biggest tree fell?

[bullbuck]

LOL

 

[Greystoke]

Mine

Coastal Redwood; Spring of 01, in Humboldt County California; 110 inches diameter inside bark; 130 foot tall stob (wish it would have had the top in it!); 33,000 bd. ft.; First two 20 foot logs off the butt had to be quarted so that they could be flown with the Boeing 234 Chinook, which has a total lift of 28,000 lb's. The third and fourth cuts had to be ripped in half. I fell it with my Modified 088, with a 60 inch bar and 404 chain. Jacked up hill using Silvey Tree Saver Jack with two rams. I worked with guys (best Fallers in the world imho) in Humboldt that had cut a lot bigger and nicer trees than this, but it is the biggest tree I ever fell. Wish I could cut timber like this every day, I would do it until I was too old and weak to run a chainsaw! It was Glorious!

 

[2dogs]

Coastal Redwood; Spring of 01, in Humboldt County California; 110 inches diameter inside bark; 130 foot tall stob (wish it would have had the top in it!); 33,000 bd. ft.; First two 20 foot logs off the butt had to be quarted so that they could be flown with the Boeing 234 Chinook, which has a total lift of 28,000 lb's. The third and fourth cuts had to be ripped in half. I fell it with my Modified 088, with a 60 inch bar and 404 chain. Jacked up hill using Silvey Tree Saver Jack with two rams. I worked with guys (best Fallers in the world imho) in Humboldt that had cut a lot bigger and nicer trees than this, but it is the biggest tree I ever fell. Wish I could cut timber like this every day, I would do it until I was too old and weak to run a chainsaw! It was Glorious!

That is a serious tree! Is that you in the pic?

BTW welcome aboard.

 

[Greystoke]

Yes, it is me. Not a very good picture, but unfortunately I have never been good at taking the time to get good pictures or videos and now I see how unfortunate it is. I can't beleive that I didn't even take the time to pose With my chainsaw in this pic...oh well...I was bushelin!

 

[Deadwood Kid]

biggest i fell was 38" across the cut and between 150-200 ft tall. the whole bottom log was that nice smelling red mush in the center and was worth near nothing. it definately wasnt the biggest ive felt hit the ground by a long shot, but it was fun with a 28" bar =)

It was just a baby tree compared to the size of fir's we get in oregon.

 

[Greystoke]

biggest i fell was 38" across the cut and between 150-200 ft tall. the whole bottom log was that nice smelling red mush in the center and was worth near nothing. it definately wasnt the biggest ive felt hit the ground by a long shot, but it was fun with a 28" bar =)

It was just a baby tree compared to the size of fir's we get in oregon.

I remember double-jackin with a guy in Humboldt when we fell a redwood that was only about 6 feet diameter, but we got 270 feet of logs; not counting trim; to a fourteen inch top that blew up about 30 feet of top. The wind was barely whispering on the ground but 300 feet in the air it was enough that it red-lined our jacks a couple of times:jawdrop:I did the scale that night and could not beleive how many logs that tree produced!

 

[valleyflyfisher]

 

[2dogs]

VFF those are some monsters!

 

[Humptulips]

OK, I got to say something,can't stand it. That top cedar sure don't look over about 6' and the bottom one don't look close to 15'. Not even close.

 

[valleyflyfisher]

Too funny....I knew some punk would have to challenge the size...oh well, I suppose the tapes were screwed on those days. I knew some rookie assed armchair "expert" would have to open their pie hole and tell me what I know "was" .....was not. No biggie..poof... Gonzo. Carry on dude.

 

[Curlycherry1]

I used to cut firewood. I did it the old fashioned way by cutting down trees and blocking them in the woods. Hard way to make a buck but for a kid it was darn good money. I was working on a contract in Central NY, of an old pasture that was left fallow for about 110 years and so I was selective cutting maple, beech and a lot of ash culls out of the woods. In the center was a monster red oak that was about 10' straight across. It was the old mother tree left way back when the land was first cleared for farming. It was probably the biggest tree in the woods back then when the land was cleared, thus the reason it still stood. It was too big back ~200 years ago, and it was still too big then. The branches also exited the trunk starting about 15' above the ground and the lower branches were over 2' across. It was huge.

I borrowed a large bar for my Stihl, about a ~48" bar if I remember correctly. It was a huge bar. I cut the wedge in the side the tree leaned towards and it took me over an hour to get it "just right." Then I started the backcut and I worked and worked and got the bar the full depth into the tree. It was then that I realized it was still too small for a full backcut. By then I did not want to stop so I kept at it doing a complete backcut all the way around the tree in hopes it would drop. I ended up going all the way around the tree with the bar at full depth the whole way around. The tree still stood.

