How NOT to fell a tree

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A new technique in lumberjacking! At least it didn't land on the fence! Evidence that we need federal chainsaw controls!
a175791.jpg
 
That may be the worst evidence and method I have ever seen. Probly felled 300+ trees in my lifetime - they all went where I wanted them to, but not with cuts like that - lucky !
 
Well, I've cut hundreds of trees and only one went other than what I planned. It just happened to fall on my house. It appeared to be growing straight up and I notched it on the opposite side and when I cut it on the other side was an oh shoot moment. It did manage to get my teenage son out of bed though. It landed very near his room. Although the tree was more than a foot in diameter it did little damage to the house. One limb went through the roof and barely the living room ceiling and that was the extent of the damage. I pretty much fixed the damage in less than half a day.
 

Sometimes there is just too much lean, too much limb or too much rot to make it go the way you want without outside help. When I started with a tree service the experienced guys were always advising, "don't cut the corner!!"
 
Very, very impressive! But, all that skill and careful planning could have been negated by one little unexpected breeze.
 
Getting them to fall where you want requires experience (lot of errors), smarts (more than most have), and a bit of good fortune. :wink:
 
(quoted from post at 21:45:29 10/20/17) .
A new technique in lumberjacking! At least it didn't land on the fence! Evidence that we need federal chainsaw controls!
a175791.jpg


I don't know what the guy running the saw was trying to do, but that is about the worst example of how to cut a tree I've seen. I'm dumber than a box of rocks, but even I never tried that style of backcut or notch or whatever he was trying to do.
 
(quoted from post at 05:58:14 10/21/17)
(quoted from post at 21:45:29 10/20/17) .
A new technique in lumberjacking! At least it didn't land on the fence! Evidence that we need federal chainsaw controls!
a175791.jpg


I don't know what the guy running the saw was trying to do, but that is about the worst example of how to cut a tree I've seen. I'm dumber than a box of rocks, but even I never tried that style of backcut or notch or whatever he was trying to do.

It apparently worked. It didn't land on the fence.
 
Hard to say what the "feller" was thinking and doing to end up with that kind of result. It looks like it fell 90 degrees from the direction of the cut, which to me looks backwards with the wedge still in place. Whomever certainly did not make any attempt at a typical face cut or back cut. That sure is dangerous. I can recall at least one where I made the face and back cut 180 degrees off, either misreading the tree or what have you, pinching a bar etc. Anyone who fells trees will misjudge or miscalculate on occasion, + the unknowns can change things regardless. I've got a bunch of felling to do this fall/winter and a few are head scratcher's but nothing that cannot be done by taking my time and thinking it out. There are also those you just walk away from, not worth the risk.
 
The chain saw comes with a book on how to make safe cuts. I don't think they had any control over which way that thing fell. Never saw that before.
 
I think we may be mis-reading that. I wish we could see more of the picture. There is a chain wrapped around the tree. He may have pulled it off the stump and got it to land exactly how he planned.
 


This picture is worth a lot of words, but I think that there could be a lot more to the story that could give it a whole different meaning. The tree is apparently dead, so a conventional hinge cut is not at all reliable.There may be a lot of branches dropped off it, there may be enough bittersweet between it and neighboring trees that it was cut and would not fall so they had to pull it over with the chain that is in the pic. Lots of possibilities.
 
Well, I don't know what his thinking was (if any!) but the tree is now hung up in a couple of other trees which are, for the present, keeping it from falling on the road. All in all it has real potential to be a "widow maker." It is almost on the property line so I don't know whose problem it actually is.
 

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