Spidey senses tingling, but is it overreacting?

[flushcut]

I’m a little late to the party but some simple tests are to shoot a line and do a pull test and see what moves crack wise. Or bore in with your bar and check chip quality. Long small drill bit same thing look at chip quality. Sound the trunk with a smacky tool listening for hollows.
In general when my spidey sends goes off something is amiss, listen to your spidey sense. Step back, reevaluate, plan B. Every tree is different but the same, nice flop!

 

[Matias]

I’m a little late to the party but some simple tests are to shoot a line and do a pull test and see what moves crack wise. Or bore in with your bar and check chip quality. Long small drill bit same thing look at chip quality. Sound the trunk with a smacky tool listening for hollows.
In general when my spidey sends goes off something is amiss, listen to your spidey sense. Step back, reevaluate, plan B. Every tree is different but the same, nice flop!

I will bring a long drill bit to these sketchy dead trees from now on.

 

[flushcut]

Simple tools can tell you a lot about condition of a tree.

 

[Treetopflyer]

Parts of the tree for sure

 

[ATH]

Now the dissection begins.

Well done

Good observation about noise. There are lots of clues...but what do they mean?

Yeah....some of those cracks are a start of that dissection. There were certainly brittle branches there. Too brittle to climb??? I don't know, but tree is safely down and @Matias is alive and well, so I think that was a good choice.

 

[Shadowscape]

Why did you take down all those sections of fence? One was enough.

 

[Matias]

So, I made sure to take lots of good pictures of the dissection for post game analysis, and what a fucked up tree it turned out to be. There was a line of intact wood that traced up on side, where I happened to climb. The rest of the tree was full white fungus, black fungus, dry rot, mushy wet rot, and loads of hollows hidden behind sealed over cuts from 10-15 years ago. That dry rotted cracked piece with the cracks that were 1" from connecting was light as balsa wood, and was from a stem that I was on, albeit about four or five feet below that piece. Most of the unions were weak and rotten. It was like a game of Russian roulette with five bullets and one empty chamber.
Maybe I could have taken the outreaching weight off for an easier dropping of the stob, like originally planned, maybe not. I'm just glad the trunk was intact enough to make the cut accurately; I don't think I actually had but 40% of the holding wood left intact inside there.

 

[Matias]

Why did you take down all those sections of fence? One was enough.

I may have had my doubts that I could execute the cut flawlessly. I was trying to avoid even replacing a single bracket.

 

[Matias]

that outside three or four inches was breaking off in little chunks as I pounded the wedges.

 

[Shadowscape]

Looks like you made the right decision and executed it with precision.
Life is good!

 

[Bendroctanus]

Good call

 

[Bart_]

Calls into question the old adage of keeping the outer sections of your hinge because of their mechanical advantage - if the core is less rotten than the periphery. I dropped a remainder of a poplar stem once where an attempt at a wedge just went popft crumble - it was just a shell. When I was on the stem I was tied to an adjacent tree. Still pretty sketchy though. Glad it worked out for you. I learned something new.

 

[islandarb]

Awesome fell between the posts. Very nice.

 

[Mowerr]

There's always always always other options.

 

[Stumpsprouts]

I love the outcome. When I saw the first photo I was going to ask if flopping was an option.

It seems like your spidey sense is operating correctly and you can continue to rely on it to help you get home safe

 

[Matias]

I love the outcome. When I saw the first photo I was going to ask if flopping was an option.

It seems like your spidey sense is operating correctly and you can continue to rely on it to help you get home safe

I was worried about flopping it because almost all the weight looked to be loaded towards the house, and if the hinge failed, it would've been game over. The plan was to just take little chunks off the branches and work it down to a trunk that'd fit in the yard, as that's where the stems came to. The fence was not built super well, so it required more work to dismantle and reassemble than some fences. All's well that ends well though

 

[flushcut]

You can always set lines to control side lean/drift.

 

[Matias]

You can always set lines to control side lean/drift.

I did, but it still seemed sketchy

 

[Christrees]

Good job sticking with that gut feeling.. good plan for that tree.


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