Understood! Go make some sawdust.... we will be here when you're done
Made lots of sawdust. During falling trees day after day I found myself entertained thinking of this thread, thanks. Boundaries for the well intended contributions will hone the relevance of certain points.
I say that wood fibre characteristics vary in the coupe of the alpine ash (E. delegatensis) I am currently falling. They vary between my coupes also. I say in strong terms that there is great variation within the various hard woods indigenous to my area of logging and further across low altitude species in Victoria. Softwood trees and introduced species have different characteristics again, in some cases different to their country of origin.
Making statements regarding methods that rely on consistent fibres and characteristics to a world stage is a folly.
The readers of this information may in fact have little intuition or feel for tree falling but dangerously take a chunk of information in its raw form. Some of the information is hazardous if applied to my work place. Novelty methods of falling often are very limited in application in general tree work. Fallers are better equipped to consolidate sound core skills first.
There is no doubt that commercial fallers in high production work have something to offer these discussions. An arborist just doesn't do the volume of trees however they do work in the variety often not available to a commercial faller.
Read quite a few posts but not all so forgive me if I missed a vital point.
I use a tapered hinge regularly during my normal course of work. These are full size trees with "free grain" cutting to compression side of the hinge through is not an option and even if I got away with before my saw jammed that the tree would crush down on the compression side and create a further lean or allow it to break off to its natural lean.
I do put a pronounced step to the back cut this seems to enable quite some movement toward the intended direction before the hinge commences to fail. I note a reference to a German finding that it doesn't assist the hinge during a side lean. I need to know the wood, fibre type, step height etc before I accept that information. Looking at the recorded results and methodology is essential. Accepting this as hearsay is not good enough.
Falling trees with the fascination of the hinge holding on for longer may have been devised for a particular situation but in general it is a narrow focus to have. Falling commercially, clean separation from the stump is what we are trying to achieve. When I am felling sections up a tree and the section is small or light I tend to open the scarf up a bit.
As a general concept to retain the top closer to the stump this could be a dangerous practice. If we consider the concept of encouraging the fibres to hang on and we apply this to species renown to tear down we may in fact be creating a serious safety issue for the climber. I would consider other options if possible and encourage those acquiring experience the same.
I saw also a method to back release a heavy leaner with the notion that the saw couldn't be taken with the tree. This is quite wrong if it were to be applied in my place of work. The free grained timber I fall here will try to take that saw nearly every time. Despite high speed, gentle cutting the rupturing fibres upon the explosive departure will separate along the chain and bend it if not take the saw. It might work for some in their places of work but expect some well founded disagreement on the world stage of tree buzz.
Regards
Graeme
