Family Affair removal

CurSedVoyce

California Hillbilly
Joined
Jun 30, 2008
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41,923
Location
Near Yosemite in CA USA
So Rob's parents had pretty much spent the summer on property helping with garden harvest and providing grandchildren with hours of amusement.
We had one of our larger ponderosa pine die out and PG&E was riding our arses to let them remove it. 30 or so feet from the primaries, really no biggie. Could not be felled, but a piece of cake to piece out. We denied them reminding them we are a tree company after all and can honestly take care of our own with only a few exception.
They called most everyday. They called Rob, They called Katy. They called me. It was really getting old. So we told them we would have it handled in a couple weeks from the final call we got.
SO Rob's nieces and nephew can up to visit and see their grandparents and cousins. They also wanted to help out. The two teenagers anyway... Grandma and Grandpa wanted to film it and get some family footage for their scrap books. They had really never seen Rob and I in action except for what I post on our FB page. We gave Grandpa my nicer Cannon camera and a comm unit. Set the kids up... Talked them through it. No they did not feed the chipper BTW. I had the Go Pro on... Just a pleasant day of kind of showing some youngsters the ropes and a trade. Good times..
Enjoy.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QvSYfj5s6zU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tZwY-JY4Zw8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Those Pondos look stringy. Are the limbs fairly strong? Flexible? Don't break like vegetables? Just curious, I've never worked with one.

Cheers.
 
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  • #5
Those Pondos look stringy. Are the limbs fairly strong? Flexible? Don't break like vegetables? Just curious, I've never worked with one.

Cheers.

They are quite stringy at the collar and quite heavy when green. The collars get quite stringy from them pushing sap when they are attacked by the beetles as well. Can be a sticky mess. We had to keep making adjustments in wraps as we progressed up the tree. Tree is dryer towards the top since it dies out first.
Tree is very flexable and has great hinge wood when green. This is why you often see me cut a foot or so out from the collar and then just take the stub off. Less stringy since the fibers are more straight further out. You can limb walk them pretty well when green. Not so much when dead. Then the limbs get brittle further out.
Nice view up there!

Thanks. That pasture below me is why we really did not want the clearance crew to do the work. Hell, they broke a custys deck recent trying to bomb stuff out that should have been lifted on the last bit. That fence is on a steep seasonal creek bank. We have horses and goats down there. If they get out, we have two busy streets they can wander into. A serious liability issue. Better we do it OUR way.
 

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  • #7
They frig shit up and make a mess of it to be blunt and honest. Free is not always the best option. I let them do one here or there.
This turned into some good family time :)
 
Ha! Puttin' the Fam to work... :rockon:... all they were doin' is playing video games anyway. :lol:

Cool vids as always Stephen. What about the wood?.... Firewood chunks or logs?
 
That was really cool, Stephen, especially since you had the clan involved!

Two questions, if I may:

I couldn't quite catch it, but when you negative rigged out the top, did you drop it on a Pinto?

Second, I noticed you usually making three cuts per limb (two on a small face cut below, one as the back cut on top). These often seemed to pinch shut without coming off cleanly, and you had to go back and sever them. Was that on purpose?

I only ask because I watched the below video of Reg's (starting at about 3:16) where he just powers through in one fell swoop. Obviously, some of the difference is in the characteristics of the two saw motors, but I'm also wondering about the choice of technique...

Thanks for sharing!

https://youtu.be/CMED3nhemUc?t=3m16s

(Butch, I couldn't get the video embed to work...again!)
 
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  • #11
If the tree were a tad more crispy, I could have powered through. I did more collar cuts to save from having to fetch wood pieces from down the slope at the fence or having to pitch them onto the driveway. Three cuts were mostly directional with a small notch to swing the limbs away from me and more towards the line of lowering.
I had set a 5/8ths block we were using,but instead of resetting the block higher when I got into the top, I just used my pinto rig... So yes it was. Then I just used the 5/8ths as a fair lead/redirect around a bend in the stem. Then cam down and took the next chunck of wood with the 5/8ths right where I had left it.
Clear as mud? :lol:
 
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  • #13
Top was small. I decided to go smaller when the wind had come up... So I went higher, trimmed off the weight and wind catching limbs I wanted for the fall direction I wanted. I was falling side (90) out from the head wind. So I cut to give myself the advantage. That top probably did not weight 200#.
Also I wanted to add that Reg cuts more Fir than I do.. Ponderosa and fir are two different animals in how the fibre behaves. Ponderosa and gray pine will sometimes hold onto them selves in those fibres for dear life. I can pretty much cut a truck on have it suspend itself in air with the notch closed even though the log could weight thousands.
 
Cool deal with the family but I'd have let the power company do it too! They can buy me a new deck if they Jack it up!!
 
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  • #15
It was the animals that was the deal breaker. The guys they send out (with few exception) are such hacks. If that fence went down and the horses got out... Life could have sucked. I also get to mill the wood this way.
 
Clear as mud? :lol:

I think I follow, Stephen...

Essentially, was the fact that you were rigging and not chucking the main factor in your choice of technique?

"Powering through" would have 1) loaded the system more than was necessary and 2) given you less control over direction?
 
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  • #17
No.. the wood was not allowing for a "power through" since it was so damn stringy. Smaller limbs yes, but nothing 4" plus.
The choice of lowering the pieces was for our ease of handling to the chipper. Every piece wanted to run down hill..... you can see a couple of limbs that did just that near the beginning of the vid because she did not stop the run before the ground and before someone could help guide them to the driveway. Much harder dragging things up hill.
Wood was negative blocked for the same reasons. Chunking the wood would have inevitably had one go down hill and take out the fence, making out side the fence accessible to the live stock. Unacceptable. Why we would not have the line clearance guys do it in the first place.
As for loading the system.. Those branches loaded or shocked the system harder when we took multiples due to the fall factor. Bottom line though was, for our rigging, the weights we were working with, loading the system was not a concern. We also kept it light for new ropers ;) No sense in sending them home with blisters and bruises :lol:
We had full control save for my missing a limb that was entwined in two others... thus a pinched 200T
Took control back with the 150T by cutting to offending other limbs.. No problem.. back in control ;)
 
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  • #19
One more little item Jeff. By swinging the limbs away from me, less chance of a new groundie smacking my feet and legs with a load ;)
 
My place has a creek running through it. I can get the town in to do some tree work and have done so a couple times. I have to be right there to tell them what to do or they screw it up, so I have been doing it myself. Gross incompetence.

My neighbors field and mine where they meet needed a ditch put in. They eyeballed it instead of getting a transit and doing it right. Naturally it wasn't right. We got them back to look and I asked them if they had a transit. I almost asked them if they knew how to run it. They shot it and redid it and surprise surprise it worked perfect. I think part of it is job security. If they do it wrong first they have another job coming back to do it again.
 
I was thinking of this job the other day, I was dismantling some maritime pines (see work picture thread) and the branches were hanging on with the tiniest of strips. Forcing me to do some careful finishing with the saw.
Drove me mad, plenty of scope for rope cutting.
Anyhoo, nice time with the family, and not a small tree either!
 
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