Dutchman 101

[SINGLE-JACK]

DUTCHMAN: Tree falling cut that alters the function of the "normal" notch/hinge.

Some believe a dutchman adds nothing to a properly executed notch and hinge. Apparently, it is also believed some 'difficult' trees will not lay as desired with normal cuts, so additional cuts are sometimes added. Several govermental authorities in several countries refer to these additional cuts as; unacceptable, dangerous, illegal, even deadly.

However, dutchman cuts persist. And, much folklore exists about how to solve difficult tree falling with this or that dutchman. There appears to be little or no written guidance about how to safely use dutchman cuts. Due to governmental and insurance control, the only formal guidance about dutchman cuts is: DON'T DO ANY.

It may well be true that no dutchman cut is safe. But, I believe and have found that some dutchman cuts actually make falling safer. It is my hope than the true AS experts will weigh in on this and establish this thread as a significant reference about the science and/or insanity of dutchman cuts - details about what works, what doesn't, how and why.

All techniques cannot be suitable for all readers. Some should never use any dutchman. So please post detailed instructions, pictures and risk assessment. I hope to learn some new dutchman cuts and how to better plan my own to improve productivity and which techniques are, truely, too risky.

 

[056kid]

It's really a matter of watching your tree and cutting in accordance with what the tree is doing. there are so many variations of the dutchman that it hard to put into text the correct application for a particular situation.

Say for instance, the kirf dutchman, not for swinging but to get the tree off the stump as soon as it has started to commit, good imo for rolling trees through standing timber, extremely dangerous as well.

one of the trickiest imo is the step or block dutchman, and the trick is in where to place the block. I have used two blocks to really rotate the stem alot, and i have had trees stall out completely with just one block that I was sure would do the job.

getting good with swing cuts takes alot of time.

Knowing where to take wood is very important as well
you really need to get good at judging lean before you even consider such activities.

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

Just as we look for the control side backfield of hinge for tension control to steer; and not make both sides of the hinge generically the same (like a tapered hinge is different on either side); unless the side loading is the same (balanced load/ o side lean). To really understand hinging control we should then equal and oppositely see how on the lean side of face(as opposed to control/non-lean side of hinge), the control achieved by compression forces. So we should not just look at machining to this area as genericially the same across either if any sidelean! We should see that adjustmeant can take place here too.

Now, that isn't to say that we should use it necessarily; but mostly; be aware that these are simple machines (hinge and face machines) that control a lot of force, with simple commands. So, most of these lessons, for most seen situations are used for how not to make a dutchman by accident (the most prevalent kind); and thereby accidentally invoke these powers/ commands to the loaded machine(of tree falling on hinge/face).

As a tapered hinge is a pull to control sidelean from the opposite side/ pull against lean towards center face; a dutchman is a push in face on the side of lean towards the center face.

MTL Dutch push in side of face

 

[Bermie]

DO a search on dutchman, there was a LOT of discussion a while back, try the chainsaw forum as well, I think thats where it got discussed...

 

[SINGLE-JACK]

...

MTL Dutch push in side of face

Your FlashPlayer animation is an amazing piece of work and much appreciated. It must have taken a LOT of time.

I'd be interested in your opinions about Tim Ards video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFTOlmCijjs&feature=related
He guns his 'normal' cuts to right of the intended lay to compensate for side lean. Is that just a different technique achieving the same result as a tappered hinge or a dutch cut?

 

[SINGLE-JACK]

Dutchman resigns

DO a search on dutchman, there was a LOT of discussion a while back, try the chainsaw forum as well, I think thats where it got discussed...

OK - done that!!! I searched and opened every thread with the word "dutchman" - back 5 years. Searched every one of those for the word "swing". Read every post about about "Swing Dutchmans" ... know less now than when I started. Found A LOT of non-sense, A LOT of controversy, A LOT of SpyderSpeak (I'm not smart enough to understand more than half of that!!! - murphy4trees had it right a few years back, the man's "ahead of his time"). To be fair I did find a couple of tricks I hadn't tried. However, 20+ years, thousands of trees, can drop any tree 90 degrees either side of lean and never had a barberchair ... I should count myself lucky ... but ... stick a fork in me I'm done.

 

[056kid]

OK - done that!!! I searched and opened every thread with the word "dutchman" - back 5 years. Searched every one of those for the word "swing". Read every post about about "Swing Dutchmans" ... know less now than when I started. Found A LOT of non-sense, A LOT of controversy, A LOT of SpyderSpeak (I'm not smart enough to understand more than half of that!!! - murphy4trees had it right a few years back, the man's "ahead of his time"). To be fair I did find a couple of tricks I hadn't tried. However, 20+ years, thousands of trees, can drop any tree 90 degrees either side of lean and never had a barberchair ... I should count myself lucky ... but ... stick a fork in me I'm done.

