Dead Man Walking

[herschel]

So a couple of days ago, a guy stops at our job site and asks if I'll do some chipping for him. He points at a medium sized spruce across the street and says that he's got 2 like that. He says that he'll fall them and I'll just drive up, chip 'em and go.

I won't give estimates to people without seeing the tree(s), but he "seemed" to know a little of the tree biz and I gave him a price for the job. He was fine with the price, so I said I'd show up this aft.

SO..........

I show up and I was in shock. And that was before he told me his story.

First of all, the yard looked as if a bomb went off. Branches everywhere, butts in all directions. The house was gutted and ready to be demolished,..... really..... no one was living there so the windows smashed out, the house was gutted. The guy/owner was demolishing his house to build a new one.

At the back of the yard is a 4 ft stump with a serious back lean into the alley. Middle of the yard, a 40 ft de-limbed spruce, top missing.

Still with me? Now the good part. He comes over and tells me the story of how he got this far.

We'll start with the 40 footer. He said he took his circular saw and duct taped the guard to the open position. Then hung the saw around his neck with a short piece of rope. Up the tree he went, leaving 6 inch stubs all the way to the top. Once there, he puts a small back cut in the top and ties a rope to it. Then he ties the rope to his pick-up in the alley and yanks it off.

Now the leaner. It had to have been 40 ft, right at the bcak of the property. In the alley, the typical rack of primary and secondary power lines, telephone and cable lines. The size of the tree, with the lean of the stump, really got me thinking. How did he have the entire (1 piece) laying in his backyard? How did he overcome such a back lean.

Here's how. Same method,... circular saw around the neck. Up the tree, de-limb. Tie rope in top. Run the rope from the tree through back window, through a closet, through punched out drywall, to the front yard. (Remember, the house was gutted) Tie rope to headache rack of pick up. He did know how to cut a wedge, so after he did the wedge and PUT A BACK CUT IN IT, he raced to his truck in the front yard and pulled the tree forward.

Incredibly, it worked. All I could do was laugh. He was waiting for a pat on the back or a compliment, but I could't stop grinning.

He had no idea how lucky he was. He could have been killed several times while climbing. And then imagine having your tree balancing on it's hinge, leaning towards power lines, while you run your A** off to jump in your truck to pull it over.

If that tree had gone the other way,........ well you can imagine.


Classic do-it-yourselfer. I chipped for 2 hours and got outta there.
Hope I don't read about him one day.

 

[Stumper]

I think I'm going to have nightmares.

 

[Tim Gardner]

It would have been pretty funny to see that truck being drug throught the house and out the back window!

 

[Keener]

Just another flat broke Canadian trying to save a dollar because thats all he had left after the Government and banks where done with him.

 

[treeclimber165]

I'm speechless.

 

[herschel]

This reminds me of this other guy wearing sunglasses who stopped me one day to look at his lilac stump. It was only one lilac, but it was a old, big, suckering type. Maybe 30+ yrs.

He had cut all the stems off. He was asking about poisoning the stump to rot it. I suggested stump grinding.

Then he took off his shades. One eye was swollen shut.....very shut. A stitched cut, below the same eye.


Here's his story. He wraps some type of rope around the stump. Attaches other end of rope to his truck mounted winch.

Now you know something's gotta give. The rope snapped, hits this dude in the face and nearly sucks the eye out of his head.
Nevermind that he could have been decapitated.

My advice to him........don't do that again.

 

[Stumper]

You might be a redneck if ....When an arborist offers to grind out that ugly ol' 30"diameter stump in your front yard for a small sum you reply,"Naw, ma'brother-in-law's got 4 wheel drive. We're gonna pull it out when we get a round to it."

 

[Jumper]

Ain't that the truth..........

Originally posted by Keener
Just another flat broke Canadian trying to save a dollar because thats all he had left after the Government and banks where done with him.

But the idiot in charge of the asylum in Ottawa insists everything is great and he has done a wonderful job doing it. ......

 

[Newfie]

at least he was an amateur...

I saw some so-called pros making a mess of things on Friday. They were removing an 80 ft spruce along the edge of a driveway between a fence and the house, wires on the other side. When I tried to pass by, these zipper heads had somehow managed to atom bomb 20 ft of the crown and delimb the stem without breaking anything (visible at least). They then proceeded to take the stem down in the driveway and clear across both lanes of traffic. All this being done while one guy is cutting and the other two are hanging on a rope praying, nobody is contolling traffic. The 3 stooges, so proud of their work, are now faced with the dilemna of how to get their handiwork out of the road without having to bury the chain in the pavement. I stopped and offered some suggestions but with their thumbs up their butts, they seemed to be a little hard of hearing. They didin't have a cant hook or the like to be able to rotate the log so I told them that they better decide if they wanted to buy a new chain or explain their antics to the police. They opted for the new chain.

