Friction devices aloft

[xtremetrees]

right up onto my trailer. I could roll a elephant onto it one chunk at a ttime:

 

[Tree Machine]

How do you smoke an elephant?

One puff at a time.


Getting back on topic.... We're talking about generally hairy precarious situations where it's to your advantage to have the ground guy with both hands freed up. If he's not handling a rope, he's freed up to do important things like clean up and do ground duty. I don't have to bust his groove. He sees a limb coming down, he steps out of his track for a few seconds to grab a limb and unclip it and he's back to work and I'm rigging the other end of the rope. The more on the cleanup he is, the less I have to do when I get down.

I watch other treeguys. After a cut I see one guy handling the rope, one guy handling the limb and the treeguy watching them both, waiting so he can pull his 1/2" line back up. Three guys taking three times as long as me and Jerry homeowner. Think about it. If all you have to do is unclip a non-locking stainless steel slideline biner, you don't have to be an Einstein or a ground guy. A 6-year old can unclip a limb (with Dad's supervision, of course).


I appreciate Xtreme smokin his trees, but my reality is it is 100% climbing and the areas we work in are so densly populated and yards so tight, fences, porches, solariums, hot tubs, awnings, power, phone and cable lines. Driveways and paver walks. Perennial beds, ornamental trees, fountains and water effect ponds; Every arborist gets that stuff to a degree, but it's really excessive here. I can count the number of 12" + DBH trees I can drop and flop, per year, on my 10 fingers. Most all big takedowns need piecing out and although I thoroughly enjoy heavyweight rigging and an occasional crane job, that is just not the level of rigging we're talking about in this thread.

This is bread and butter, middle of the road arboriculture. The stuff being described here is more of pruning and deadwooding where 'going big' is not as important as with a takedown. This is day-to-day stuff; Pruning overly dense areas or overextended limbs, and select limb and dead limb removals over areas where you can't conveniently cut em and drop em. This is pretty much a staple in the work diet of all tree climbers.

I was able to go through the video clips that Apprentice Dude took this week of solo aerial rigging over a roof and will need some time to edit. They're a bit shakey.


The tree is a 30 meter doublet oak where the streetward half died. The other half is primarily over the house. The homeowner wants to save the tree.


Here's a video clip for Xtreme. This was that oak, the dead part. No itsy bitsy slings were made in the making of this video:

 

[xtremetrees]

man that tree looked dead.. very nice vid.

 

[woodchux]

Hey TM,
Are you still working with nick and PU climber?

 

[xtremetrees]

Thanks TM

Bro, I had a large company call me saying they needed me for the day. I got to thinking I gotta be totally self-reliant. Aint gonna be no help on the ground.
I quoted him my daily rate and got to thinking shoot fire because of TM I dont need help from the ground.

Thanks man If youll PM me your address I'll send you some cash..!

 

[Tree Machine]

Glad this stuff is of practical use

Something tells me you could have flashed that job without my help. No cash necessary, but I appreciate the thought

man that tree looked dead..

Half the crown was dead. I have some clips of the rigging of the live parts over the house and perennial garden. Nick did a pretty OK job with the camera.


Here's that same tree, after dropping the dead stem I quickly shifted the chainsaw into reverse to impress the onlookers. This is how it came out:

 

[Tree Machine]

Blank movie player for me.

Trev, are you able to view the quicktime videos? I'm about to feed the gang some more and wanna make sure you're in the loop.

 

[xtremetrees]

That was funny your always a blast TM.

 

[trevmcrev]

Arrgghh. Im getting the bottom toolbar type thing that shows the progress but no image. Sometime when i try a meesage comes up saying " some software is missing for quicktime". It used to work, and ive seen some of your other clips but not recent ones.
Annoying. I'm not too up to speed with configuring things right on this computer.

Trev.

 

[trevmcrev]

Arrgghh. Im getting the bottom toolbar type thing that shows the progress but no image. Sometime when i try a meesage comes up saying " some software is missing for quicktime". It used to work, and ive seen some of your other clips but not recent ones.
Annoying. I'm not too up to speed with configuring things right on this computer.

Trev.

Could email to me if you want.
[email protected]

 

[trevmcrev]

Tried again by saving then opening and it said some parts missing being used by other programs. clicked yes to change it then it still said the compressor is missing. ???????????????????????

 

[Tree Machine]

Well, I wish I had something to offer you. I'm not real advanced in the computer world.


Here's one that Nick got on video. I drew a pic of how I rigged it. This was a fairly good size limb, pretty long, not quite as big around as my leg. I wanted it to come down, butt-end first.

The rope was first draped over a limb above the one to be lowered, then chokered to the limb out beyond the halfway point, weight-wise. Normally, I would do the cut at this point, but as mentioned, this one was really long. A sling was set on the limb I was standing on, and a second sling on a limb just above me creating an 'M' profile with the rigging rope (which was an 11 mm dragonfly in this instance).