20 years & no barberchair?

HOLY ****!!

What are you cutting, shrubs?

 

[SINGLE-JACK]

20 years & no barberchair?

HOLY ****!!

What are you cutting, shrubs?

Ain't NOTHING like luck!!!

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

One of the quirks of this is that, the power that is set against you (weight, sidelean, length etc.) are now allies for you. So, this works best on longer, harder, sideleans. Without this, you don't get the power back out.

For, the harder the leveraged sidelean, the more compression on that side, and the more tension on the opposing side. Also, the more breadth across the stump, the more control-because this places a greater leveraged distance between the compression and tension parts, that give tourque ; that steer her around.

A sidelean is one sidewards to the desired travel; in this definition. So, in sweeping a limb out horizontally from over a roof, is a hard sidelean, because the desired direction is across, and the pull of gravity is down. So, the model can be turned on it's side, and plot for downwards compression and upwards tension... This can be a lot safer to practice.. and another way to view,many more times a day.

These same forces are all around us everyday in all different ways; treemen just push them to higher loading to witness mare magnified what is going on! Once again, especially in felling; L-earning dutchmans is best for what not to do/accidentally invoke/let happen; why to precisely machine the faces squarely, and also what can happen if wood in the 'active' quadrants is rotted/won't stand to compression or dry -won't give/take tension forces.

i tried to get Tim Ard's stuff long ago, when he first started i think. Something didn't take my card, or paypal, ck etc. and i never pursued it more. But, i did pour over all his explanations, talked to peoples from his seminar and those that bought the disk he was selling, read posts and explanations, tried some things etc. i always think in terms of serving the tree towards center face, like it tries to self compensate to do so itself. Tim Ard (it seems to me) takes the opposite approach and tries to calculate where the tree 'fails to' (?) instead. So, separate strategy from what i can gather; but whatever worx... Though, that model, doesn't seem to work as well turned on it's side, in throwing/rigging a limb across horizontally.

i think the biggest help in understanding these things is to think of stump in quadrants. Ruling out backlean, the intersection of the 2 lines making the quadrants, would be on the forward part of the hinge fiber, at the point of lean (the lean weight/leverage being the empowering force of all the rest of the mechanics). Mechanics of compression or tension are on a diagonal across from the front lean side square, to the rear contra-lean side. So, is actually more 'inline' to the lean, on this diagonal across from sidelean. The other quadrants, have less power; so like in a tapered hinge, we 'schedule' more/earlier tension/ pull towards gunned face in that rear quadrant opposite the sidelean; forsaking the other rear quadrant more. Same as, only reversed; with dutchmans strategies; we schedule more/earlier compression / push towards gunned face in the quadrant front of the lean.

Now, the compression/pushes don't have to be connected; but the tensioned/pulls do. Also, the 'lean' (the empowering force) changes with the travel, so model has to move with that... These things happen Naturally - we just seek to take advantage and maximize them!! "Nature to be commanded..."

 

[SINGLE-JACK]

20 years & no barberchair?

HOLY ****!!

What are you cutting, shrubs?

Ain't NOTHING like luck!!!

Sorry, my reply was flippant. The real luck was many good teachers - seeing enough BC examples of what not to do.

Being a belt & suspenders type, mostly working alone, can't afford risks, e.g.: plunge cut anything over 12 DBH + always wedge light back leaners + always rig pull/hold lines on heavy leaners = 0 BC's.

Always use groundies when climbing & rigging risky removals. Made my share of mistakes but at the end of every harvest the only thing laying on the ground was trees.

Still, it would be so nice to learn how to make a tree change fall direction in mid-fall - that'd be cool!!!

 

[056kid]

with so many variables at hand & spending on average 7 to 8 hours in the woods daily I have seen a few.

Broke my left hand by standing next to a small barberchaired white oak,(i was pooped @ the end of the day) the tree was about eye level and i was looking away from it.

then it feels like someone smashes my hand with a sledge hammer. The tree rolled off the remaning stump & just grased my hand and messed up my chain brake, I was holding my saw in my left hand Could have dome more.

 

[Burvol]

20 years & no barberchair?

HOLY ****!!

What are you cutting, shrubs?

It's called open your face up and saw the sucker off with a saw that can handle the timber

 

[matt9923]

with so many variables at hand & spending on average 7 to 8 hours in the woods daily I have seen a few.

