New spur climber

[jefflovstrom]

I have personally seen most climbers climb , its true what he says

Jeff

 

[lostcoastland]

I had a friend look at it with me ( he worked for the electric company for 10 years on the tree crew ) and he thought for my first tree a leaner over power lines and by the road was a bad choice. So I set a 1" rope up in it and blocked it to the base of another tree and we hooked the rope to the front tow hook of his dually. He could see me and the tree good as he was backing up. He put a good load on the tree and I cut a 90 degree face cut and cut almost all the hinge out on the road side and it laid right down in the ditch and road side. Worked beautifully.

Don't Cut almost all the way through hinge! you need that to keep the tree on the stump till its on it's way down safely. .that's all your control right there..ive seen guys think they can pull over any leaner and have to climb and limb the tree ready to bail trying to take weight off. Ive seen another guy use wedges and a truck to do it bit by bit. Cut a little bit..pull a little set wedges a little more..its alot safer than one shot all or nothing. Its good to have direct visual contact. i was in the truck pulling and the freaking faller just decides to start ignoring me. i'm waving hooting and hollering he
s cutting and stopping and cutting and stopping with a big old spruce tree..Afterwards i was flipping out like dude wtf i'm weavign my arms screaming at your not even lookign at me once the whole time!! He was kind of retarded always leavign stubs out , walkign out to the tip of the tree while i 'm limbing it from the butt. I tried dropping branches on his head after he hit his chainbreak so he might wake up. sounds like your buddy knows what he's doing though..i met someone who really schooled me after i almost lost one backward into a house and powerlines in front of the HO..I climbed the tree next to it and pushed it over and it freaking fell on the rope tied to the tree i was in..it was a double wammy i went for the ride of my life that log pushed the rope all the way to the ground i hugged the tree while it boinged like one of those spring door stops..I thought i could eyeball it and my senses were good ran out of ropes on the last tree..no branches just a stick. Huge oops falling, and a huge oops climbing all cutting one tree....went home and the guy was cool and said i could come back and do the rest of the job with this other guy who i ended up working for as a rigging guy...i kept climbing though and learned there will always be trees or situations like that. you have to change your plan before you walk right into a trap. Cassidy Lancelin

 

[Greener]

Good morning,
I thought with the line set much higher than me the swing to the other tree would be a slow one. I guess 10' is still a long swing? On the carabiner I was thinking one of the non locking with a 75lbs rating. And would one of them work also as a chainsaw lanyard breakaway? I'm sure your right on the strength of the tree, it's weathered many storms and is still standing. I was planning on limbing it up (no roping them down needed) and then cutting the trunk down in short sections. What length do you think I would need to cut them in for it not to shake me around to bad?? Does cutting a larger angle face cut (90 degrees +) help with the push off effect when the hing breaks??

Avoid free falling wood by facing out the undercuts when your are chunking down the pole, unless you have a lot of room in your drop zone. This approach usually results in lengths of wood spinning wildly to the ground, and increases the chance of bounce on the ground. I used to do more standard felling (like you are talking about) when taking down poles. But looking back, it was way more risky and I'm lucky I came out unscathed on a few occassions. I had a few sit back on me. I would caution you about doing it unless you are absolutely certain about 1) the center of gravity of the wood or if you have a rope on the top with a groundie ready. A better approach is to do snap cuts (in medium wood (10-15") come through with the gut of the bar-cutting away from you-until the bar starts to pinch, then come through from the other side an inch or so below the kerf/first cut). If the wood is bigger 20 inches or so, you should not chunk more length than double the diameter while you are still getting used to it. If you are going to do a standard face cut-and when blowing out longer tops (as was mentioned by someone else in this post) when doing the back cut and it starts to go, speed up in the cut so you can decrease the hinge size to avoid splitting the trunk and minimize the spring back when it goes over.