Falling a Big One

Here are some pics of falling a "juvenile" Douglas fir. 65 yrs old, 146 feet tall, 25 yards of chips, about 2500 board feet of logs, appx 35 tons. As you will see, it took some thought to decide if we dared fall this monster. As there is only $200 coming from the customer, we had to salvage as much timber as possible to make any money. And there was no other way to do it. Crane access was not possible. Even if we could have gotten the small boom in, the tree was too heavy, and there would have been no place to set the logs. And dropping a couple 16 foot top pieces was too ballsy. Dropping a 80 foot stick without branches might have bounced. So we took it whole, after limbing it to 86 feet to clear the fence and nice shed. I guess I could have done it, but I called in a friend, who is forest service Class C Certified faller, by the man himself, D Douglas Dent! We spent close to an hour sizing it up, and getting ready. then it took close to an hour to set up the cuts, VERY VERY precisely!! The tree had a bit of favor in the right direction, but needed some careful setting up. and a breath of wind was coming up from time to time.

Ist pic, horsing around with the super wide angle lens, while wating for David to show up. It is the lens, John isn't heavy enough to bend the tree trunk!!

This tree would have been close to 200 feet tall if it had been growing in a forest setting. And instead of all those huge branches, it would have had at least an extra 1000 board feet. As it is, 2500 board feet is pretty amazing for a 65 yr old tree.

You can see where it has to fall...


...after we move the truck!!

Wood shed under the tree, and fences right beside it, with a 20 foot tall lightpost, meant we had had to carefully lower the huge, long branches.

Setting up the face. David made a conventional cut first, but he ate up a little more wood than I would have done.

We wanted to make sure we were cutting into good wood, with no strange butt fibers, plus we saw some ants. Didn't want any decay to deal with. Turned out there was none, but there had been a bunch of dead branches, so i had some concern.

He put in the snipe, humboldt style, giving us a nice sliding surface for smooth butt action.

I used two 8 foot poles as gunning sticks to help us determine the exact gun. We had to be near dead on perfect.

We ran a rope out to the tree truck, through a block, and to David's pick up, which we used to pull her over. It was a backup, just to make sure any bad wood fibers got broken. But it pretty much went over on its own, due to its favor in the right direction.

Success!!

Boy, what a relief. This was likely the ballsiest thing we've ever done. A major mistake would have taken out the shed, or worse, the house. the customer had said he didnt care if the fence got hit, but if we had hit it, the house would have been brushed pretty badly by the branches... or worse!! Never had an insurance claim, 28 yrs of tree work, and don't want to start now!!

I took video of the tree falling, so got no stills of that craziness.

It actually fell about six feet to the side of the cone I had set up for our target, but within two feet of it, length wise. I used the stick trick to guess the length and was only two feet off! When we did the final set up of the wedge, I thought we had moved the aim to close to where we wanted it. but David had said he thought it would fall off a bit. And it did, which was OK, but it sure scared me, as I was aiming the camera, and it looked like it was headed right for the shed!

Earlier, I called this tree a monster. well, it is one of the three largest firs I've ever done, but it is sure no monster. If it scales out to 2500 board feet, that is about 215 cubic feet. Well, the current world's largest fir has 14,060 cubic feet!!! The largest known in history, which was 393 feet tall, had about 18200 cubic feet!!

Just toothpicks, compared to the General Sherman sequoia, at 55,040 cubic feet of timber!!!

Hey rb you guys did a fine job given the tight spot you had to put the tree. hey is your buddy a fireman with the FS. I am a C instructor also and was certed by Dent in 97' in Ca. I have fell trees around houses before but not that tight. I agree on the twisted wood thing especially on the corners. We have digger pine (Pinus sabiniana) down here and it has very stringy wood. I was told by a local faller that you have to clip the corners to keep these trees from pulling to the side if any excess wood is left. Well I got a nice lesson in this during the winter. I had to fall one that was 30" dbh and about 120 ft tall. I had a good lay picked out and my under cut came out fine. I backcut it I thought was good but I left a little bit on one side and this tree pulled about 10 ft off its lay just from that little bit of extra wood. Only damage was a knocked over firewood pile. Now i nip the corners on these trees so that does not happpen again and I gun my backcut alot closer now. Again nice job on the tree glad it all worked out fine.

fsburt,

His name is David Stice, and no, he currently is a certified arborist working in the PNW. Has been a hotshot on firecrews, and has done production falling. Which I never have, but do think I would have done the job pretty much as he did.