My helper and I realised we were screwed. We needed a bigger bar. So we went over to the tractor parked about 100' away and got out the cold Pepsi and doughnuts and sat down to plan our next action. We sat there looking over at the tree still standing there mocking us. We were about 1o minutes into our planning on who would go get the bigger bar (~30 minute drive one way) and who would guard the tree so no-one passed by it when an ever so slight wind came along. All off a sudden there was a pop the likes of which I have never heard since and over she went. Because of the large branches that beast basically stopped with the trunk at about a 45 degree angle to the ground. It took us another full day and a half to get the branches and trunk onto the ground safely. The part of the trunk that held the tree up was still over 20" in diameter so I needed about another 10" of saw bar to drop that tree. The two of us spent a full 4 days cutting that thing into managable pieces to drag out on a trailer. It yielded over 35 face cords of firewood.

The most big tree fun I ever had was on a contract that was along an old dirt road. It was a contract again where the culls were being removed for timber management. The road had 75 sugar maples along the one side spaced at about 30' intervals. All of them leaned over the road and all of them had to go. Not a one was less than 3' across, and most were 4-5'. I borrowed the big bar and picked a day and with my dad watching for safety I started chopping and dropping. I cut a tree off and moved to the next one (we were trying to beat the leaf out). One after another after another they went down. Each one making a sound that was so cool. At the end of the day they were all laid down across the road. I spent the next 5+ months backing my truck up that road and with woodsplitter and chainsaw turning them into firewood on the weekends and nights.

Most of the wood I cut could be easily handled with a 20" sawbar. I cut mostly culls. I did cut timber a bunch of times but being careful not to ruin the but log with a bad cut kind of took the fun out of dropping trees. With firewood logs they just need to be on the ground and the feller still standing so he can move to the next tree. Drop-em and move on!

 

[hammerlogging]

Too funny....I knew some punk would have to challenge the size...oh well, I suppose the tapes were screwed on those days. I knew some rookie assed armchair "expert" would have to open their pie hole and tell me what I know "was" .....was not. No biggie..poof... Gonzo. Carry on dude.

Too bad you took the pictures off, I liked them. But, from what I gather, Humptuplips with "rookie", "armchair", and "punk" don't match, at all.

 

[Humptulips]

Too funny....I knew some punk would have to challenge the size...oh well, I suppose the tapes were screwed on those days. I knew some rookie assed armchair "expert" would have to open their pie hole and tell me what I know "was" .....was not. No biggie..poof... Gonzo. Carry on dude.

I'm sure those are acurate measurements root to root. If I'm wrong leave the pictures up and let people decide for themselves. I'll admit I'm wrong and apoligize if you can tell me why they don't look that big.

Her I am next to an honest 12' fir circa 1980. I'd only been hooking for about four years at the time.

Similar tme frame, I was young then.

 

[Nailsbeats]

I used to cut firewood. I did it the old fashioned way by cutting down trees and blocking them in the woods. Hard way to make a buck but for a kid it was darn good money. I was working on a contract in Central NY, of an old pasture that was left fallow for about 110 years and so I was selective cutting maple, beech and a lot of ash culls out of the woods. In the center was a monster red oak that was about 10' straight across. It was the old mother tree left way back when the land was first cleared for farming. It was probably the biggest tree in the woods back then when the land was cleared, thus the reason it still stood. It was too big back ~200 years ago, and it was still too big then. The branches also exited the trunk starting about 15' above the ground and the lower branches were over 2' across. It was huge.

I borrowed a large bar for my Stihl, about a ~48" bar if I remember correctly. It was a huge bar. I cut the wedge in the side the tree leaned towards and it took me over an hour to get it "just right." Then I started the backcut and I worked and worked and got the bar the full depth into the tree. It was then that I realized it was still too small for a full backcut. By then I did not want to stop so I kept at it doing a complete backcut all the way around the tree in hopes it would drop. I ended up going all the way around the tree with the bar at full depth the whole way around. The tree still stood.

My helper and I realised we were screwed. We needed a bigger bar. So we went over to the tractor parked about 100' away and got out the cold Pepsi and doughnuts and sat down to plan our next action. We sat there looking over at the tree still standing there mocking us. We were about 1o minutes into our planning on who would go get the bigger bar (~30 minute drive one way) and who would guard the tree so no-one passed by it when an ever so slight wind came along. All off a sudden there was a pop the likes of which I have never heard since and over she went. Because of the large branches that beast basically stopped with the trunk at about a 45 degree angle to the ground. It took us another full day and a half to get the branches and trunk onto the ground safely. The part of the trunk that held the tree up was still over 20" in diameter so I needed about another 10" of saw bar to drop that tree. The two of us spent a full 4 days cutting that thing into managable pieces to drag out on a trailer. It yielded over 35 face cords of firewood.

