nightowl66
New Member
This walnut has been leaning since I moved here in 2005. It is finally dying and it's time to take down. I've dropped lots of trees, but not one like this. Any suggestions on how to drop it?
Bad lean
- Thread starter nightowl66
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It looks like the leaner is hung up in the "middle tree".
If I was cutting this, I would ladder up the middle tree from the side away from the leaner and drop off the section to the left.
Then cut the limb off the middle tree that is supporting the leaner and let it fall to the ground.
If I was cutting this, I would ladder up the middle tree from the side away from the leaner and drop off the section to the left.
Then cut the limb off the middle tree that is supporting the leaner and let it fall to the ground.
Sounds like that is too dangerous to me. How about cut the base of the tree where nothing is above your person, if it don't come down, pull it out with a come along or whatever. The object here is to stay clear of it as possible.
nightowl66
New Member
Thanks, It's not hung up on anything. I was worried about getting the bar pinched when undercutting since it has such a lean.
Bring 2 saws and a bar wrench if the first one gets stuck, unscrew the bar and chain and remove the power head out of harms way. Cut very slow, watching the tension is tricky. Also, don't go there alone ! Don't go under it !
Assuming it is an un-hung-up leaner, a pinched bar while cutting the face cut won't be your problem.
(Assuming you don't go back to the face after cutting the back cut...and, you wouldn't do that, right?)
Any problems come with the back-cut. Barber-chair issues. Do you know how to bore-back-cut?
Roy
Just cut straight down a foot up from the bottom.
That's a recipe for a barber chair...
This just really isn't a tree to learn how to cut on the internet
It so low and so small it won't mostlikely with a quick cut.
Yeah, never did like to throw most likely into a sentence... especially when a chair is a possibility.
To the OP, if you want to tackle this, I would recommend ratchet strapping the hell out of the trunk, a tiny undercut , less than an inch on the bottom, and then fly through the top cut with your biggest saw and sharpest chain. Start your top cut on the far side of the trunk, then go level and stay low, so if it does chair, it should pop away from you. It's not rocket science, but you are dealing with some serious compression and tension forces there.
As an aside, the reason I am always so cautious in my advice in these situations, especially in the homeowners helper forum, is there just isn't anyway to teach someone how to, for lack of a better word, how to "feel" what the wood is doing under compression and tension over the internet... it just takes experience, and mistakes, hopefully not painful ones...
That's good advice no doubt to seek help from someone local in person. Someone has already been there.
A tiny undercut offers no protection from a barber-chair event and doesn't offer any directional control over just top-cutting it. I agree that Lightning's suggestion of top-cutting is probably fast and safe, but we cannot be sure.
I would put in as deep an undercut as possible, then not worry about a barber-chair. A shallow undercut (or none) encourages barber-chair by leaving compression wood on a severely side-loaded tree. Cut off the compression wood, then when the tree's structure fails, it does it at the stump rather than by splitting violently up the length of the tree.
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