Advice On Cutting Large Trees?(Includes discussion of personal hang-ups) (Trees!)

[Sojourner]

That’s what a forester said is what typically would be done. According to him, given the site characteristics, the biggest overstory trees won’t grow much bigger, and the smaller ones are too old for much release potential. High-value trees, some clear to nearly 100 ft. But the trees are close to the owner’s home and they already have a clear cut for much of their view, so we’re going to manage it selectively for awhile and see what happens. It’s a really beautiful woods. Goats keep the undergrowth minimal.

[Farrier]

@Sojourner 22976 wrote:

One question, on putting a wedge into the back side of a through-the-face-cut bore hole, why not put the wedge in after you set the hinge with the side-bore cuts, thereby not having to worry about hitting the wedge tip with your saw?

I set a wedge before making my side bore cuts so that I have lift on the tree from the very beginning. This is necessary on some of the hazard trees we have to fall on the fire line.

Carl, where do you get the Sandvik wedges? I am awful parcel to hardheads but I’ll try anything once.

[Carl Russell]

Re: Clear cut
That’s what a forester said is what typically would be done. According to him, given the site characteristics, the biggest overstory trees won’t grow much bigger, and the smaller ones are too old for much release potential. High-value trees, some clear to nearly 100 ft. But the trees are close to the owner’s home and they already have a clear cut for much of their view, so we’re going to manage it selectively for awhile and see what happens. It’s a really beautiful woods. Goats keep the undergrowth minimal.

He’s probably right. Sounds like a typical scenario where nothing was done when it should have been, and now the stand can’t sustain the kind of change that is required. If you maintain high stocking in some areas, and create opening in other areas, you may be able to develop some potential for the future.

Carl, where do you get the Sandvik wedges? I am awful parcel to hardheads but I’ll try anything once.

I just get them at my saw shop. I watched him open a catalog yesterday and order them for me, but I can’t for the life of me find any supplier on the web. They used to be made and sold by Sandvik, now BAHCO (same company), but I have now idea who supplies them in US.

Actually when I googled Sandvik wedges, the number one result was a link to DAP.com, and this thread….. I know I’m not making this up.:confused:

Carl

[near horse]

I’m certainly nowhere near as experienced as most of you guys when it comes to dropping trees and freeing hangups but another very real concern with hangups is overhead. While we’re finagling stuff to get our stuck tree loose, we (I) can lose awareness of the danger overhead – specifically the widowmaker branches/tops that may have been created in the process of our original snagging.

It seems a lot of accidents out here come from above. Amplify that number when you’ve got snow/wet snow on the branches – we ain’t got no hardwoods.

So at the risk of restating the obvious “don’t forget to look up – often”.

Carl – I’ve never heard of that sawdust in the kerf trick – sounds kind of interesting.

Also, and this might sound like butchery, but to get/change the lift Carl mentioned by using a short log, we’ve used the hi-lift jack leaned backward away from the direction of pull and lifting up on the choker (we were using cable). When you pull, the jack rotates forward and lifts up even more to hopefully raise the butt enough to clear the stump or what have you – jack just falls over. Biggest issue – hauling the hi-lift up slope to where you need it!

[Does’ Leap]

Geoff, one fact that stuck with me from GOL training is that 70% of logging fatalities come from dropped limbs. Thanks for the reminder.

George

[Scott G]

@Does’ Leap 23017 wrote:

Geoff, one fact that stuck with me from GOL training is that 70% of logging fatalities come from dropped limbs. Thanks for the reminder.

George

Everyone that I know personally that has been seriously knocked into tomorrow (including myself) or suffered severe injury/near fatality was wacked by something less than 6″ d. People tend to do two things, 1) take the small ones for granted, and 2) forget to look up…

A small fence post falling from the air can do a lot of damage…

[near horse]

I am reminded of the danger of those “upper tree parts” every time I go to our local grocery and go thru the checkout. The clerk there is a woman whose husband was killed by a rotten top falling on him while he was felling. He was 29 w/ 3 kids under 7yrs old.

George – thinks for the GOL stats. I always wondered just how prevalent those injuries were – they seemd to me to be a lot of the injuries.

Does GOL have some kind of reminder phrase like:

“Check overhead or you can end up dead.”

Watch yourselves!

[mitchmaine]

hey geoff, i weas cutting a pine and hemlock grove once picking through the pine. the pine was older and taller wood and you couldn’t really see the tops well. i cut this big one and stepped back as it fell and pow, i got hit by a falling porcupine. don’t know if i brushed him out or if he just baled but he got me good in the left shoulder and drove me right to the ground. we were in about two feet of soft snow and he made it fine. he came out of the snow like a little bulldozer heading off. i was wearing a bunch of clothes so i didn’t get quilled to bad but it took months to get over that whack. you could have told me it was an anvil and i would have beleived you. good advice. keep looking up. thanks for the reminder.

mitch

[Scott G]

@mitchmaine 23030 wrote:

…and pow, i got hit by a falling porcupine…
mitch

Drilled & quilled!!! I glad you’re OK, Mitch, but damn you gave me a great laugh this a.m., and yes, I’m sorry, it was at your expense…;)

[Tim Harrigan]

That’s a good one, Mitch. Windy days worry me as well. So many times I see big branches on the ground sticking straight up, blew down and stuck about 6 inches in the ground just standing there. That’s going to hurt as much as a porc.

