How'd it go today?

[rskybiz]

I have thought of looking him up Butch but he left, life goes on and fb is not the same. The treehouse is where he is and was a friend. Seems no different than missing Burnham while he was getting his hip.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Today was a day of irony.. Irony? You ask.....
Taking down another beetle infested ponderosa and down to just the spar, county sheriff pulls up and starts talking to Rob..
I was swinging about to get a small hanger out of the black oak next to the TD from off the spar. I rappel down and join them. Seems that someone (a local leaf licker) calls in to the local PO PO saying "someone is cutting down all the trees on a county road!". Well.... We are on private land, next to a county road that basically is an easement through the two properties we are currently working on Pays to have pulled a plot plan and walked property lines. Sheriff agrees, why yes, the county has verified this... But he has some questions... I am fine with that.. ask away. He starts asking about tree work and how we do things, and how obviously we know what we are doing from what he has already witnessed... No trees in the road.. nothing in the road, nothing blocking the road and two of three 100 plus foot ponderosa pretty much gone... So... He now has my card and wants a consultation on a large oak out in front of his house. Might want it removed, but pleas look at it first... Thanks to the leaf lickers, I may just have to kill another tree Maybe I will find virtue in saving it, prune and cable the thing.. Have to look at it first of course.... But hey.. thanks for the referral

Some from today....

Pulling a line up to the top of the next throw with a throw line....

Throwing some top and some of the middle
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Ee4mplBLOy0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[MasterBlaster]

Ka-BUSH-ka!!!

 

[Tree Reb]

We did a good sized dead jackaranda today for an old client, nice lady lives alone.

Dead because someone poisoned it. Pretty obvious to me it was the next door neighbor, but she said he told her he didn't do it as he liked looking at it.

I might be wrong, but no one else could even see it. He wasn't there but he wanted the wood so it all went over the fence, saved me getting rid of it. Hope he doesn't breath any toxic smoke.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Poisoned it? That's a shame...

 

[Al Smith]

Nastey little trick the power company used to do .If they had tree that needed trimming where the property owners gave them fits they would ring it with copper nails . Little tiny ones you could not see on a thick barked tree .In about two years the thing died .

 

[Cobleskill]

Copper Sulphate, I have been told, is supposed to kill roots that have invaded drains. I wonder if it hurts the tree.

 

[stig]

Looks like you have some fine weather for working, Stephen.
I thought it would be snowing up your way by now, or is that only when I come around to sleep in trees

 

[Al Smith]

Yep copper sulfate also called blue vitriol will kill the tree .It screws up it's ability to transfer liquids by osmosis I believe .They used to use it as a fungacide for things like foot rot in sheep etc .Other uses as well .

It may be an urban legend but I've heard the old timers used to bury a copper wire over top of the clay tile they used for sewer drains that was reported to stop a tree from growing roots once it neared the area the copper was in .Evidently in its' tree mind it knows that was not the thing to do .How much truth there might be to that I have not a clue .

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Looks like you have some fine weather for working, Stephen.
I thought it would be snowing up your way by now, or is that only when I come around to sleep in trees

So far we have been below the snow line and now hardly any moisture. But up higher..... Temps have been cold enough to keep what snow we got. Your climbing grove will have some snow, but not a lot. Up around 7-8000 feet there is about 4 foot.



65F is a pleasant work environmentthis time of year Frost in the morning so the ground is managable.

 

[HolmenTree]

Copper Sulphate, I have been told, is supposed to kill roots that have invaded drains. I wonder if it hurts the tree.

I know copper sulphate hurts the edge on a saw chain. I once milled with my Alaskan chainsaw mill, beams out of old thrown away red cedar hydro poles preserved with the stuff. Dulled the chain to the point of smokin thru the wood only after a few inches in it.

With an adze I'd have to chop the inch thick layer of the stuff off the pole on the 2 spots where my sawchain path was. Once I got 3 slabs off it was good to go.
Made some beautiful red cedar beams and lumber, the biggest were 14"x8"x 32 ft long. I had the best looking fence and arch in town.

 

[Cobleskill]

Creosoted railroad ties are terrible to cut too.

 

[Al Smith]

What's odd about old ties that have lain in ballast for maybe 40 years is once you cut into them you can smell oak .Red oak has a smell all of it's own .Same with old barn timbers .

 

[Cobleskill]

We used to find date pins in the old ties close to home from 1915 to the 1920's. They pulled it out of service in the 70's.

 

[stig]

Back when I started working in the woods, we still cut logs for tie cutting out of the beech stands. Tie logs had to have a certain diameter, one knot free side and max 30% false heartwood, because that couldn't be impregnated with creosote.
Now those logs have gone the same way as the ones we made for pilings and those long thin ones that fishermen used for setting nets along the coasts.
The ice would tear them apart every winter, so thee was a steady market for those.

None of that stuff is made today. If I look at a real close grown stand of oak, and remark that a person could make some fine netting poles there, my apprentices look at me kinda sideways.

All part of getting old, I guess.

 

[Cobleskill]

What do they use for ties these days?

 

[woodworkingboy]

Over here, concrete now. It used to be mainly Chestnut. The wood doesn't rot easily, even without creosote. Ties have lost a bit of their romance.

 

[Cobleskill]

Concrete makes more sense in the long run. Derailments would probable take a severe toll on them.

 

[woodworkingboy]

The Japanese railroad company used to sell the old ties to people when replacing with concrete. They decided that concrete better served their needs, so went on a countrywide replacement campaign. If you didn't have a connection, you could call and get on a waiting list for when they became available, and they would actually get back.. Someone introduced me to a station master, so I cut into the line and bought a whole truckload of them twenty years ago for very cheap. They were happy to get rid of them for a minimal cost. Some are still holding up being buried in the ground. The demand outgrew the availability, so now you can occasionally see them being sold at home centers for like ten times the amount. Someone got the bright idea to replicate and sell them, made from some different type of wood. Junk compared to the originals, however. Probably cheap wood out of Siberia, maybe logged by North Koreans in their forced labor camps. :what: There is some bad stuff that goes on between the Russkies and the North Koreans in isolated places.

 

[Husabud]

Got the dump stuck between gears this morning turning around on a hill and snapped off the shifter tower. What a way to start a day. I got a new to me tower from a friend and was back on the road in two hours. I want a new truck.

 

[Al Smith]

Sunny beech ,14 degrees with a 24 MPH gusts .About froze my business off retrieving my log splitter from Toms' a little while ago .

Good heavens he must have 25-30 cords of split wood in a big heap .

 

[lumberjack]

All this log talk... I hauled 13.4T to the sawmill today. $60/ton.

7.5T of 16' pines.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Old how they pay by the ton. They measure and scale, here.

 

[Tucker943]

Measure and scale conifers?

 

[MasterBlaster]

Pines? Sure! I don't know how they handle hardwood, all I ever delivered were pines.