Felling a hung up tree
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In part 3 David Rossney makes chainsaw cuts to a tree so it falls where he wants. He also deals with a common problem, a “hung up” tree, where the surrounding trees stop it falling as planned.
Transcript
David Rossney: That's good. All right, spot on.
OK. So, this is the first part of the felling process, and I've put in what we call a sink, or a directional notch, or a cheese cut, or a gob cut, or, I can't think, there are about a dozen names.
What it's doing is it's giving me a nice opening, which when the tree starts to move later on, will close up and allow the tree to fall forward. And it's also giving me a nice straight line at the back, and that's one that I'm going to line up on when I do my back cuts so I get a nice parallel hinge.
As I said before, it's the wood that you don't cut that gives you the control over the felling operation. I've aimed this opening to tie with the nearest thing I've got to a gap in the sky to put this tree through, so that I can actually get the tree to rest at an angle and not be sitting upright.
But from now on, I think I'm going to have to get you into a safer place than you're at, at the moment. [laughs] OK.
[sound of chainsaw]
OK. It's balancing on some branches at the moment, but it's resting. OK, so this is what we would call a hung up tree. It hasn't finished falling to the floor, and now we've got two options. We either have to twist it to dislodge it, or we have to move the bottom bit of it outwards until the top can come free and fall to the floor.
But, at the moment what's happening is that the hinge is doing its job of just keeping the tree moving forwards and backwards. So, what I'm going to do next is I'm going to adjust the shape of the hinge. So, instead of it being a bar shape, I'm going to try to make it into a peg shape.
That will allow me to do some twisting, and hopefully that will be enough to get the tree to rest against the group over there. Then I'll have a much better chance of scooting the back out.
[sound of chainsaw]
OK. So, let's see about this now. All right. Try it the other way. Can't give up.
[sound of tree falling]
All right. That's about half way down, so it's slowly getting there. I'll just make a severing cut here to get the tree off the stool.
[sound of chainsaw]
Now, this is a bit like pulling teeth really. Eventually it goes. OK, hooray. [laughs] Good.
What always surprises me even now is that you can do that; you can pull a tree all the way down through the canopy amongst other trees. And when you look back, you think, "How did that get there? There's no gap." There's usually very little damage to the other trees.
There's a little gap here next to this ash tree, and to my eyes, that's looking much healthier already. So, job done. [laughs] OK.
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41 comments so far
brianmsee
June 6, 2011
Baby trees.Cute!
kenfo0
June 19, 2011
@etipsh stop your ching-chong china talk and get me some fried rice. NO, not flyed lice!
kenfo0
June 19, 2011
That was just silly.
PInk77W1
September 4, 2011
@kenfo0 way worse than that
PInk77W1
September 4, 2011
i have been cutting trees for over 25yrs… never seen anything so silly. Was he trying to save the log? He lost me. could of had that thing on the ground in seconds with a 45degree cut at about chest height.
seizetheweakened
October 29, 2011
what a cute little saw
seizetheweakened
October 29, 2011
I think I’ll stick with my plastic wedges because they don’t allow the tree to rock back the wrong way like this ‘felling lever’ does
tahoeskibum7
November 10, 2011
why didn’t he step cut it?
MaxSafeheaD
November 23, 2011
Irritating camera directional work but otherwise good video.
huuhko
November 30, 2011
buy docma winch–it has power!