Australian skyscrapers in the SoCal desert.

Rodney Ciro, third gen timber faller in the county, has a lot of good stories to tell. One about packing a gunny sack full of steel wedges. frig carrying the sack, he thought. So he started dragging that sack of steel wedges across the hillside and wore a hole in the sake and out spilled the wedges one by one, and each slid down the hill under the leaves.

I ask Rodney what his pop said when he needed a wedge at the next tree, and he just said, "Oh, Jer, Pop got really mad."

Rod was about 12 years old then and the eldest of 3 boys by Jim and Carolyn.

Ol' Pop, Jim Ciro, is 99 years old this year and still growing a garden.

Rodney is legally blind. Poor fellow, but he still always has a good tale to tell.
 
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  • #111
Finally: vid.



Tree #1 was a while back. #2 had a little back lean and got winched to my dodge slightly to the left with the lay to the right of it. Power to the shop by my dodge angles closer over my truck, so the trees were dropped closer to his parts/project trucks.


Tree 3 redirected off a pulley on the front of the white ford…which was chained to the black ford.
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View whilst attaching the pull line to tree three.
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Here's a euc at Sonoma Mt. Regional Park. upper right hand corner in the first pic.

It's not a blue gum... leaves are too small, but it's a good size tree.


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  • #117
How do your chains hold up doing this work? Everything looks dry and dirty.
404 is a big improvement. Stihl or raisman semi chisel even better. I try to keep the chain pulling out of the dirty log. Both saws were quite dull in one tank. 3/8” full chis round I have had dull in one cut. Yest I was running full chis round (404) cuz that’s what was on the saws. I had a loop of semi 42” to put on but didn’t. This stuff doesn’t bore very well (I did bore one cut) and it’s difficult to get any feed with the tip buried with bars this long. I keep the tip down, bottom is cleaner due to gravity… Over bucking, working one’s way in helps. Aussies run shorter bars and block it out, I think I’m going to try that. I think I have a 30” loop of 404. Blunt angles and low rakers.
 
That's always good advise, Sean.

One time, but actually a couple of times, I have rocked my chains 20' from the rootwad in clear clean wood.

In each case the tree was hollow, fallen downhill, and over the years seasonal rains had washed the dirt and rocks from the rootwad down into the hollow of the tree, for up to 60 feet in one tree.

Lordy, did I ruin those chains bad. In each case the trees were old buckskin redwoods windfalls (big trees) on steep ground and laying over logging roads we had to open just to get to work.
 
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  • #124
We use a blockbuster splitting axe for euc. Weighty and wide.
6" should split ok.
Larger rounds, smack them right near the edge of the round, get some splits starting. Once you get one piece to split off, work around the round, splitting bits off the outside until it's small enough to finish through the middle, if you get what I mean.
Got my ‘buster imported from Oz. Works well!

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