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I've been following this thread and just wanted to say thanks. I have two EAB ash trees that need to be dropped. Both are leaners and I have been thinking about them for a few weeks now. One can drop with the lean, but the other needs to fall at a 90 to its lean. I am just a hack but have enjoyed this thread.
 
I know that cut, & I've heard Coots Bay, but I did not know that was what it's called.

I have that book also.

It's either "To Fell a Tree", or Douglas Dent's book mentioned earlier. I can't remember.


Junkman likes it.
Its an easy quick cut that gets the job done without pinching your bar,do not stand behind the lean though off to the side when making triangle cuts,a long bar is safer also ,no 20 inchers
 
This cedar was growing to the south ,and had to fall to the north ,my house was about 25 feet away ,just behind where am taking the picture ,the little guy in front of it i just pushed over ,3 wedges buried did not have enough lift tip the cedar,or break the hinge,i did not want to mess with stacking wedges and sweating for a half hour so i hooked a choker about 10-12 feet off the ground and parked my skid steer just to the right of where i was taking the picture put a couple extentons on the choker and a couple tugs backing up and it fell slow right beside me in the direction of the face cut ,Very important to leave enough hinge or it can roll off the stump and go somewhere else on you ,that tree had a lot of long limbs ,falling into the driveway and not down the cliff saved a lot of work on cleanup ,and yarding back up the hill .I have found on a lot of trees you do not have to be very far up to pull them over ,12 feet usually does it for me Plus i do not slack up as fast on my cable when going over .Maybe someone can math the leverage force out on a pull cable 12 feet up 20 feet and 30 feet ? That is over my head .KIMG0351.JPG
 
I'm not overly impressed with Billy Ray. That ash he chairs is merch timber that I cut every day. In hard leaning hardwood you want to use a modified coos bay that I showed pictures of early on in this thread. Basically wide open face, gut the heart, then back cut each side of the back one side at a time. I just finished a swamp where I would saw several marms off of one stump. Many over my head and still save them out. It's what you're used to I guess.

On that I ash I would have put a Humboldt in. Then a snipe on the stump (another little chunk out of the stump for more relief) then gutted the heart. I would have nipped the wood on the right side of the back cut maybe a few inches deep and then finished the back cut from the other side ( the side he back cut on). He didn't take time to cut his compression wood up enough. He just back cut it and he's lucky he got his saw out. It looked like total amateur hour at cutting a hardwood leaner. He got lucky.
 
I'm not overly impressed with Billy Ray. That ash he chairs is merch timber that I cut every day. In hard leaning hardwood you want to use a modified coos bay that I showed pictures of early on in this thread. Basically wide open face, gut the heart, then back cut each side of the back one side at a time. I just finished a swamp where I would saw several marms off of one stump. Many over my head and still save them out. It's what you're used to I guess.

On that I ash I would have put a Humboldt in. Then a snipe on the stump (another little chunk out of the stump for more relief) then gutted the heart. I would have nipped the wood on the right side of the back cut maybe a few inches deep and then finished the back cut from the other side ( the side he back cut on). He didn't take time to cut his compression wood up enough. He just back cut it and he's lucky he got his saw out. It looked like total amateur hour at cutting a hardwood leaner. He got lucky.
He is just an urban surgeon. I have only seen this video and a part of another one on here but I wasn't in the mood. He did an A+ job in the cut steps to utilize the max advantage BUT....his wedging tecneques are something to be disired. .which brings me to my next point. Kids,..don't do drugs!
I will say he is from my town I was raised and my parents live. My routes of this country. I will say he is confident and compedant from what I've seen so far.

The wedging?
I almost get the feeling he is half doing it for the workout, he's definitely getting that part ? IDK. . It's not a feat of strength through max weight & force.
It's a happy medium in this case.
Precission and tecneque will always beat weight and force. I always joke when I can hear a guy beating off with his axe on the hill to much. I call him Bob the builber. 'Bill the builder' is it? I get ye fact that a few extra swings were for demonstration/exercise.

How do you do it correctly ? (For the purpose of everyone)

There is only one right way...just so happens to be my way.

You know when I know that's true?
When you are a skinny ******* and you have bigger vains in your jaw and your ****. Then you know you 'have made it'!

Anyway...

He doesn't alternate his wedges Werth ****. He ends with 4 hits on the wedge/wedge stack closest to him twice?
That's crazy! If it's gets hard and its hard on every row then thats it, In the case of "back cut before the undercut.
Didn't he use two rows with the 8lb sledge for the frist cut (back cut)? Why not a
3 1/5 lb with a 22' handle and 4 rows?

Doublng up wedges:

Your don't just alternate your rows but alternate the wedges in the row.
a sledge hammer is useless!!!
He did alternative a few with the sledge randomly. If you can't alternate then it's a miss! It got harder for him and not easier for that reason. He did eventually go to that long handle 5lb wedge melter.
It's all about alternation and accuracy.
Last I tried, doubling up and maxing a two stack on a doug fir; it just wasn’t that
hard.
 
i am very serious about this. A 4" tree can take your head clean off. imagine what an 18" tree could do
My dad (not a logger, just a regular guy) has known 2 people who got killed while clearing fence rows, and had 4-6" cherry trees, that they thought were too small to need a notch, split and kill them.

