Dangerous barber chair felling ash infected with emerald ash borer

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kdjacob2000

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Howdy.

New member. First post.

I've been taking down mature ash trees on my property dead on dying from the emerald ash borer.

Yesterday, I had a classic barber chair occur as one of the trees went down. See pix.

1 of 4: showing big tall barber chair from direction of fall.
2 of 4: showing my hinge, which looks good (thickness = 10% of DBH).
3 of 4: behind the hinge, which also looks good.
4 of 4: showing how far back from the stump the tree fell, YIKES!

This is why you clear your escape route, put your saw down when the tree starts falling, and walk briskly away.

(I'm Level IV in Game of Logging).

My question to the community here is whether EOB infection makes ash trees more prone to barber chairing. I know they're uncommonly dry and long-straight-grained, but I've felled a lot of them over the years and never had this happen.

I love ash for firewood and the woodshop but I'm not into big danger, and this one scared me.

Any thoughts?
 

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As far as I understand as soon as soon as The tree starts to die it will rapidly begin to dry rot, causing the tree to harden and become brittle. This process moves quickly and begins before it looks like the tree is dead. Eab might make it worse than a normal die off but it’s just the nature of the wood in the tree.
 
It will be interesting to see what the experienced fallers say, but that looks to be more than one tree. Which means nothing 'classic' about that barber-chair; this diverted from anything that could be called standard.
 
First off, SSD GOL (Swedish Stump Dance/Goon of Logging) has its place, but its a narrow sighted ridged set of rules for falling timber, while some of it makes sense, other parts of it will get you in trouble, trees fight back and don't care about what ever rules you learned in your weekend logger course. After all the trees don't read Swedish or English, and are belligerent and vengeful assholes, bent on the destruction of all of mans works.

From what I understand Ash is just a PITA chair prone tree no matter what you do, dead and dry? does its split easier green or seasoned? the equivalent we have out here is Alder, which is most dangerous when green and the sap is running, it hardens up a lot when dead standing, though it can still kill you.

As for critiquing your stumps, face cut to shallow i.e. not deep enough which on a leaner means you have to blast through that much more wood before it tips giving the tree that much more time to stall, and then chair, granted you don't want to go as deep as a straight tree, but considerably more then ya did, then consider boring and leaving a safety strap, (as GOL teaches to do on every ****ing tree) or better, bore the guts of the hold wood, leaving wood on each side, though on this one, if you had cut a little deeper you would of been well into the rotten core, and not needed to...

Now, as for leaving safety straps, I rarely do so, but will if its super sketchy, the benefit is it gives you a head start on vacating the area, however, your other cuts have to be correct or it can still chair, or worse you over cut the hold wood and the tree crushes it and pinches your saw (this realllllllllyyyyyyy sucks btw) which is bad in all sorts of ways, not just pinching the bar but it also compromises the integrity of the hold wood....

Anyway, next time take a little more on the face... it will solve most of the issues.
 
I really appreciate the technical advice. That's what I came looking for.

I'm not sure I understand the mechanics of how a shallow face cut translates to "giving the tree that much more time to stall". I do understand how a shallow face cut translates to more force required if I'm using wedges at the back (tree straight or back leaner).

Attacking Game of Logging, Sweden, and weekend logging classes is a real turn off. If this is a forum only for tree professionals from famous logging states (I love Washington) I've clearly come to the wrong place.
 
Here's a little more detail on how we're taught to make the face cut.
 

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I like a 90 degree open face for my ash trees. In my experience a healthy ash tree rarely breaks off the stump, and has to be cut loose. This is different from my other species: pignut and shagbark hickory, various maples, yellow birch, and black locust. Now that my ash trees have EAB all bets are off, and I try to cut them while they are still green.

I haven't taken GOL, but I do use the open face almost all the time, and I bore cut when I think it is necessary. I have learned over the years that sometimes a shallow face cut to 80% of diameter is not really enough (especially if the tree is not round). Of course, too deep a face causes other problems.
 
I really appreciate the technical advice. That's what I came looking for.

I'm not sure I understand the mechanics of how a shallow face cut translates to "giving the tree that much more time to stall". I do understand how a shallow face cut translates to more force required if I'm using wedges at the back (tree straight or back leaner).

Attacking Game of Logging, Sweden, and weekend logging classes is a real turn off. If this is a forum only for tree professionals from famous logging states (I love Washington) I've clearly come to the wrong place.
GOL, as I stated, is a very narrow set of rules, and therefore limiting, which is simply wrong and deserves derision, is it a good course for the average homeowner, sure, it does provide some much needed situational awareness, but it teaches one and only one way to cut a tree, and this is patently false.
It also tends to get folks set in their ways so they refuse to look at things any other way, which isn't necessarily a fault of GOL its just human nature.
As I tried to make clear via humor before, trees don't care, every tree is different, they fight back and they fight dirty, using the same set of rules with every tree will eventually lead to failure. To respond to natures forces you have to be able to adapt and have a "tool box" of other tricks and processes.

as for attacking Sweden, I am not, GOL is the product of one rather self righteous Swede who has made a great deal of money promoting the fact that he is a "Swedish Logger" and therefore should be taken seriously, hence the term SSD (Personally I have my doubts about his logging credentials, especially since Sweden is largely mechanically harvested, and has been for a rather long time)

Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with homeowners and weekend warriors taking a few classes to better prepare themselves and be more safe in the woods, or at anything. The problem arises when the classes are taught in a way that creates hard and fast rules, when in reality, there are no hard and fast rules. There are simply rules of thumb, i.e. all depending on perspective and current limiting factors. A couple days here and there of playing with a chainsaw under supervision, does not make anyone a professional timber beast, but it certainly gives a great deal of folks the idea, and unfortunately the confidence to act like they are a big bad logger, which is a very very dangerous attitude to have in the woods.
 
Is that normal? I think I have been making my face cut depth at around 30% of the diameter.
The GOL teaches 80% of the width of the tree if you are looking at it from the notch side. Others say 30% deep notch if you are looking at it from either side of the notch. Normal depends on who you learned from and where you are from.
 
Having done a few dozen Ash now and had at least 4 do big barberchairs.
I am moving towards plunge cuts for any leaning in the direction I want to fell.
Taking branches down so they don't fall on me is also critical.
Rope is our friend
No climbing, impossible to tell what is green and what is dust.

No face cut seems to fix this issue so far. Split can happen many feet above the cut !
I even had one throw a slab off the back. A good reason to be 45 deg off center.
 
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