Steve Connally
Been here much more than a while
- Location
- Suffolk, Virginia
Hey there. As requested by Levi I am carrying this thread over from work photos concerning the oak I did. So Levi I've tried to carry over and draw some diagrams. Yeah I suck at it.
So as to orient us to the tree lets refer to one side of the fork as crane side and the other as neighbor side. Crane right.
The split was awful and as I stated in work photos it was getting worse daily. The split went all the way down to the old pruning cut with the suckers circled in photo one. The crack was open on the crane side though not as much on the neighbor side. That lead me to think more holding wood on the neighbor side and more weakness on the crane side. In my mind the tree had found some sort of balance between rot, holding wood, and gravity. The wind was from the west (straight ahead in the picture) so the crack was being pushed open and closed in a fairly straight line. Had the wind been from north or south I think I would have seen one side open more than the other in a rocking motion.
Picture 2 is what I think was going on. It found balance. All forces aiming in the same direction, down, based on balance of the limbs being fairly same in size.
Picture 3 is what I thought could happen with the removal of the crane side all at once. I figured it was possible the "distributed weight" being fairly equal would be upset with the crane side removed thus creating a sort of lean or twisting motion from gravity alone heading to the neighbor side. Lind of like felling a codom trunk. It'll fall straight with both leads but remove one and it'll want to fall heavy on the remaining side due to loss of balance. My thought was instead of weight being distributed evenly its now weighted left with no "ballast" and could the rotten wood on the right provide tension wood against the failure?
Again, remember we are only taking about that forked lead, no the entire tree. The rest of the tree was not my concern. My concern was upsetting whatever hostile situation the forces of nature had created. I did not want to be the trigger of this thing crushing at least one house and possibly 2 taking me with it or me getting fragged by an exploding chain.
I understand based on the simple fact of removing any weight, the lead is less likely to fail. But I kept asking myself what should I do to keep this thing as balanced as possible since it only seemed a little grumpy in that position.
I'm all ears. Like I've maintained, I am no expert at the sketchy stuff much less everything else. This was a learning experience. Fortunately or unfortunately even the next one like this won't be the same as it's all based on unknowns like decay and things I cant see inside the tree.
Now, I wanna learn here so no worries about hurt feelings. Lets get something out of this discussion!!!
So as to orient us to the tree lets refer to one side of the fork as crane side and the other as neighbor side. Crane right.
The split was awful and as I stated in work photos it was getting worse daily. The split went all the way down to the old pruning cut with the suckers circled in photo one. The crack was open on the crane side though not as much on the neighbor side. That lead me to think more holding wood on the neighbor side and more weakness on the crane side. In my mind the tree had found some sort of balance between rot, holding wood, and gravity. The wind was from the west (straight ahead in the picture) so the crack was being pushed open and closed in a fairly straight line. Had the wind been from north or south I think I would have seen one side open more than the other in a rocking motion.
Picture 2 is what I think was going on. It found balance. All forces aiming in the same direction, down, based on balance of the limbs being fairly same in size.
Picture 3 is what I thought could happen with the removal of the crane side all at once. I figured it was possible the "distributed weight" being fairly equal would be upset with the crane side removed thus creating a sort of lean or twisting motion from gravity alone heading to the neighbor side. Lind of like felling a codom trunk. It'll fall straight with both leads but remove one and it'll want to fall heavy on the remaining side due to loss of balance. My thought was instead of weight being distributed evenly its now weighted left with no "ballast" and could the rotten wood on the right provide tension wood against the failure?
Again, remember we are only taking about that forked lead, no the entire tree. The rest of the tree was not my concern. My concern was upsetting whatever hostile situation the forces of nature had created. I did not want to be the trigger of this thing crushing at least one house and possibly 2 taking me with it or me getting fragged by an exploding chain.
I understand based on the simple fact of removing any weight, the lead is less likely to fail. But I kept asking myself what should I do to keep this thing as balanced as possible since it only seemed a little grumpy in that position.
I'm all ears. Like I've maintained, I am no expert at the sketchy stuff much less everything else. This was a learning experience. Fortunately or unfortunately even the next one like this won't be the same as it's all based on unknowns like decay and things I cant see inside the tree.
Now, I wanna learn here so no worries about hurt feelings. Lets get something out of this discussion!!!
