How'd it go today?

[Raj]

Today was beautiful. A couple of big red oaks to deadwood and some smallish red maples to thin and deadwood. It was nice to walk around the canopies at a relaxed pace. Only kill for the day was a 15' tall spruce that someone planted to close to the driveway. Loving that hitch hiker more and more. I need to buy a longer climbing line for pruning. A basal tie eats up to much rope once you work the whole canopy.

I have my old friend 150ft of 16 strand arbormaster with eye splices who's new job with a slender quick link is to extend my 150ft of vortex. Get a few redirects and I don't notice the bounce from the 16 strand.

Do you use any sort of sling for your basal tie?

 

[treebilly]

No I don't Peter. I really need to take the time and learn to splice so I can do that. I just tied two ropes together to extend my length.

 

[Raj]

I had spliced both ends of 30 or so feet of left over arbormaster for a basal tie sling, over a year ago, never used it, always quicker to just tie climb line off at the base...... until our dollar dropped, over $300 for 150ft of rope, I'm gonna baby it as much as possible, use the sling every basal tie now.

 

[SouthSoundTree-]

Peter, what is your connection between the basal-tie sling, and the climbing rope?

 

[Raj]

I have a large steel ring spliced and a large eye splice on the other end of the basal-tie sling, an ISC steel biner clipping into a bowline on a bight for the climb line. Once I get to a suspension point to work I'll throw a canopy anchor with a steel delta.

 

[SouthSoundTree-]

Different Strokes, as Mick said few minutes ago, but I think base ties are soooo over-rated, after screwing around with them a lot.

Extra gear, complication, breakable parts, knots, hitches...more room for human error, or equipment failure.


http://portal.treebuzz.com/simple-lowerable-base-anchors-719


One (unnecessary) piece of hardware, requiring a tool (if you're 'anal'/ covering all your bases).

This simple system puts virtually no wear on your rope, and is the simplest for an emergency rescue by anyone, especially a novice/ untrained (but smart) person on the ground.

Different strokes. By no means my idea.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

More shat at the base of the tree to get in the way or messed up IMO as well.
I still say, if you have to do it... Use a friggen porty. Brain dead simple.

 

[Raj]

I usually don't work with any sort of trained ground help, for me I find it so much easier to use the base anchor sling to access the tree if I didn't isolate a limb, once I get up switch over to a canopy anchor on a take down, easy enough for anyone just to unclip the biner, and then I can deal with the tail ends, keeping the rope away from the ground help, which is the best practice for the help I get. Of course I shoot for canopy anchors first.

 

[Jed]

Here's me spur pruning a Big Leaf Maple today on Mercer Island.

 

[treebilly]

Is the whole tree dying or the top just dead? I don't like seeing lichen or moss growing that heavily on a tree. Always seems to be weak wood when covered like that

 

[Jed]

Not in this region Rich... we just get light rain pretty much all winter long up here and that stuff comes alive to the extent that our wintertime deciduous trees can be just as heavy of limb weight as when they're fully leafed out in the summer.

 

[FJR]

More shat at the base of the tree to get in the way or messed up IMO as well.
I still say, if you have to do it... Use a friggen porty. Brain dead simple.

That it what I always think about! Why are SRT basal anchors so over complicated? We can lower down extremely heavy pieces of wood dynamically on a porty but no one wants to use them for an srt anchor? Why?

 

[Grendel]

Old Maples always look like that up here. . . Agree it makes them suspect

Two emergency call-outs in the last two days. Big Birch top over an old guys driveway blew out and hung up. Cool thing was he was taking bids from the Big Iron guys for their removal, so I could just spur the hell out of everything with no worries.

Tonight's homeowner wanted a hooked, dead Hemlock dumped into the woods away from his drive.

Cheers!

 

[Jed]

Cheers Grendel... Say hello to Hrothgar for me.

 

[flushcut]

That it what I always think about! Why are SRT basal anchors so over complicated? We can lower down extremely heavy pieces of wood dynamically on a porty but no one wants to use them for an srt anchor? Why?

Because that is to simple.

 

[flushcut]

Two oaks five stumps was my day yesterday. Today three huge walnuts (100'+) to deadwood

 

[CurSedVoyce]

That sir, sounds like a lot of dead wooding

 

[MasterBlaster]

Three in one day? You're a better man than me!!!

 

[treebilly]

Finally installed and linked the sena systems. All I can say is these things kick ass.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Welcome to the comm family

 

[SouthSoundTree-]

A porty for a basal tie is unnecessary and lower performance than a simple wrap. The weight of the POW will drop the rope down, unless you complicate it more and tie the POW up. A POW is around $100+, plus a sling. For what benefit?

If I wanted to complicate it with hardware in the system, I'd use a munter-mule-overhand tie-off on a steel biner.

.02

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Yes, just wrapping rope around the stem with a tie off is simple like Greame showed

 

[treebilly]

Yup I'm a commie now. We were clearing for a creek project today and it was so nice being able to talk to the feller and the guy manning the chipper as I was bobcat boy. Borrowed two of them for the weekend to let Jason try them out. I think he'll tell me to order a pair for our " side " work.

 

[Jed]

Sweet Rich!

Easy Hemlocks growing out of nursery stumps today. How to spice up a boring removal? Just add yellowjackets in the nursery stump!

 

[treebilly]

They'll definately liven things up.