some holding wood on snappy species that wouldn't fold predictably, but I've found that I can throw branches this way too. If you've got a big heavy branch that's weighted far left and you want it to end up falling far right, you would never get there with a normal notch. especially if its not great holding wood. But if you get the notch on the side, it falls away from the direction you want to go, swings round, closes up at the angle you set your notch, then pretty much gets launched a good ways in the direction you want it to go.

So yesterday, I'm doing a cupressus removal, from the ground. Typical ugly dusty thing with about 20 leaders in it, not a one of them straight, none of them over 4". On bigger wood you can set secondary notches, kerf dutchman etc, but on small stuff I always had trouble falling it far outside of the lean. I'd usually just set a line up in there with a throwball, or if its small enough get a hook on a couple 8' jameson poles to give it a hand over.

So I started doing some diagonal notches on the falls, and you can swing them a good 90 degrees or more from the direction of lean. Am I the only one doing this? Im sure I havent discovered anything and this is probably an elementary technique I just never came across, but I'd be interested in seeing more of it if anything is out there. I think its strictly a small wood technique, but in the tree it sure has come in handy. I think it will save me a lot of rope time on snappy small staff. Any feedback?

Shaun

 

[hammerlogging]

I get what you're saying and it sounds good to me, for the limbs that is- jus tkeep working with it. the only thing that comes to mind is that you are dealing with a high percentage of sapwood to heartwood both with the limbs and small dia. stems which may be working in your favor. My money is made falling, other than here and there trying to pull something creative or fancy, I'm not ever doing something like this. But, I do run across times when I am not cutting/falling perpindicular to the grain- in these cases it is usually what we call a "pistol butt", a tree that the ground or tree slumped and the bottom 4-6' grows out of the ground at an angle downhill , then turns upright. If you cut these stems sidehill, the face and backcut are not perpendicular to the grain, and really much like what you are describing, but in a mature hardwood scenario, I find in this case the hingewood to actually be weaker, if not at least less predictable.

 

[GlenYoshida]

Hi Shaun,

I know this is an old post but it's interesting and wondered what hindsight has shown you. What are the pros and cons of this from your experience? You still doing this method on the snappy stuff?

 

[TheJollyLogger]

We always called it a hip notch. It works well on smaller, limber trees.

 

[GlenYoshida]

Hey thanks, appreciate the addition of terminology.