Leaners

[Treeaddict]

I heard on a Facebook page that when falling a heavy head leaner:
-Face cut as deep as possible
-Make your back cut directly level with the bottom of your conventional fave cut

This is supposed to prevent chairing.

What do you say?

I bore cut and sometimes wrap a chain for belt and suspenders. A coos bay would work too.

 

[Mick Dempsey]

Face cut a heavy leaner as deep as possible?
Recipe for the tree to go before the back cut.

 

[Tuebor]

Face cut a heavy leaner as deep as possible?
Recipe for the tree to go before the back cut.

Well, it's on Facebook, so...

 

[Reach]

I heard on a Facebook page that when falling a heavy head leaner:
-Face cut as deep as possible
-Make your back cut directly level with the bottom of your conventional fave cut

This is supposed to prevent chairing.

What do you say?

I bore cut and sometimes wrap a chain for belt and suspenders. A coos bay would work too.

I say bore cut. A deep face is a recipe for a pinched saw at best, or a tree failure at worst.

 

[southsoundtree]

Shallow cut.

There are names for making the holding wood a triangle, allowing faster back-cutting, while also cutting the corners off of the hinge, seperating the stress of the lean from the fibers above and below the nipped corners.


Back-cut with a strong powerhead and sharp chain without hemming and hawing, bar reaching clear across.

 

[Treeaddict]

The post sounded totally sounded back asswards to me and want against common tree sense, but, what do I know being fairly green.

I don’t think I’ve ever learned anything from Facebook. It’s just about seeing all the train wrecks and getting a good laugh. If a new climber asks serious questions I direct them to the major arborist forums (like TB) so they don’t get hurt

 

[Vicente]

Relatively shallow face cut plunge get the hinge perfect cut back from the plunge quickly, maybe put a wedge in each side to make sure it doesn't sit down on your bar, this is how I do it. maybe wrap a rope on the top if I'm worried about it barber chairing but it doesn't usually have time from my experience

 

[Jehinten]

I heard on a Facebook page that when falling a heavy head leaner:
-Face cut as deep as possible
-Make your back cut directly level with the bottom of your conventional fave cut

This is supposed to prevent chairing.

What do you say?

I bore cut and sometimes wrap a chain for belt and suspenders. A coos bay would work too.

Which way are they saying the lean is going? Logs or felling cuts?

On a slight/moderate side leaning log you can do a deeper notch at your intended lay to get it to tip without needing to wedge/pull. I wouldn't go that deep to fell a whole tree.

Forward lean, use a shallow notch. A deep notch would pinch

Back lean, you can go deeper, but unless you have a pull rope supporting the tree it's possible for it to go over opposite of the lay.


Practice all things low and slow. Sometimes this means on saplings at ground level.


As for backcuts, I usually aim for the apex of the notch unless in a woods area and I expect the top to hit other trees. Then I'll raise my back cut 1-2 inches (depends on the size of the tree) to help prevent it from pushing backwards off of the stump. I don't do this often as I'm not in woods often.

 

[ghostice]

Shallow face cut with Humbolt or face wider than 90 deg to get the hinge to hold longer on the way down, plunge cut setting up the hinge width first, then clean to the back of the stem to a triangle as mentioned (bigger tree) or a good solid peg (smaller tree). Size depends on species (some prone to barberchair more than others) and condition of the wood (if the least bit rotten this whole thing gets dicey in my book) and bark thickness. One thing not mentioned is when cutting the final release cut on the backside, I make sure to keep the saw cutting a bit lower than the plunge cut - that usually avoids the tree taking your saw with it when it goes. Cut fast and depart the scene at 45 deg angle - feet don't fail me now. Longer bar, more better in my book too. Barberchair has killed many. Facebook life lessons are often misguided. My two cents more or less as they say in real estate contracts. Stay safe.

 

[flushcut]

I wonder how many FB posts or “advise” has gotten somebody hurt or killed.?

 

[southsoundtree]

I shave bark off the rear of the tree to help accurately judge the strap thickness and see that the wood is solid in the strap.

 

[colb]

I sometimes deepen my face cut if the lean is ambiguous, but it's really contextual. I'd never depend on that as my sole technique unless there were no consequences if it went wrong. I'm thinking of a 50+" diameter 25-30' pine spar that I dropped a couple years ago where I could not tell the direction of lean, so I cut well past halfway and used large wedges on the abundance of remaining kerf real estate. The residence was out of reach and it would have hit the road if I'd been wrong. Worked out according to plan...

 

[Treeaddict]

Re: Which way are they saying the lean is going? Logs or felling cuts?

This was a head leaner situation- falling into the lean. Lean was approximately 25* from vertical and was the whole tree.

 

[Jehinten]

Re: Which way are they saying the lean is going? Logs or felling cuts?

This was a head leaner situation- falling into the lean. Lean was approximately 25* from vertical and was the whole tree.

Shallow notch and plunge cut/ trigger gets my vote

 

[27RMT0N]

I had a good one today, a doug fir over 100' tall that had partially uprooted maybe 20 years ago, then the top corrected and kept growing. Massive leverage and tension. In many cases, or most, I do a shallow face and bore-cut like most people agree with here, but not in this situation.

Now this was 'in the woods' so I had space to make a mess, but it is an area being cleaned up, leaning towards a road, and as just so happened, their army 6x6 dump truck broke down literally a few degrees away from the natural lean of the tree. I asked it we could pull it out of the way with the excavator that was near by, but its air brakes were locked and that wasn't going to work, so I had to make due.

I'd considered a bore-cut, but knew that since I was trying to bend this thing about 25* from where it naturally wanted to go, if I made anything like a normal, straight-across hinge, it would break the tension side and hang up in the other big firs or hit the truck, either itself or with colleterial damage. Also, being partially uprooted for so long, core-rot was likely. So I made a fairly normal depth face for firs out here, a wide angle one, then started in on an intentionally uneven hinge from the compression side as my pivot point and intending to leave the tension side being much, much wider. The cut-height is pretty even here, it just looks weird given the absurd width of the tension side of the hinge and wood that tore out. Of course things happened very quickly, but I saw the tree start to move and swing where I wanted, so right away I got the hell out of there. It folded exactly where I wanted, well off its lean and well away from the truck, that light-filled spot in the last photo is where it landed. In the closeup you can see the discoloration (early-ish decay) and brittleness of the wood, and the super fat tension side of the hinge that actually had fiber to hold on and let it swing as needed. Hope that makes sense.

(and every tree and situation are different, we all know that)