In the latest episode of “Idiots with chainsaws”

@rico "When I am taking bigs tops I usually open up the intersection of the undercut to keep it from closing for as long as possible, and if i am really worried i will use a modified coos bay." Sorry, whats a coos bay?
 
Steve Connally said:
@rico "When I am taking bigs tops I usually open up the intersection of the undercut to keep it from closing for as long as possible, and if i am really worried i will use a modified coos bay." Sorry, whats a coos bay?
Click to expand...
Steve,
Coos Bay is where you turn your hinge 90 degrees from where you normally would put it. You cut the sides deep as possible and then go at the hinge quickly. Good for hard leaners to prevent barber chairing but you really have no directional control. It goes where it was leaning. There might be some fellows who can do some control work with that cut, but not me. Good idea to make your first cuts on the sides near the compression side so you don't get your bar pinched, then move back to the tension side. In other words, you are running your hinge in the direction of the fall. The hinge holds it in place because you have tension wood intact until you zip down through it on the final cut.
If Rico has a different take on a coo bay I would be interested in hearing his version
I use my version quite a bit in blow down areas.
 
rico said:
It's really hard to tell, but it kinda looks like he undershot his back cut by multiple inches. If so, this top had no choice but to do what it did.
Click to expand...
100%.. he was way low on that back cut, only after putting in a very shallow notch, and then he stopped in the middle of the cut... Recipe for disaster. He hit the trifecta... Beyond bad skills.. that's doing everything wrong that you possibly could do wrong. Hope he found something else to do for a living.

sketchy top no matter what, but he clearly gave it no chance to do anything else... but hey... that's what angels & funeral directors are for... Looks like the angels beat the funeral directors out on this one.

And that topping cut could have easily been made safely with the right cut, but why take a chance?.. wrap that bad boy up with a wratchet strap or even multiple wraps with a short piece of accessory line. I wouldn't have used one, but if you're not 100% confident in your skills, that's the fool-proof technique.

Did you see this one? @rico I only came up with the idea because I was trying to induce a BC with a pull line and the codom behind it kept it from splitting..


and here is the fall:

 
I was working on a vista view job. Last 2 trees of the day were shagbark hickory tall forward leaners, first one I got away with, second one... well, let's just say it wasn't intentional. Scared me. Learned the coos bay and several other techniques after that.
 
Daniel said:
100%.. he was way low on that back cut, only after putting in a very shallow notch, and then he stopped in the middle of the cut... Recipe for disaster. He hit the trifecta... Beyond bad skills.. that's doing everything wrong that you possibly could do wrong. Hope he found something else to do for a living.

sketchy top no matter what, but he clearly gave it no chance to do anything else... but hey... that's what angels & funeral directors are for... Looks like the angels beat the funeral directors out on this one.

And that topping cut could have easily been made safely with the right cut, but why take a chance?.. wrap that bad boy up with a wratchet strap or even multiple wraps with a short piece of accessory line. I wouldn't have used one, but if you're not 100% confident in your skills, that's the fool-proof technique.

Did you see this one? @rico I only came up with the idea because I was trying to induce a BC with a pull line and the codom behind it kept it from splitting..


and here is the fall:

Click to expand...
A very shallow undercut, a severely undershot backcut, and a fella who is taking his sweet time on his backcut. No wonder things turned out as they did. Duh.
 
This was a modified coos bay... 4' tree with a 24" bar..... used a kerf cut for the undercut instead of standard face cut. I easily could have kept on cutting and avoided this BC. But thought it would be good to capture this one on video instead. This is one of the biggest BCs ever shown on video. I thought the coos bay would have been enough to avoid the BC here. I just didn't think there were enough fibers attaching the stump to the tree to cause it to split. as it tuerned out, the BC saved a lot of time and energy on the clean up, which was all completed with a 24" bar.

 
Generally a modified Coos Bay involves using an undercut then proceeding as described in the Fundamentals.

Not sure what technique the nutty professor employed in his vid, but I will say that I respect Daniel for his endless quest to figure this stuff out, and his willingness to experiment. He‘s the Super Dave Osborne of the tree world.
 
Last edited:
Daniel said:

This was was published in 2009.. to my knowledge this video was the first ever published showing big tops..
Click to expand...
So you were the first cutter on the internet to post big tops, to your knowledge.

Wow!!

Nothing says narcissistic, self-centered, and nutty like being the first on the internet to do something, ever, to your knowledge.


Noteworthy, you didn't insult anyone in that post.
 
Tom Dunlap said:
???

Did I miss a segment?

I see a tree felled using only a plain ol' back cut. Then the feller stands right next to it while it barberchairs.

This had a good ending...no one was hurt.

Is 'modified Coos Bay' or MCB a high falootin' name for Make Back Cut or MBC?
Click to expand...

That's a 4' diamter tree Tom. cut is made with a 24" bar... no notch.. do the math....

I say right on the video that I used a modified coos bay...

You can see the back cut open up a couple inches... there had to be some room to move... that's not going to happen with a straight back cut....
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Kask Stihl NORTHEASTERN Arborists Wesspur TreeStuff.com Teufelberger Westminster X-Rigging Teufelberger
Back
Top Bottom