How'd it go today?

Been loading a 95g BTBT Nosler. I bought my wife one a while back in Muddy Girl. Great little shooter. I also have 100g for it as well. Fast and flat.
Good gun for the budget.
 
We started 2 apprentices out on climbing today.
Since we work in old forest trees right now, that is what they had to climb.
Makes for a hard beginning.
One is a bit cocky, but like I mentioned elsewhere, it doesn't take me long to shut that down.
After he'd been fliplining up 3 nice, smooth barked Beeches with a line set and the groundie pulling on it to advance his knot, we sent him up a straight oak with no branches for the first 70 feet.
Old school, just with a flipline and rope.
Last tree before going home for the weekend.
As he reached the first branch and was setting his friction saver, he did the classic rookie thing, too tight flipline and bending in the knees.
Had a world class kick out and slid about 6 feet down, howling.
Threw his rope over the branch and bailed out.

When he reached the ground, I asked him if he knew what the astronauts said when the lunar lander touched down.
Well, I said, this is more like " The chicken has landed".

Then I sent him up in an easy beech, so he didn't have to end the week on a failure and to get him back on the horse that threw him.

Meanwhile, Richard fliplined up and retrieved his friction saver and veteranised the oak.
 
Calling off my locust prune. I was heading out to the store today, and stopped to look at it. I saw there were birds in a hole on one of the limbs I was gonna cut. I don't want to ruin their gig, so I'll leave it alone for the time being. It was more or less make work anyway. There's a non zero chance the limb could break and hit the house, but it would take an unusual wind condition to get it over that way. Kinda disappointing. There's a fairly big hanger about 20' up I can remove. I'll do that; maybe tomorrow. It's pretty windy today.
 
I have a bitchin' camaro across the street from me. It's a semi pro(?) dragster, and it shakes the walls when he runs it. Neighbor to the right has a new charger with modified exhaust to make it sound like a hotrod. I think it makes the driver sound like douchenozzle :^D
 
Climbing today was a conceptual failure, but a functional success. Started on the locust removing the hanger. Got my first throwbag stuck, so I got the apta and sent the other end of the line up. First shot went through the crotch, through the next two trees, and over the electric lines. 60# was a bit much I guess, but it worked. Tried to pull my rope through the crotch, but it was hanging up, and wouldn't go through. Ended up trying to put my Mora sheath on the line hoping that would get it through the the crotch...


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No luck. Take a bight of line. and try to get it through the other side, and it still wasn't going. I think there was a slot big enough for throwline. but not enough for rope. Reshot the bag over a sacrificial branch over the crotch, sent the rope up, and yanked it down into the crotch. Success! Climbed up SRS with the ropewrench. Removed some stuff on the way up, and got to the TIP. Still needed to be ~6' above that. The plan was to girth hitch looprunners, tie in a mrs system, and just advance it a bit at a time til I was where I needed to be. I wasn't real comfortable with the whole thing, so I went down, shot a line over the hanger, then yanked it down like I had some sense :^D I did rescue my throwbag.

This was all an exercise to really try an srs system, and not be as efficient as possible. I need to meditate on srs a bit. It felt foreign and weird, and I wasn't super comfortable with the system. The gear all worked ok. I just felt "off".

Had to do a micro climb in my walnut to get a branch from over the service lines. Figured I'd try a short length of trueblue I had, and opted to just make a throwball with the line, and throw it up. Got that stuck... Got my throwline. sent it up, and pulled my arbormaster into the tree. I climbed mrs with that, and everything was great. Side hinged the branch in question, swung it away from the lines, and dropped it perfectly. Also cleaned up some other stuff while I was up there. I saw what was wrong with the tree, with the split bark, and presumably pecker holes. It's absolutely infested with bugs.

Question time. Have any of you seen anything like this in a walnut?

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There's several splits like that with galleries underneath, and pecker holes all over. Never really seen anything like that before. I'm thinking the tree isn't gonna live a full life. Not a huge deal. It's one the squirrels planted, but having a tree is better than not having a tree.

edit:
Forgot. My tie in on the walnut was ¼" dead twig sticking out of the side. I figured it would break and drop me into the target crotch. It never broke. I did everything I needed to do off that twig. Before I went down, I put the rope where it belonged, and trivially knocked the twig off with my hand. Weird...
 
Got up early and watched some tv. Made breakfast ate and then took a nap. Spent the afternoon cutting, splitting, and stacking firewood. It’s bothering me that I only got another cord done but it’s done. Normally I’ll split a mountain and then dread stacking it for the most part of the year. This way the drudgery of stacking isn’t to terrible.
This would be ideal but that price tag is a bit much for heating two houses😎 Add the box wedge and four way wedge plus the attached conveyor and it’s up to 28k
 
That would be sweet.

Haha I hear ya re the drudgery of stacking, it takes all the fun out of splitting!
 
Got a call today that some stormdrain is messed up, and they hit a gasline digging too deep. There was a set of prints released after mine that made the structures shallower. The manager said he thought he gave me the prints, but I'm 99.x% sure he didn't. I use half set plans, and I keep them all in a briefcase in the truck. I don't see any other prints in there. Additionally, the structures were made to the old prints, so it matched my stakeout, but not the later plans. There's a problem, and it sucks, but I'm pretty sure it isn't my problem.

Boss just called me and said he had a meeting at 9 tomorrow, so I could come in late. Optionally, there's a small job I can do by myself. I think I'll do both. Come in slightly later than usual, do the easy job, then look into hauling wood at my office project.

Fixed my tape, sort of. This was the lowest effort fix. Might hang too low. I readjust if necessary...

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Oh, and I got this stuff yesterday. I like the way the rope feels. Looking forward to trying it...

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Finally, I got my snus today; 60 more cans. I didn't need it, but it's a hedge against government stupidity.
 
We have cardboard over the windows in the basement office to reduce glare on the computer screens. Boss was whining about how dark it is(perfect!), so I folded a corner back to let light in. Been that way awhile. Today I cut a tree into the cardboard, and covered the window again. Also gives a bonus light tree on the wall...

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Pretty happy with it. I don't think I'll do anything better than that today :^D
 
Yea, there's filters and stuff, but it costs money, and it creates another dust collecting surface, and more diffusion of the image. Cardboard's free. I'd kind of like to do a night time birch forest scene in fine line. That's a project for the future. I need to get a big enough piece of paperboard, and take the time to cut everything with a knife. I'll maybe put that in the other window.
 
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