The most big tree fun I ever had was on a contract that was along an old dirt road. It was a contract again where the culls were being removed for timber management. The road had 75 sugar maples along the one side spaced at about 30' intervals. All of them leaned over the road and all of them had to go. Not a one was less than 3' across, and most were 4-5'. I borrowed the big bar and picked a day and with my dad watching for safety I started chopping and dropping. I cut a tree off and moved to the next one (we were trying to beat the leaf out). One after another after another they went down. Each one making a sound that was so cool. At the end of the day they were all laid down across the road. I spent the next 5+ months backing my truck up that road and with woodsplitter and chainsaw turning them into firewood on the weekends and nights.

Most of the wood I cut could be easily handled with a 20" sawbar. I cut mostly culls. I did cut timber a bunch of times but being careful not to ruin the but log with a bad cut kind of took the fun out of dropping trees. With firewood logs they just need to be on the ground and the feller still standing so he can move to the next tree. Drop-em and move on!

I like how you mentioned the 35 facecord on a 10' hardwood. I remember cutting down a 5' hardwood and yielding a bit over 15 facecord, sounds about right.

 

[Curlycherry1]

I like how you mentioned the 35 facecord on a 10' hardwood. I remember cutting down a 5' hardwood and yielding a bit over 15 facecord, sounds about right.

I probably could have gotten a lot more wood out of that tree but I left alot of branches in the woods because they were a dangerous tangled mess. Also a lot of the crotches were so big, even ones in the main branches that dealing with them in order to get decent firewood out of them was not worth the effort.

In the mid 1980s my brother took over the business when I went to grad school and in the early 1990s he switched over to using a firewood processor. He has a Timberwolf processor and so now loggers bring the cull logs right to his yard and they stack them up. He plucks them off the piles and load them onto the processor and while standing in a nice weatherproof shack at the end of the processor he chops and dices wood all day long in comfort. I think he has gone soft.

 

[Greystoke]

Here I go...

"I'm sure those are acurate measurements root to root. If I'm wrong leave the pictures up and let people decide for themselves. I'll admit I'm wrong and apoligize if you can tell me why they don't look that big". Humptulips...That is exactly what I was thinking. I was not going to join in on this one, and I don't want people thinking that I am getting on here to toot my own horn:rant:, but I just can't help myself sometimes:bang: I have been around professional timber fallers all of my life; some of the best, and they can be very arrogant (not me of course, them)lol. I don't know how many stories I have heard about some guy cutting a 17 foot red cedar with a 36" bar, but if I had a nickel for every time...I even have one of my own stories, here goes:chatter:...Falling timber in SE Alaska, getting paid 1 penny per square inch of stump measured straight across hinge, inside bark; Fell a 122 inch red cedar with a 32 inch bar! 122 inches across the hinge and about 40 inches perpindicular to that. No I was not manipulating my face cut to get the maximum inches out of it to make more money(shame on all you cynical people) , that is just how it worked out...I really am a stand up guy:angel:, which is why I always made it a point to remember that when I was talking about...okay, bragging about a trophy I REALLY tried to keep it REAL. I would love to say that my Redwood was REALLY Over 11 feet in diameter, because it was, outside the bark.:bringitthe bark was a foot thick in places). I just chose to measure it inside the bark because I wanted to keep it REAL, and keep all the skeptics at bay.oke: I really wish that everyone would just use westside scale to guage the size of their ego...er...I mean, trees. Anyhow, hope I don't sound too arrogant, or sound like some punk rookie a$$ed armchair expert; Just HAD to add my two cents. Peace out!

Cody

 

[Greystoke]

P.S. Sorry about all the smilies...I am a :newbie: to this forum writing, and feel like a little kid again :yoyo:watching looney tunes what with all those funny little faces to play around with :check: I know I should grow up:help:. I will shut up now:taped:

Cody

 

[Greystoke]

I'm sure those are acurate measurements root to root. If I'm wrong leave the pictures up and let people decide for themselves. I'll admit I'm wrong and apoligize if you can tell me why they don't look that big.

Her I am next to an honest 12' fir circa 1980. I'd only been hooking for about four years at the time.

Similar tme frame, I was young then.

But...Dang that is a nice fir:drool:

Cody

 

[Greystoke]

Found It!

My Brother-in-law fell this tree. Nice Sitka Spruce, (funny story behind the writing on this pic if anyone is interested?). I am fairly sure he said It was 11 feet? Don't want to down-play his tree, cuz it was a dandy (hell of a lot nicer than anything I cut in Alaska...add in funny story here). Can't remember how much scale, maybe around 20 bushel?, but will try to clarify later. Anyhow I know I am ranting again:rant:. I figured out how to use my scanner , so here it is. Also a couple more pics of my redwood...with my chainsaw!Yayeah! And I was off by a year...spring of 02! Breathed too many chainsaw fumes I Guess

Cody

 

[Humptulips]

In hindsight I wish I had kept my mouth shut. They were some nice pictures of some very nice cedar.
My foot was hurtin' and I was feeling particularly mean and grumpy. Should have kept my thoughts to myself and let the forum members think what they may think.