Blinky Wrote:
If you would simply accept that and recognize that you're one of us, not our superior, all this drama would just go away and I'd have to find another way to expend my energy... which i will gladly do.
I take this as another olive branch you're throwing out Chip..I appreciate it ... but there is no reconciliation without truth..
I've been posting vids for near 2 years now, and didn’t start this with the attitude that I was somehow better than everyone else.. I just got bored all the youtube vids…man cuts branch... branch falls to ground.
I come off as arrogant because of the way I respond to the feedback I get on these videos.. If I had gotten "nice vid.. good thinking .. nice cuts.. no big deal, its only tree work".. I'd have been fine with that..
But that is far from the way things went down... And anyone that hasn't been around long enough to know the history, I'd appreciate it if you looked into it a little before you make up some story based on what you read here lately.. Just go back to mid 2009 and read the threads I started in the video forum..
I posted video after video of true excellence and you guys got it all wrong.. Look at the first vids of Pat climbing those big tulips.. That is probably the best example of expertise and co-ordination between climber and ground man in how the cuts were made and ropes were run.. and what happens.. everyone freaked out, about the rotation of those big pieces.. Does no one know that rotation does not cause shock load? On the very same video, I purposely post a close up of Pat bypassing his face cuts, causing an unintentional dutchman, then because the hinge is seized from the bad face, he has to reach up and push with one hand as he finishes the cut... That is extremely dangerous technique and totally unnecessary if the face is cut properly (Pat gets away with it because he is such a big strong guy, and doesn't seem to think its a problem when I suggest otherwise)... and no one makes mention of it... Clear close up of bypass cuts on his face and not one word about it from the peanut gallery! And all this talk about how the pieces were cut too big, when that was the whole point of the video, to show that you can rig big for production when its done right..
Then onto the "near balance point rigging thread".. This is a extremely useful rigging principle that Chisholm tries to teach in his classes.. I made a gorgeous video, showing that principle in action, swinging these major limbs around etc.. and what happens.. I have to explain the principle over and over again with almost no back up from the crowd.. It was like beating my head against a brick wall…
And it just got worse from there..
I showed vids of me taking monster tops out from the hooks, and everyone freaked out (AND I MEAN EVERYONE).. I AM a master of that cut.. I have that dialed in.. Now if I had heard.. good cut, not a good idea for novices etc... or even some intelligent questions, then I wouldn't have gotten defensive and called it like I see it, which is anyone that thinks that cut is more dangerous than climbing and rigging a tree, does not have the mastery of the technique needed to proceed confidently. I DO.. I understand perfectly what can and can't be done, and how to do it..
No one said I was demonstrating mediocre skills.. No no.. they all said I was a crazy, reckless, suicidal maniac.. Once again I generously tried to explain all the principles involved needed to do the job safely, and was met with hateful insults.. At that point I have no choice, but to consider myself superior in skill, knowledge and experience to those that could not conceive that this work could be done safely..
Then I show an unconventional notch that works perfectly, and once again everyone freaks out.. Showing again their lack of knowledge/experience and their rigid thinking.. they are in the box..
Then falling a huge back leaning silver maple lead, that no one in my area would have ever considered doing without a crane, and that gets called all kinds of names..
I show an great example of advanced rigging, taking huge oak limbs with an undersized bucket, controlling the shock loads by using near balance rigging, and swinging the tops out to brush past and sometimes through adjacent trees, doing so little damage.. and no one discussed the rigging.. only the two little branches in the adjacent maple that were damaged.. And Holly is all over that, calling me a hack etc.. Two little branches in maples that hadn’t been pruned in 20 years.. made the cuts with a handsaw to clean them up.. Would have taken 50-100x that out if I’d been hired to prune the trees.. It was ridiculous.. NO ONE could see anything of value in that video because it was so far outside their experience. All they saw were monster limbs swinging around and it scared them. Once again, I have that rigging totally dialed in, leaving me no choice but to once again believe that my skills and knowledge far exceeds those of my critics..
You even said there was nothing “pushing the limits” in that video.. When I was bombing big tops out, just brushing but not damaging the understory trees, and rigging out 500 lb oak limbs from an undersized bucket without shock loading.. How do you expect me to think about a person that makes such statements?