Mike

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
 
He is just an urban surgeon. I have only seen this video and a part of another one on here but I wasn't in the mood. He did an A+ job in the cut steps to utilize the max advantage BUT....his wedging tecneques are something to be disired. .which brings me to my next point. Kids,..don't do drugs!
I will say he is from my town I was raised and my parents live. My routes of this country. I will say he is confident and compedant from what I've seen so far.

The wedging?
I almost get the feeling he is half doing it for the workout, he's definitely getting that part ? IDK. . It's not a feat of strength through max weight & force.
It's a happy medium in this case.
Precission and tecneque will always beat weight and force. I always joke when I can hear a guy beating off with his axe on the hill to much. I call him Bob the builber. 'Bill the builder' is it? I get ye fact that a few extra swings were for demonstration/exercise.

How do you do it correctly ? (For the purpose of everyone)

There is only one right way...just so happens to be my way.

You know when I know that's true?
When you are a skinny ******* and you have bigger vains in your jaw and your ****. Then you have made it!

Anyway...

He doesn't alternate his wedges Werth ****. He ends with 4 hits on the wedge/wedge stack closest to him twice?
That's crazy! If it's gets hard and its hard on every row then thats it, In the case of "back cut before the undercut.
Didn't he use two rows with the 8lb sledge for the frist cut (back cut)? Why not a
3 1/5 lb with a 22' handle and 4 rows?

Doublng up wedges:

Your don't just alternate your rows but alternate the wedges in the row.
a sledge hammer is useless!!!
He did alternative a few with the sledge randomly. If you can't alternate then it's a miss! It got harder for him and not easier for that reason. He did eventually go to that long handle 5lb wedge melter.
It's all about alternation and accuracy.
Last I tried, doubling up and maxing a two stack on a doug fir; it just wasn’t that
hard.
I hear ya about all that wedge pounding. Its a total waste of energy if you have criss crossed cuts or the backcut is below the undercut. Its all about mechanical advantage.
Let's tear Billy limb from limb. Lol
 
Well, this thread sucks. Pretty much all I've ever used is a simple face cut of varying depth and a conventional back cut on everything. Cutting a leaner in the direction of lean was especially easy as there wasn't anything to worry about, you knew where it was going to go. I did switch to using humbolt lately as I like the way it should keep the tree from kicking off the stump, but mostly I've been working to get my sloppy cuts to line up.

Now, however, I have to think about all this chairing crap, which seems like a PITA. I blame this thread - if I hadn't read it I'd still be happily whacking down leaners the way I always did. I'm just going to convince myself you guys are a bunch of wusses with your panties in a twist over nothing and forget about it - maybe I'll go back to the sloping back cut like my old man taught me.
 
Well, this thread sucks. Pretty much all I've ever used is a simple face cut of varying depth and a conventional back cut on everything. Cutting a leaner in the direction of lean was especially easy as there wasn't anything to worry about, you knew where it was going to go. I did switch to using humbolt lately I like the way it should keep the tree from kicking off the stump, but mostly I've been working to get my sloppy cuts to line up.

Now, however, I have to think about all this chairing crap, which seems like a PITA. I blame this thread - if I hadn't read it I'd still be happily whacking down leaners the way I always did. I'm just going to convince myself you guys are a bunch of wusses with your panties in a twist over nothing and forget about it - maybe I'll go back to the sloping back cut like my old man taught me.
Lol, it's not something that happens that often, Ive only chaired about a dozen trees since 1981, but it's nice to know how they can be avoided. Most of my chairmanship was due to the deadly dutchman which I didn't understand at the time. Lol.
 
Lol, it's not something that happens that often, Ive only chaired about a dozen trees since 1981, but it's nice to know how they can be avoided. Most of my chairmanship was due to the deadly dutchman which I didn't understand at the time. Lol.
Well, being a Pennsylvania Dutchman they come especially easy to me - it's sort of a heredity thing.

Seriously though, I have a much better understanding of what is happening and the stresses on the fibers (as well described by @Marshy in comment #374), and that will help a lot in reading the trees.
 
I don't think I've said this in this particular thread but it's worth saying.

Any time you have wood chair its a shear stress failure of the fiber. Wood fibers are perform poorly in shear stress.

When you have a leaning tree or over hung branch (cantilevered) the shear stress is at its absolute highest where the wood fibers in tension transition to fibers in compression. There's an invisible 2D plane through the body of wood.

By bore cutting the tree to are significantly reducing the amount of shear in the fibers by creating a "dead space" between the tension and compression fibers.

If all you do it start cutting the tension fibers then the load of the tree is put into the remaining fibers in tension which increases the shear stress until it fails.

I thought that might entertain you guys.
Very good description! One of the most important parts of the equation is having a fast saw and sawing like you mean it.
 
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