humbled today and got away with it

M

murphy4trees

TreeHouser
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Nov 28, 2008
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Location
Philadelphia PA suburbs
I was dropping a medium Norway spruce today from the bucket, took all the front and side limbs off. Back limbs were over a fence and garage, so plan was to take them with the wood. after pulling the top, set up another 8-10' piece, fairly heavily back weighted. Cut a narrow humboldt, with a little block face,maybe 1"+ height to the hing fibers, with a little snipe. Very narrow hinge, under .5".. wasn't really thinking about bark peel, so made the mistake of not scoring the sides under the hinge. The thing had so much back weight with only 1 groundie pulling by hand. Set up a 2:1 MA natural crotch, then came down to help him pull.... We used a little jap maple as a foot anchor to get more pulling power. it blocked our view of the top. So couldn't see the piece falling. When we walked out from under the maple, the piece had fallen almost 90º to the intended lay. Tips of the limbs just barely cleared the service lines, brushed the house siding, and the back limbs stuck in between the uprights of a picket fence. Leaving the piece stuck in the ground pointing nearly straight up... the tiniest little splinter of bark peeled and held to to that side... ZERO damage..
I have only had issues with bark peel once with a high back cut (bad cut). Sometimes I'll score the sides of hemlocks etc, but usually with an open face and good hinge, the tree is going to have enough momentum to stay to the lay.. So one of the issues was back weight, because it was all limb weight , the COG stayed back even as the piece started moving... so we had to keep pulling , meaning no momentum when the face closed... The most obvious lesson is to score the sides of the hinge.. Of course I knew that already, just wasn't thinking about it.. that won't happen again!

I got before and after photos. Will post when I get them downloaded..
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #4
I try to be as honest as possible..
the client came out, peeking around from her back deck and said... "I didn't expect that to come so close to the house"

"Neither did I, it was supposed to land over here" I replied..
 
Yeah, honesty, but you could have said, "I thought you'd find that intriguing". Must be some tough bark.
 
Stuff happens...glad it worked out. Thanks for sharing..might help keep some of the rest of us on our toes.

Those little omissions can bit us sometimes. You just got nibbled.:D
 
You sure the problem was not the very thin hinge, rather than side fiber/bark pull? Seems more likely in that situation, with a slow pull.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #11
here's a pic of the hinge and rip, looks like the hinge held til the face closed.. though there was a lot of side weight and the snipe may be very slightly pointed towards the house, of by 5º or so
 

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  • #13
use everything to your advantage right???

Fun to use the downed piece to protect the fence (under there somewhere) while shortening up the the side limbs before dropping the last stick
 
I don't know why you'd cut such a narrow hinge when trying to pull over all that back weighted limbs? Even blocked it looks to me like the hinge probably closed and then the top went to the side with most of the limb weight. A wide open face would've served much better imo.
 
Looks like the hinge broke prematurley due to a skinny face cut as Squish said. After that it would just go anywhere it wanted. I cannot see why you would put such a narrow face on a back leaner. It must have must have been almost closed when the piece was upright
 
It looks like when the hinge closed it would've been far from committed and possibly not even over COG with all those limbs out the back still.
 
Which face cut's that Murph?

Drunken dutchman with a sterno kicker?

From a bucket?

Every picture tells a story you flat tailed scalliwag!

Jomo
 
Angle of the snipe could've mae the hinge fail first on one side coupled with the narrow face.
Not really a Humboldt either, just a gap really. That snipe cut was the only part of the face that did any steering. I'd say the set up of that would've had more effect of pushing the butt off the stump rather than making it drop.
Shoot, sucked into replying again
 
Any excess fiber pull could have seriously messed up that spruce veneer log... :D
 
Why would you leave all that weight on the back when you wanted to pull it forward?

Guts for posting though...thanks
 
Not yet...the only thing I can think of is he would have had to set up a zipline or rigging as they were over the fence and house, so maybe thinking he could pull the top over with them still on, into his drop zone.
It didn't work.

What say you Murph?
 
squisher said:
I don't know why you'd cut such a narrow hinge when trying to pull over all that back weighted limbs? Even blocked it looks to me like the hinge probably closed and then the top went to the side with most of the limb weight. A wide open face would've served much better imo.
Click to expand...

Zackly, Squish. Norway spuce limbs can be very heavy if they have much size to them.

I presume Murph left the back limbs on because they would be a time consuming hassle to remove, and if he could skinny up the top enough to make it fit in the LZ by removing the front and side limbs, he was hoping to be able overcome their backweight and take em with the top, saving time and labor.

Thx for posting, Murph.
 
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