[mitchmaine]

Tim, Scott, I got a question. Maybe a notion. They had a saying that you left a piece of you in the woods evry year, and if you stayed long enough it took the whole of you.
I haven’t cut much wood in the past 15 years but I did full time for the twenty years before that, and lots of my friends and neighbors had some pretty bad scrapes and one died in the woods. I didn’t do anything different than them, but I had better luck.
The maine forest service tells me that the woods is much safer now to work in, new felling practices and awarenerss mostly. And I believe that totally. BUT, I also think that most woods workers now are in protective cabs and not in so much danger. The numbers of choppers using saws is way, way less. I’m not trying to say that the new methods aren’t effective. Just the opposite. BUT, I am trying to say that horse loggers are out there. With not much of a safety net. And shouldn’t get lulled into thinking that its that safe, cause stuff happens. Like kamakasi porcupines. We had an ice storm here 12 years ago that broke off the tops of half the wood around here and its been raining wood ever since. Stuff like that you just can’t prepare for. So expect the unexpected, keep looking up and try and stay safe out there. You guys have cut enough to know what I mean, but its always good to keep saying it. Right?

mitch

[Carl Russell]

Now I don’t want to dismiss this track, but there is a difference between the degree of potential injury, and the degree of risk. The likelihood that something falls from a tree, or that it actually strikes you is actually pretty low. It is the fact that a very small object can cause serious/critical injury.

The times I have been hurt in the woods were times when I was in a hurry, and didn’t pay attention to things I could have easily seen. One of the benefits I see in working with horses is that I don’t cut that much wood in a day, and since I take a break to skid, I am usually fresh and ready to pay attention.

So, yes keep looking up, but also keep a lid on it. Work in a rhythm that allows you to take all the precautions necessary. I make a habit of stepping backward away from the tree with an upward glance to make sure all is well. I also turn off my saw after I cut the trigger wood, and when the tree hits the ground, I wait until all the branches have stopped swaying before I start it again to delimb.

And when I feel the blood pressure rising cause I’m pissed off about something, take a breather, or I pack it in. The worst injury of my career came about 15 minutes after I said to myself, “You know, if you keep this up, you’re gonna get hurt”.

As a follow up to the earlier discussion about wedge placement, I have these pics.

Carl

[near horse]

Hey Carl,

I think your comment about being in a hurry as the underlying cause of many accidents is right on. With all the technology we have in modern logging, much of it making things safer, one result has been to push harder to get more wood out per hour. Regardless of the level of “tech” – rushed is rushed and that, as you said, can spell disaster.

While the odds of a branch or top falling and hitting one seem to be almost astronomically long, it still happens. I know I don’t have nearly the time in the woods as you Carl and I do respect your observations. But logging is a unique situation in the woods that requires us to be working in an area where we’ve “disturbed” the stand via dropping trees, hanging some up etc. For example (and a funny one -sorry mitch) did Mitch increas the likelihood of being hit by a falling porcupine by cutting trees rather than say picking mushrooms? I would say yes.

As a sidelight – do you guys who work in the woods see much change in broken tops or branches, tipped up trees etc after opening up a stand? Is that indicative of a stand that has not been managed well? We see that here when a stand is thinned and what’s left are 60ft+ 16″ DBH trees that then get blown over. See I’m a rookie!

Okay – to seem even dumber, can you tell me what your paint mark down low is for? Does it mark something in particular?

[mitchmaine]

hey geoff, that paint on the stump is a deterant to wood thiefs. reminds the forester which trees he painted after they are gone.
you and carl are right about the pace of horse logging. seems strange but when i cut with the horses i go much slower. take my time and am much more careful. put me up on a skidder seat where i can cut twice as much wood and i try and cut four times as much. never could figure that one.

[Tim Harrigan]

I agree the real danger is in losing concentration or focus in things that you pretty much have full control over either from being distracted, tired or just over-confident with things you have done many times before. Just like me getting dragged off my stoneboat by my foot a few weeks ago. But I think there is value in hearing Mitch’s porky story or thinking of the wisdom of working in the woods in conditions that litter the landscape with dead branches. It reminds you that odd things happen and you need to be observant and vigilant in your approach. The times when I have gotten myself in a jam I don’t often look back and think ‘I never saw that coming’. I usually think ‘That was stupid’.

[Author]

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