treemandan
Tree Freak
I completely agree with lxt's response in its entirety. When I first saw the title "Extreme Precision Felling" I was expecting something really spectacular. After watching the video, the title is laughable at best. Extreme Precision Felling? Compared to what? Your first summer doing tree work?
In my experience, its been the older, out-of-shape, lazier bucket queens that are placing emphasis on felling rather than limbing out a tree.
You fell a whole tree and you've got a giant mess to deal with. Limbs stabbed into the ground, damaged turf, compromising the crumb of the soil, etc. There's nothing safe about cutting wood that has that much tension from the weight of the rest of the tree on it. There's nothing easy about fighting with the twisted mess of brush from a felled tree and, unless you're cleaning up with a skidloader, (in which case, you had tons of room to drop the tree), the cleanup takes a great deal longer. But you didn't have to climb it -- so that makes it all worth it, right?
While I enjoy watching videos of treework, representing this as Extreme Precision is a joke to anyone but a 1st year tree worker -- maybe that's why treeslayer is so impressed with you lol.
We all have our own way of doing things though, so whatever. I enjoy climbing, and its working for me, and you're felling and that's working for you.
To a newbie, your information should be better than a lack of any instruction, but if he is your intended audience, you may want to take the time to explain the terms "compartmentalization" and what "destabilization" of a tree is. Otherwise, it just makes it seem like you are trying to use terms to fit into a higher skill level than the work that is presented in your videos.
That's not to say that you are not good at felling trees. To me, its just lazy, and shows a complete disregard for a customer's property. "We'll have our landscaper come fix all this turf damage for you." (Which is stupid, because that's going to increase the amount of time it takes to get paid, customers waiting to pay you till you finished the landscape repairs) Try explaining to your customer how its perfectly ok that you're putting his home at risk of having a tree fall on it because you'd rather fell it than climb it and rig it down safely.
If your competition caught on -- they'd be out badmouthing you (like you do to them). They could probably easily steal a great deal of work from you by offering your customers the premise that Murphy is out taking giant risks by felling trees. Would you rather have Murphy fell a tree by your home and risk something going wrong, or would you rather have me climb the tree and bring smaller peices down safely?
I hope that doesn't happen to you, because from most other considerations (aside from leaving stubs where its unnecessary) you do appear to be above the hack jobs out there -- safety gear, taking the time to plan and discuss the project, good equipment, etc.
I do admire the fact that you've taken a portion of time and initiative to do the one thing many many many other tree guys neglect to do though -- research. Not saying your research is all correct, but at least you are doing it to some extent.
I'm suprised by the fact that none of your videos show you with a cast on your arm, having broken it several times patting yourself on the back, but of course now you probably have treeslayer doing it for you. hehehehe
I think we all need to pat ourselves on the back. I also think your definition of lazy, well, #### it, I am lazy then. Its 6 way one, half a dozen the next and to read what you just wrote one would get the idea you know that but for some reason don't want to admit it.