And I kept getting called lucky.. lucky, lucky, lucky.. Over and over and over again.. EXCEPT.. ITS NOT LUCK…. How do expect me to think about people that think its luck, or that say my work “scares them”? The only way I can think about that is that they don’t have the knowledge to even recognize the level of work that is being shown in these videos..
And it doesn’t stop… telling me not to pull with equipment, nor use a skid steer… advocating the use of static rigging lines. And you can’t seem to get the benefits of the step cut etc… you all are insane IMO… I do great tree work, and make more money with less effort than most of you could even imagine.. and you all would rather make fun of me than try to learn something… And that’s fine.. I actually think a lot of that is funny too.
But there’s a price to pay for that… you are missing out on a great opportunity.. you want to stay in your box. I’ve seen it time and time again on these boards.. Everyone gets all cozy in their little cliques and no one can deal with anything out of the box, so they attack it. Did you ever hear Shigo talk about how his work was first received when he presented it early on. They all but threw him out of Germany, and he was hated in the US. But he continued because he knew he was right. And I know I AM right too, no matter how many people or “experts” say different.
There is a long history on arb boards of posters that knew what they were talking about, introducing advanced and complex techniques and concepts, getting heavily criticized by a clique of small minded lesser skilled individuals. DO you remember the "dent on hinging" thread, started by spidy back at AS?.. he had it dialed in and caught a bunch of crap from everyone but Roger and me. Do you know Jack, he goes by hotsaws101 on youtube. He's a badass west coast tree faller. He got run off AS by the ignorant abusive posters there... And look at what they are saying about Big John.. John Grier is one of the top production arborists that ever walked the planet, and the climbing techniques he showed in this video are just a small example of what he can do. And how was that received. He was criticized by people that couldn’t hold a candle to him, and no one had enough sense enough to say different.
So you think I AM an egomaniac huh? IMO I AM just telling the truth. You think I AM self serving, self-promoting, and need approval. I think it’s extremely generous of me to take the time and energy to make these videos, and put up with the ignorance and abuse of the mass of small minded “peers”, knowing that it at least spurs thinking and debate, and hoping that one day the tide will shift and people will open their minds enough to get outside of their boxes.
Also FYI Chip.. I haven’t given away all my secrets.. I AM well aware that many of my “peers” (read that competitors) are reading and watching here and elsewhere. This is an insanely competitive market, where prices have been driven down radically by drug dealers washing money through the tree business… People that have the best equipment (drug) money can buy… Between that and dealing with lyme/chronic fatigue since ’98, I have to preserve my competitive advantages whenever possible.. So I AM careful not to show the stuff that just anyone can look at and make a quantum leap in their productivity.
I think by now, YOU should know better.. We’ve been down this road before. You want to throw an olive branch out.. That’s fine.. start by telling the truth..
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I don't hate you, I think you're amusing.
You scenarios aren't really complex. I'll grant that what you planned to happen is what happened. Doing the back leaner that way you did it was good thinking... except for that whole shackle/skid steer thing. And that's what everybody else took exception to as well. There's good reason for it. Rope has limited capacity. Bend it sharply and then tension it and you've diminished that capacity very significantly. Anyone who's taken some time to learn about rope and it's application knows that. Add to that the fact that you don't know how much tension you're applying and you risk pushing it to failure. That's not disputed by anyone, it's common knowledge across all roped disciplines. So in that sense, you WERE lucky.
I understand that if you do something enough you develop a sense of whether you're pushing too far or not... but you can't put that in a how-to video and expect people to accept it as a formal method. It's a personal choice and a personal risk... not a generally accepted practice.
Tree guys do creative rigging all the time, at times it gets very complex but I think most agree that simple is much better and usually more productive. The current trend is to do less and less damage to the landscape and other plants, so watching a redbud or a dogwood get impact pruned immediately raises questions.
What your videos have depicted aren't unusual, lot's of us have pulled leaners back and let them fall sideways mid-pull to get them into a tight LZ... it's just tree work, it's intermediate to advanced but it's not cutting edge... it's not even new.
If you posted the videos as just videos of your work rather than instructional and accepted criticism calmly I think you would be received very differently. We don't want to have your methods shoved at us as though you're the tree god and we're just armchair tree hacks. We know what we're doing, you aren't the only one, we all put wood on the ground daily.
If you would simply accept that and recognize that you're one of us, not our superior, all this drama would just go away and I'd have to find another way to expend my energy... which i will gladly do.
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