Seems like a bit of rigging, but the whole clip was under a minute. I boiled it down to around 38 seconds to keep the download time reasonable.

It is a 1:1 setup. The friction comes primarily from the draping over the limb, with additional friction through the caribiners of the two slings, and finally, my gloved hand.

This setup allowed for the limb tip to be lowered a bit, allowing the traditional face cut to close, then snap, nice and predictable. When she let loose there was the one second of chaos and mayhem as the but end swung down and the tips up, however, because of how the rig was set up the butt end swung down and away from the climber, the brush end came upward and it was all well away from me as the limb hung from the right side of the 'M' and i was positioned on the left side of the 'M'. It was lowered with full control and not a great deal of grip from the belay hand. Friction was distributed well.

Here's the crude drawing of the setup:

 

[Tree Machine]

Here is the video clip:

 

[xtremetrees]

nice video nice limbage floating down.
take and start a thread in the video section TM I'll match you :rockn:

 

[Tree Machine]

Video takes a painstakingly long time for me, beginning-to-finish. I will politely decline a contest of any sort. Lets just share amongst ourselves.

 

[046]

nice work!

thanks again for sharing...

 

[Tree Machine]

Newbus earlicus[/i]]I'm still seeking to know everything I can before I attempt to do it so I can be fully confident in doing the work. I basically have 3 trees to practice on that aren't near anything and then I want to take one out right next to my house that will definitely require some lowering. I'm basically going to be working by myself and when I read your profile and saw that's what you basically do. I later read some more of the threads and discovered that you really only lower when absolutely necessary.

When you do your cuts for dropping, do you use a felling cut or do you make a straight cut and then an angled cut from the back and push it off on the tires? How does one do a jump cut? I can't find info on different chainsaw cuts I might should try so any direction to websites or info you can offer is much appreciated. I still would like to know your rig and hear how you would go from beginning to end cutting down a tree, setting up ropes and all and using your lowering method. I still have more equipment to buy and I don't know exactly what I need so do get back to me when you can.

I definitely want to get some repelling equipment like you used in the oak over the house video but don't know what to buy. Should I or could I use that rig as my safety line when climbing with spikes? Do you think it would be unwise to attach a safety line in an upside down 'V" setup to the metal rings that the leather strap that hugs the tree attaches to? I don't know the terminology of the tools,setup, dbRT for example so any clarification of methods and tools you provide is great whenever mentioned. I may know some of this stuff by the time you get back to me but right now I'm unsure and to be honest I first was just going to climb without a safety line. Just the spikes and the leather strap because as a kid I use to climb trees with a grappling hook and I would then climb as high as I could and use another one to climb higher, so I'm definitely not afraid of heights but I'm not as young and dumb as I use to be and really need to employ the safest method possible.
Earle Watson

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Excellent host of questions, but it's important to stay on task. We've got a good start on this topic so we'll stay focussed.

Earle Watson has a few really excellent questions in there, cutting right to the meat of the matter:

Do you think it would be unwise to attach a safety line in an upside down 'V" setup to the metal rings that the leather strap that hugs the tree attaches to?

OK, so that was not one of the better questions. As a matter of fact, I don't have a clue what you're climbing on, but it scares the livin' bajeezers outta me.

I basically have 3 trees to practice on that aren't near anything and then I want to take one out right next to my house that will definitely require some lowering. I'm basically going to be working by myself and when I read some more of the threads and discovered that you really only lower when absolutely necessary.

Absolutely. I use an array of specialized cuts to get the limbs to fell certain directions and most importantly, to release (snap off) exactly how you intend it to and the limb will go the way you want it to.

That is not unique to me. This is the way ALL tree guys do it in the trees. Rigging is only done when necessary. In fact, NOT rigging is really the norm in our industry. Then there's the use of slings, which isn't necessarily considered rigging, but the use of the slings aids you in directing the limb to where you want it to go.

Here's an example of that: A 135 degree upward face cut and a nick on the underside. The limb here was over primary lines and dropping the tips down was just not such a good option. Work-positioning is everything. Enjoy.

 

[Tree Machine]

Whoops, that was a similar technique, but not the clip I meant for. No wires in that one.

This is some crazy Aussie climber, pretty advanced new school guy who I caught here in a rare moment where he was only tied in once, with his rope. He shoulda had his flipline sunk also so that he was tied in twice when making the cut.

 

[Tree Machine]

The point being, that the slings are multi-tasking workhorses that can be used a lot of different ways up in a tree to give you advantage in leverage, friction, or work positioning. Slings are essential, and the right slings are even more essential, like for instance how long they are for your liking, and what caribiner (if any) is on the sling, and how is it affixed. Then there's the one sling you carry that has your life on it, one that doesn't get used for rigging or anything other than being your terminal redirect. This one is extra long and has a triple lock biner on it.

I feel naked in a tree if I don't have three or 4 slings on me.

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

WORD:

Abso-freakin'lutely!