Treeslaying Illinois style

[treemandan]

But I have to ask, Slayer; How in the hell do you do it? illinois, Va, Jersey, Phila... its giving me jet lag and I think I need a nap.

 

[treeclimber101]

Do you travel with your chainsaw , mine is smelly if I leave it in the cab of the truck

 

[treeslayer]

nope, they wont let me.:chainsawguy:

 

[treeclimber101]

Don't leave the airport in Newark theres alot of unsavories lurking about , and I don't want that chithole to be what you remember of this great state...

 

[outofmytree]

How do you know that bean bag shot got you a secure tie in?

Great vid and music. Nice job.

George knows how to lay down a good track don't he.

The bean bag goes over, rope gets pulled back and then pulley up to the top. Adjustable false crotch. Secure is a bit of a guess in Washingtonias. The best bet is dead centre of the head. We bounce plenty on the lines to test em before anyone goes up.....

 

[ropensaddle]

George knows how to lay down a good track don't he.

The bean bag goes over, rope gets pulled back and then pulley up to the top. Adjustable false crotch. Secure is a bit of a guess in Washingtonias. The best bet is dead centre of the head. We bounce plenty on the lines to test em before anyone goes up.....

Being completely and utterly ignorant of palms except what I have read I get the picture of coconuts knocking you out ever happen? Also can't the fronds be dangerous ?

 

[outofmytree]

Being completely and utterly ignorant of palms except what I have read I get the picture of coconuts knocking you out ever happen? Also can't the fronds be dangerous ?

No coconut palms over here so I can't tell personally if that is a problem. Koaman or Bermie may be able to help there. The fronds on the other hand, I can say are nasty business. The dead washie fronds make a "skirt" which can be very very heavy and loose. The ones below are fairly small but the dead fronds would weigh an easy 200kg.

Guys who dont know better have spiked up em from underneath and the entire mass has collapsed on them and suffocated them to death whilst bending them backwards like a pretzel. Its over the top only for my crew!

 

[sgreanbeans]

I worked in San Diego for 2 years at GOTHIC LANDSCAPE, did palms all the time, HATE THEM WITH PASSION, yes, depending on the type, they are very dangerous, Mexican Fan Palm has SUPER sharp thorns on the stem of the fronds, they are very strong and do not break, nature had something wicked planned when these things came around! The "Immigrant Workers" we had, told me that on the ranches in Mexico, they use these fronds as weapons for ranch wars (real fights, real deaths) They will shred your body to pieces, u cant chip them either! We had to just load them up and take them to a particular dump in San Marcos.
Plus if you work on one that is old and never had maintenance, there will be hundreds of dead fronds still attached to the tree, hanging down covering the trunk. Great place for very large rats!

 

[tree MDS]

Being completely and utterly ignorant of palms except what I have read I get the picture of coconuts knocking you out ever happen? Also can't the fronds be dangerous ?

I've done some coco's back in the day... never had any dangerous scenarios that I can recall.

I can tell you this: the seed pods (they hold many coconuts) can get heavy as all hell. you just touch a saw to them, and its bombs away. i remember watching one explode onto a dock, coconut juice flying everywhere. pretty cool.

 

[ropensaddle]

I don't know if I would like palms but I guess its good for business where they grow as much maintenance would be necessary I suppose to eliminate the dead fronds from falling out on people at the beach and any traffic area. Ekka showed some sorta special cut some time back I forget the cut now but what stuck in my mine was that sticky crap all over the saws. I am assuming it gets all over you too and must be a peta to get off. My saws would bite me if I did that to them:hmm3grin2orange: It would be very interesting in Aussie imo with jack jumper ants,funnel web spiders how does a treeman live long enough to gain experiance? Then he gets down to clean up brush or what do you call palm clean up frush lol,only to be bitten by a king brown or Thiapan!

 

[treeslayer]

ain't no palm trees in Illinois, this :censored: derail must stop immediately.


















I cut down a big nasty palm in Orlando a few years back, and learned my lesson..
We hauled it to the curb by hand, got a good lesson in what lives in the top of a palm tree.
Pruning them would definitely be better, (making a tree look good is a thrill), but doesn't look easy.
How structurally sound are they, and not working with defined limbs would be my first concern.


Oomt, Do you get paid adequately for being good at working on them?

 

[tree MDS]

To my knowledge theres no sap envolved with the palms... more of a sweaty dust ridden event trimming them.

I think I remember that wing cut deal ekka was talking about. I think it has something to do with the wood swelling as you cut and pinching your saw (only certain palms). Sort of feels like a bad raker job. Not sure though... its been a while.

You want sap?? try a strangler fig, or a norfolk island pine... indian rubber tree is another good one. lol

 

[Bermie]

To my knowledge theres no sap envolved with the palms... more of a sweaty dust ridden event trimming them.

I think I remember that wing cut deal ekka was talking about. I think it has something to do with the wood swelling as you cut and pinching your saw (only certain palms). Sort of feels like a bad raker job. Not sure though... its been a while.

You want sap?? try a strangler fig, or a norfolk island pine... indian rubber tree is another good one. lol

Well, coconuts are nicer to work on than anything else IMO, no thorns and less chance of resident nasties.
I tookdown two last week, 60' +/-...the nuts can be REAL heavy...I've seen one fall and shatter a 4x4 resaurant railing (wolmanized pitch pine). One of the ones I did, I had to rig all the leaves and nuts down and all the trunk sections.
They are really wobbly though, standing on spikes on a 10" diameter stick of juice and fibre at 50', rig a 150lb chunk and catch it...wheeeee, ride it!
They are deceptively strong and flexible though...quite the feats of nature.