Broke my left hand by standing next to a small barberchaired white oak,(i was pooped @ the end of the day) the tree was about eye level and i was looking away from it.

then it feels like someone smashes my hand with a sledge hammer. The tree rolled off the remaning stump & just grased my hand and messed up my chain brake, I was holding my saw in my left hand Could have dome more.

aren't you the one who like's to "chill" at the stump?

 

[matt9923]

It's called open your face up and saw the sucker off with a saw that can handle the timber

Iv seen them but never had one happen to me.

 

[RRSsawshop]

Tarzantrees and Forestyworks are good ones to ask questoins to check out the logging forum...opcorn:

 

[pdqdl]

20 years & no barberchair?

HOLY ****!!

What are you cutting, shrubs?

I have never had a tree barber-chair. I did have a 5" branch do that to me once, about 15' off the ground, only a short time after reading Beranek's Fundamentals of Tree Work for the first time. When I saw how that happened, I thought, "WOW! That was neat. I'll have to not do that ever again!" (I top cut a horizontal silver maple branch, anticipating a slow descent. It didn't turn out that way)

My techniques for sending down trees have never included baby/shallow face cuts on head leaners, nor pulling trees over with massive force. These are the usual causes of barber chair. Since I have never practiced doing them, I suppose I could be wrong...

I never even heard of barber-chair until long after I (foolishly) considered myself pretty experienced. I guess I am pretty lucky, because I am almost entirely self-educated in the tree business, having never worked for a tree service. Understanding the physics of cutting a tree down is probably why I have had such good luck.

So yes. There are probably lots of guys that have never had a barber-chair happen to them.

 

[056kid]

thats crazy...

I would say lots of guys that havent cut that much have never had a tree start to go alittle early due to a sudden gust of wind, or vines that are pulling on it, or just a messed up chain...

 

[pdqdl]

What are you saying? That with your vast experience you have frequent problems with Barber-chair? Why do you think that Barber chair is a common experience only among experienced tree fellers?

I haven't ever broken ANY bones while doing tree work, either. I suppose that makes me a noobie too? You really shouldn't impune the experience of other workers based on their lack of failures and near fatal mistakes. If that is how you score your experience, you are doing it all wrong.

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

Even an open/wide face can give barberchair if the wide face has a dutchman inside of it on accident (making it a narrow face actually). This is from one of the face cuts bypassing the other, this effect is mostly seen when the lower/horizontal cut goes beyond the upper/slanted cut.

Douglas Dent's felling bible "Professional Timber Falling A Procedural Approach"; speaks of dutchmans etc.

 

[pdqdl]

Depth of face cut determines probability of Barber chair. Any form of loading, whether wind, gravity, or tow-line in the direction of fall increases that probability. When the side loading creates sheer forces in the trunk greater than the resistance of the trunk to splitting...you have a big problem.

If the tree is trying to fall in the direction of fall, make a face cut to at least 50% of the diameter of the tree. There is almost no way to get B-C now.

Barber chair is a modern phenomenon that did not exist in the days of axes-only timber felling. Wedges do not work in the wide kerfs created by axe cuts, so the technique used by the old timers to get the tree to fall in the desired direction is to remove the support out from under the side you desire the tree to fall. Essentially, they kept chopping on the side they wanted the tree to fall towards.

This technique never barber chairs, but it is a great deal trickier to learn, because the open faces and deep wedge cuts created by axes do not prevent a tree from setting back in the wrong direction should wind or mistaken judgment send it that way. The modern method of only face cutting a teeny little face cut and then wedging the tree over from the back-cut prevents most of the risk of the tree going the wrong direction, but it also creates the risk of barber chair. In their handbook on tree work, ISA (in my opinion) erroneously advises to never cut the face deeper than 1/3rd of the tree diameter; advice that I strongly disagree with.

I have some comments on the shear-resistance of trees too. I have never seen this addressed in any book or technical resource, but I believe that trees have greater resistance to splitting in some directions, and less resistance in others. The natural loading on a tree in a heavy wind creates both lifting forces on the windward side of the trunk, and compression forces on the other side (the "Lee" side, if you are a sailor). When a barber chair condition is created in a tree by putting a deep back cut into the trunk, the loading during the cut shifts the lifting forces into the wood in a force and direction where it has grown for many years resisting the strain of compression. So the tree has never developed the natural resistance to splitting in that particular direction, and...it splits!

I have always used the gravity method of sending trees over, or ropes where necessary, so barber chair has not ever been a problem for me.