As bewidlering as this was I wasn't surprised as the owner tore his thumb off last year while playing around inside the motor housing of his chipper, while it was running of course. and of course he has his company listed under "tree service supplies" not "tree service" in the yellow pages. He doesn't sell any supplies.

At least nobody was hurt this time.

 

[murphy4trees]

A customer told me the story of how he cut down a tree,75'+ oak, at his former house... He used a cordless drill to screw in steps up to a big crotch at about 40'. Standing in the crotch he was able to drop the top, one lead at a time.. Not sure if he tied in with anything or not..
He seemed like a very nice and highly competant man. Glad he made it..
I went on another estimate and saw this doubled string going over a main oak lead leaning out towards the house. At first I thought it was a radio antena..the woman there told me her husband had tried to remove the lead, well over 18"+ diameter using one of those "cable on a string saws" that gets pushed and pulled back and forth over a limb to do the cutting.. He was lucky the plan failed as this limb was going to hit the house and take out the new swingset when it fell. She said she didn't talk to him for two weeks after that stunt.
God Bless,
Daniel

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Women stop_________and men might listen

I wonder if the guy paid attention to his wife the next time she told him not to do some crazy project. Maybe two weeks isn't enough.

I read an article about how the women in some country withheld sex until the men quit warring with each other, and stayed peaceful. Didn't take to long to bring about peace, and keep it.

In another storyu of the power of women, in Nigeria it is very shameful on a family to have women naked in public. Now, don't go off about naked women in Western culture. The women wanted the oil company, Exxon or one of their cronies, to give more jobs to the men and to do a better job of protecting the environment. Their protest was meant to shame the company. It worked as I read later.

I wonder if we all might be a little better off if we didn't listen to our wifes/companions/significant others [yech...I HATE that term]/girlfriends more just before we men tear into another "Tim Taylo" project.

Tom

 

[Tim Gardner]

I would drop to my knees and thank the good Lord if my wife didn't talk to me for two weeks!

 

[murphy4trees]

In Ghana W. Africa, the world bank wanted to implement a 17% tax on all purchases under it's "structural adjustmrnt" program ( neo-colonialism)... The women shut down the markets throughout the capital. The government and world bank gave in..
God Bless,
Daniel

 

[FBerkel]

another of the removal follies

About ten years ago, I was topping out dying lombardy poplars for removal, heard yelling and screaming from pretty close by. Looked around, and maybe 3 blocks away are two guys up in a one-man bucket, one has the saw, the other is controling the bucket.
Seems that they disagreed on how each the other was performing his role. Amazingly, their little screaming fight continued for close to two hours. When I got down, I walked over to the site to see which company it was (turned out to be our county's biggest topping "specialists"), and saw some poor schmuck on the ground, trying to untangle all the brush, which the bucket guys had let pile up to about 15 feet. I've often wondered how long it took them to finish that job.

 

[Reed]

I'm often that "poor schmuck" on the ground trying to untangle fifteen feet of brush. Isn't so bad if it's green and from say, an elm that's been pruned over the ages but my business is removals of dead live oaks, the ones over the houses.

100(+) today and trying to figure-out why I'm still sitting here under the ceiling fan while the morning cool has grown to sizzling mid-day temps. Yes, I have to go forth and climb today, makes one almost wish to be Pentacost or someone that honors Sunday's as a day to drink beer and watch sports. Do we do things backwards sometimes, maybe just to be abnormal? Isn't simply being in the tree business enough?

 

[FBerkel]

I Don't envy you, Wilt. Maybe you could convince a few customers to delay work until a cooler season, and join us Sunday beer drinkers?

 

[mikey]

I thought I'd heard it all,Herschel's story of the guy climbing with a skill saw around his neck,goes beyond my imagination.I do enjoy reading these storys.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

There was a local story of one of the "big" radio DJ's trimming his crab apple with a skill saw.

Heard/read about a guy who taped the trottle wide on his chainsaw while on a pole to limb trees. Think he survived ok.

 

[geofore]

deadman walking

Using a skil saw? Heck sawzall sells a green blade for doing that, one17" and I think one 21" but get the special GREEN blade for trees. While I posted some time ago it was absurd to cut a top and climb down and pull it out yourself, I have seen a homeowner do it. I did do an elm for a guy after he nailed 2x4's up the tree and then built a platform out of plywood to stand on to cut the top out. Lost his nerve after he realized how high off the ground he was. Good thing, he would have put the top in his kitchen if he'd have cut it loose, hollow for about 17' through the crouch. Had to use block and tackle to swing it out over the house into the yard, not easy with a hollow tree. I have to wonder what sawzall was thinking of with the Green blade, probably your homeowner that cuts the tree and then runs for the truck to pull it over. The best one was the homeoner sitting in the lawnchair, his son up on the roof with a polesaw cutting dead limbs. He must have wanted to get a comfortable veiw, he yells up "get that last one on the left" and moves his chair to watch I step back and the limb breaks loose and lands on the homeowner. I went over to tell him to move, he was too close. Only took nine stiches to convince him, he was too close.