The Ekka wing cut is useful because palms just settle as you cut, there is no strength to support the vertical weight once you remove material the normal way, so chunking big diameter palms need a different cut sequence and wedges can help too.

Palm 'sap' is corrosive to the metal alloy of saw bodies...people who cut them regularly tend to use a HO saw with more plastic. If I cut a palm and leave the saw to clean till the next day, the chain will have started to rust and anywhere there is a gob of fibre and sap next to metal discolouration will have started, some species are worse than others.

I'd rather cut palms than figs though any day!...except Canary island Date palms...

 

[sgreanbeans]

Yeah, those seed pods were freakin HEAVY. Didn't work with them enough while I was there, those seed pods will let loose eventually, right? Couldn't imagine walking into a restaurant and getting bombed by one of those, I think those could kill!

 

[ropensaddle]

ain't no palm trees in Illinois, this :censored: derail must stop immediately.

















I cut down a big nasty palm in Orlando a few years back, and learned my lesson..
We hauled it to the curb by hand, got a good lesson in what lives in the top of a palm tree.
Pruning them would definitely be better, (making a tree look good is a thrill), but doesn't look easy.
How structurally sound are they, and not working with defined limbs would be my first concern.


Oomt, Do you get paid adequately for being good at working on them?

Then my good buddy start working and posting pics:hmm3grin2orange:

 

[outofmytree]

ain't no palm trees in Illinois, this :censored: derail must stop immediately.



I cut down a big nasty palm in Orlando a few years back, and learned my lesson..
We hauled it to the curb by hand, got a good lesson in what lives in the top of a palm tree.
Pruning them would definitely be better, (making a tree look good is a thrill), but doesn't look easy.
How structurally sound are they, and not working with defined limbs would be my first concern.


Oomt, Do you get paid adequately for being good at working on them?

Palms make up no less than 20% of our work every week of the year and in Summer can be as much as 40%. If the HO won't pay my price then they don't get done. The Washies I showed earlier pay pretty well. I get between $600 and $1000 to remove the skirt depending on height and honestly its about throwbag skills/luck. If you get a good entry 1st time and can place the false crotch in say 30 minutes from the time you stop at the kerb then the biggest baddest palm will take perhaps 1 1/2 hours to completely skin. Of course the clean up takes a hell of a long time and if the wind is blowing you better have told the neighbours to bring in their washing! My base rate is $200 ph plus tax but if you get lucky on set up then you can push $250 even $300. Having a chipper that eats everything makes a huge difference too!

Tell you what. I have some very large Syagrus romanzaffiona (Cocos palms) to remove on the 12th. There must be water only a few feet below ground cos these babies look pregnant! I will vid a little of the job. Done properly its good fun but you do need the right gear.

As strange as it may sound, we have found that hand saws are a major speed benefit when pruning Cocos palms. I know many, many climbers who have cut their life lines and polestraps whilst 1 handing the 200t in order to cut and throw fronds or seed pods. Zubat 11 inch saws eat em up and you can 1 hand all day without fear of kickback!

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

When I ran the pruning department at the local ChemLawn branch shrubs were over 50% of revenue in June-July. It was mostly small foundation yew/juniper jobs, but they added up; especially when I was able to pick up neighbors and take care of two or three houses in a row every year.

It never ceases to amaze me how many small tree companies disdain shrub work when they are the easiest way to get onto a property, or the easiest add-on work to a partial day trim. Most of the time I would do a pick-prune reduction as a cheap throw in "while we are here", then get the annual return visit for maintenance so they would look good for the holiday.

 

[ropensaddle]

When I ran the pruning department at the local ChemLawn branch shrubs were over 50% of revenue in June-July. It was mostly small foundation yew/juniper jobs, but they added up; especially when I was able to pick up neighbors and take care of two or three houses in a row every year.

It never ceases to amaze me how many small tree companies disdain shrub work when they are the easiest way to get onto a property, or the easiest add-on work to a partial day trim. Most of the time I would do a pick-prune reduction as a cheap throw in "while we are here", then get the annual return visit for maintenance so they would look good for the holiday.

here the illegals do all the cake like that but I do try and sounds like a good strategy in areas not overrun with illegal cheap labor.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

here the illegals do all the cake like that but I do try and sounds like a good strategy in areas not overrun with illegal cheap labor.

This is where selling yourself, rather then the process comes in. I think any area an arborist can be undercut by a landscraper. My pitch is would you prefer me or an unskilled college kid? More often then not I was given a chance to prove myself, and was rewarded with a revolving account.

I tell people that I don't just come and run over it with a power shear, i manage the growth. Time the pruning so you get there after the first flush has slowed down, do hand pruning on larger stems so it looks better and cuts are under the "green shell", do a meticulous clean-up in and around the plant How often do we hear people gripe about having to clean up after the landscaping crew?

Some people I was able to sell several visits in a year, simply because they wanted an immaculate front yard. I did it better then they did, and often healthier. (shearing junies every year stresses the roots. I am convinced that the loss of auxins from the buds has a synergistic effect with the leachates form concrete basements.)

 

[Bermie]

...Tell you what. I have some very large Syagrus romanzaffiona (Cocos palms) to remove on the 12th. There must be water only a few feet below ground cos these babies look pregnant! I will vid a little of the job. Done properly its good fun but you do need the right gear.

As strange as it may sound, we have found that hand saws are a major speed benefit when pruning Cocos palms. I know many, many climbers who have cut their life lines and polestraps whilst 1 handing the 200t in order to cut and throw fronds or seed pods. Zubat 11 inch saws eat em up and you can 1 hand all day without fear of kickback!

:agree2: Up at the top, a Zubat rocks......love one handing the Zubat!!