Today....

[davidwyby]

Volunteer mesquite, growing like a weed. Only 3-4 years old. Hacked it to keep the tweakers away.

 

[davidwyby]

Cut these down sat. Went and winched the logs up on the trailer today. Unloaded them at the shop and loaded Euc FW to sell to guy I’m also cutting down a dead Euc for. The mesquite will probably get sold as decorative slices or “cookies”. Maybe salami cut into charcuterie boards, etc.

Saturday customer gave me this old 8lb maul, rehung it for my son.

 

[davidwyby]

The dreaded knot in the hinge

Didn’t matter in this case

Had to wedge the thick hinge pretty good…might have made it thinner but glad I didn’t.

Recently dead ironbark…brittle

 

[davidwyby]

I think we were talking about crippling limbs the other day.

 

[davidwyby]

Trimmed the seed thingies out of my palms. Discovered burder scene

 

[davidwyby]

So….50’ lift wasn’t enough to small
piece this thing down from the top without getting the power lines. So, I took off the back limbs I could reach, left two big ones on the front, and topped it or gave it an extreme high stump. Made myself a bit of a widowmaker on the tree it landed on, but the sun was setting and I wanted to get the lift work done today so I could bring the truck trailer and forklift to load it all tomorrow. Probably could have felled the whole tree, but it would have bounced off the others a bit.

 

[Neill]

Got some older deadwood out of this mature white oak. Foothold stubs removed on the return.

 

[davidwyby]

 

[davidwyby]

Walkabout in the salt cedar forest to avoid the wind.

Also some test cuts in hopes of improving hinge holding time. Post on AS, ole fella from down under does long gap faces with the back cut in the middle of them, seems to work. These trees are brittle like cotton wood, seemed to hinge better than I remember, despite a long summer with no monsoon rains….axe handle/wedge dried up and re-sunk.

 

[oceans]

Walkabout in the salt cedar forest to avoid the wind.

Also some test cuts in hopes of improving hinge holding time. Post on AS, ole fella from down under does long gap faces with the back cut in the middle of them, seems to work. These trees are brittle like cotton wood, seemed to hinge better than I remember, despite a long summer with no monsoon rains….axe handle/wedge dried up and re-sunk. View attachment 96082View attachment 96083View attachment 96084View attachment 96085View attachment 96086

Wouldn’t an open face 90+ degree hinge do the same?

I still have my grandfather’s old axe. He used it his whole life then gave it to my dad. My dad replaced the handle and used it his whole life. When my dad gave it to me, I had to replace the head…
…but I still have my grandfather’s old axe!

 

[Matias]

Wouldn’t an open face 90+ degree hinge do the same?

I still have my grandfather’s old axe. He used it his whole life then gave it to my dad. My dad replaced the handle and used it his whole life. When my dad gave it to me, I had to replace the head…
…but I still have my grandfather’s old axe!

The Axe of Theseus

 

[davidwyby]

Wouldn’t an open face 90+ degree hinge do the same?

I still have my grandfather’s old axe. He used it his whole life then gave it to my dad. My dad replaced the handle and used it his whole life. When my dad gave it to me, I had to replace the head…
…but I still have my grandfather’s old axe!

Apparently not. A hinge partly bends but in order to bend, the front must compress and the back stretch. Making the hinge longer provides more material to compress and stretch. More testing needed but my initials confirm his...

Does anyone else "Long Hinge" difficult trees ?

When the timber is old or brittle, or the tree has to fall against it's weight/wind/lean, and it has to fall with the hinge attached at least 1/3 it's fall arc = I use a "long hinge". 20 years in the industry without formal training. My work is in domestic situations where you are removing trees...

www.arboristsite.com

 

[davidwyby]

The Forest Where the Only Things Alive are the Trees

there’s this place where a wash in the desert runs into farmland. The Salt Cedars/Athel Pines (Tamarix aphylla) that were planted as a windbreak have spread into a little forest in the desert. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarix

opeforum.com

 

[oceans]

Apparently not. A hinge partly bends but in order to bend, the front must compress and the back stretch. Making the hinge longer provides more material to compress and stretch. More testing needed but my initials confirm his...

Does anyone else "Long Hinge" difficult trees ?

When the timber is old or brittle, or the tree has to fall against it's weight/wind/lean, and it has to fall with the hinge attached at least 1/3 it's fall arc = I use a "long hinge". 20 years in the industry without formal training. My work is in domestic situations where you are removing trees...

www.arboristsite.com

Your description makes sense. If the technique does provide longer holding time, the question becomes how to design the face to close and break it desired to do so.

 

[davidwyby]

Your description makes sense. If the technique does provide longer holding time, the question becomes how to design the face to close and break it desired to do so.

The wood in question (mesquite, eucalyptus, Tamarix aphylla, often dead) is so brittle that it will break without the face closing.

 

[27RMT0N]

Taking down a cluster of small dead alders.

Edit: Doing the whole job with the Husky 542i XP and love it.

 

[davidwyby]

Deep faces for spars, gap for brittle, not that it helped much. Maybe if I had made the face a square, parallel block face and back cut into the center of it….but goal was a low stump.


Small post on compression side



Love my chokers

Winched on tilt trailer


Madrone is close to Euc right?

 

[Muggs]

Controlled speedline over a pool, trimming a big basswood. Leaving for Baltimore early in the morning, 9 hr drive...

 

[Matias]

View attachment 96120
Controlled speedline over a pool, trimming a big basswood. Leaving for Baltimore early in the morning, 9 hr drive...

I finally got to do a controlled speedline for the first time last month, and it helped the ground crew so much. They were stoked.

 

[southsoundtree]

A high redirect for the bottom end can aid speedlining (e.g. block or rigging ring at 10'-20' up on the bottom side, down to a POW or redirect, if needed).