We were going to put in side cuts below the face to prevent fiber tear, but both of us forgot. Luckily it went fine. I'm using ears, splint cuts, whatever you want to call them, most of the time now, both aerial and on the ground.

Both of us are planning on going down this spring to work with the legend, Gerry Beranek, in a huge redwood. It is a preservation job, that is slated to take one week to do!!!!

He was pretty excited to use my wimpy 15 hp 3120 XP-G though. All his white and orange toys are bone stock...poor fella....he was a bit reluctant to admit it , being a Stihl lover and all, poor confused boy...

Interesting pics RB. A good deal bigger than any I have felled. Why, pray tell was it only $200?!?

Hey RB you gotta take some pics when you go down to work with J Baranek. After reading his book about 5 times over I gave him a call and asked his permission to use some stuff out of his book for my saw training class. His book is the only one I have seen that talks about and illustrates info on tree falling and bucking that is most helpful. He is a cool guy to talk with and run ideas by. I wish I could work with him for a few weeks I bet he has wealth of info dealing with the big wood in all aspects of falling bucking and climbing.
When did your buddy go through Dent's class and what shot crews did he wrk on. You guys up in WA and Or get to deal with some big wood. The only time I get into any lumpkins is on lightning fires when a big Red Fir gets hit and has to be felled to put the burning top out. Biggest one so far has been a Sugar Pine and Red Fir 84" at DBH. Waiting for a bigger one though. Yea I agree it sucks we can't open up our saws especially our falling saws. I am a believer in spending as little exposure time as possible under a large burning tree. Well take care and may all your trees fall where you want them to.

Roger, I gotta say man. You have got some SERIOUS kahones. The size of the trees that you work on out there is simply unfathomable to me. Biggest we will get out here for the most part is 75 - 85 feet, little more maybe.

Stumper,

I hope to also net $1000-1300 on the wood....

Yep, Gerry is the man!!! His book is the best...

Don Blair ain't too shabby either, and my new friend from down under, Graeme McMahon, has the cahones of an elephant. His work on 300 foot tall eucalyptus regnans, is out of this world!

Having been a semi pro photographer for 20 years, I'm really impressed with Gerry's work. Shooting trees is not easy, dealing with sun and shade, and the forest around...

Do you have his CD-Rom, " A Tree Story"?. If not, run, dont walk to Bailey's and get a copy. or get it direct form Gerry at atreestory.com

Ask Ken Dunn if his modified saws can be run for forest service work. I'll bet they can. Go to the chainsaws forum and search for hot saw, kdhotsaw, muffler mod's etc. Ken is the best, his woods saws run 40-50% over stock, that is , if they are Husqvarna!!!
He and the Rupleys live near you...

I'll ask David, maybe you guys know each other!! And email you if there is a chance. he has no puter...

84" is no small tree!!!

Biggest we've done was a 9 foot (at the ground) sequoia, 80 yrs old, 24000 lb in the bottom 24 feet, and about 30 yards of chips.

Hows the undies?

Awsome job well done:Eye: :Eye: I bet the nerves were a bit shakey ...?Hard to hold the camera still

Wow....this reminded me of job I did recently but on a much smaller scale. I had to put a 70 foot Magnolia that was about 7 feet in diameter through a gate entrance that was about 8 feet wide so I only had 1/2 a foot on each side to spare. It was a ballsy decision but we were confident. I cut and Dan pulled. We just did make it through. I am yet to have a claim yet either although I have only had my biz for a little more than a year now.

Congrats on the job RB! That took some serious balls. I dont have the skill to have confidence in doing something like that. I mean if I had messed up on mine it just would have been a fence to repair but to risk a house. Balls move but what a sweet payoff!

Nice fall RB,
A humbolt would have saved some of that timber in the trunk though.

Jerry Beranek shared a gunning tip with me. Instead of using eight foot poles as gunning sticks use a long throwline. First go out and drive a stake at the point where the tree needs to land. Find the center of the throwline and tie a loop at the center. Put the loop over the stick. You'll use the throwline to measure the ends of the face's apex. Since you don't have measured marks on the line you could use electrical tape to make a flag or use a marker to add color to each leg of the line. Put the marks on the trunk and you'll have the apex of the face layed out.

Tom

I understand the money in salvage RB Just cant figure out why you didn't pick up several hundred more for the Job. Is cutting for salvage common practice in your area?-Here it's a sign of an amateur-but we don't have much to salvage except firewood.