hickory hanger: pulling with a skid steer

[Daniel]

Tom D is the all around most knowledgeable arborist I know.
Though I consider him a personal resource, we do have a major difference of opinion on the subject of pulling with machines. Tom called it “wrong”.. I do it all the time and will never go back. There are very specific safety considerations that must be observed. That’s been covered already.

Here is one scenario where pulling with a skid steer allowed me to get this top down more safely than pulling by hand w/ MA, knowing I could leave a very thick hinge, so that there was no way the top would go before I descended, without worrying about the possibility that the hinge would be too thick to trip with the available pull.

Other benefits here would include less exposure to deer ticks, less fatigue and less time, which could help prevent hurrying at the end of the day, as well as less gear to handle and keep track of. They may seem small, but it all adds up over time.

This is just one small example of what can be done when pulling with machines.. There are a lot of other benefits, both in safety and efficiency. There is a thread at the TH where the boys are telling stories of groundies getting hurt and killed when the pull line takes off with them attached. Happens more than you'd think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8wZHaB5J6o

 

[Worthaug]

It would seem that maybe you would go through more bull/rigging/pull lines than the average climbing arborist company would considering you use a machine to pull/lift/etc.
Is this true? What are your favorite lines? What lasts? Have you ever had a line snap and recoil into the operator or at least the bucket?

Using the machine for this top made a lot of sense, it seems higher tie ins are only available on jobs you don't need them on but when you do need one it isn't there.

 

[Mr_Ed]

The Dunning–Kruger effect
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.

The hypothesized phenomenon was tested in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, then both of Cornell University. Kruger and Dunning noted earlier studies suggesting that ignorance of standards of performance is behind a great deal of incompetence. This pattern was seen in studies of skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis.
Kruger and Dunning proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:
tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they can be trained to substantially improve.
Dunning has since drawn an analogy ("the anosognosia of everyday life") to a condition in which a person who suffers a physical disability due to brain injury seems unaware of or denies the existence of the disability, even for dramatic impairments such as blindness or paralysis

 

[Tony]

Fascinating!!

However, next time you quote a source, please cite it appropriately. The evil of sophistry is it can lead to more sophistry! Even if it is not intended.

Tony

 

[Mr_Ed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

 

[Tony]

Thanx, I'm a stickler for academic detail

A very interesting article.

Tony