Petzl Paw S

[brendonv]

Hmm, I dunno.

Possibly tensioning the line, dealing with the haul back if your using one, remembering to clip the slings back on, lowering the tensioned line at the right time, hauling back the line before walking away, typical groundsman duties that some people just don't get.

 

[MasterBlaster]

For sure, if you do all that. So far, all I've done is hook the limb, tell them to tighten up, then let it fly. And since it's MY SL kit, I make sure to instruct them beforehand how to deal with the slings.

 

[SouthSoundTree]

I find that with a lot of conifers, if you aren't trying for huge horizontal distances with a very taut line, a biner and sling are all you need. Control lines are unnecessary. If you are trying to go for long horizontal distances where you need to really tension the line (and maybe use a very low/ no stretch SL), catching on a rigging line, then tensioning the speedline, and using a pulley and haulback is sometimes necessary for safety. Frequently, IME, dropping small limbs onto a speedline works fine. As you get higher in the tree (greater lever/ moment arm), limb size decreases, and rope angle (relative to the ground) increases, reducing forces. If brush trailering, a person can load the brush from the speedline. If chipping, I try to attach to the chipper. If grapple trucking, you can stack piles with the speedline.

 

[SouthSoundTree]

It's rarely needed, that's for sure. I like when people see it for the first time.

Here, we very frequently have landscaping or fences below trees. People love gardening (especially with delicate plants).

 

[MasterBlaster]

A fence isn't much of an obstacle. It's easy to rope limbs to one side or the other.

 

[stig]

A lot of the trees that we take out are in nice gardens.
Dragging brush through the flowerbeds is not the way to go, hence the speedline.
A couple of years ago we took a large willow down, standing right next to a pond, with it's feet in the water.

Houseowner asked if we were bringing a boat to take the brush out, so I told him we'd set a speed line across the pond.
He didn't believe that was possible.

There was a huge spruce behind the willow we could anchor the top end of the speedline in, the Hobbs to tighten it and away we went.

In 3 hours we had that whole tree laying on the lawn on the other side of the pond.

I was the climber on that one and it was pure fun.
Good money, too.

I love a good speedline.

 

[Bounce]

I have found speedlining to be a lot like any other specialized rigging skill. Before I used it very much, I wasn't very good at it and so it wasn't a very efficient. As a result, I felt like it was an option of last resort that I would only use if there was no other way. But after I had done 6 or 8 SL jobs, I began to refine the system until it became quite an efficient tool. Now I use it on probably 1 out of 5 or 6 removals. I use it for sure any time the brush has to be dragged a long way or uphill. But I consider using it anytime I will have to lower branches anyway because it doesn't take a whole lot more time than lowering pieces straight down. When lowering straight down you have to pull the end of the line back up to you after every piece, but you get to skip this step in a SL (as long as you just clip the biners directly to the SL and don't use a pulley with a haul back line). I just use a fiddle block to tension the line, which the groundie can sag at the right time to make the piece hit the ground instead of nailing the anchor. If you have 15-20 slings w/ biners, you won't have much down time waiting for more to be sent back up. I use these in batches of 6 (because this is the maximum number of branches per tier in most of the trees I deal with). The hardest part of most SL jobs is the top of the tree and sections of trunk, which I usually catch first with another false crotch rigging system before transferring to the speedline. That way I can send down nice big 4-500 lb chunks instead of little guys.

Everybody is clumsy and slow when they are first learning a new technique. But if you don't do it enough to get good at it, then it should be no surprise that you're no good at it. Anybody who has used this technique only a handful of times and decided it isn't just worth pursuing might be missing out on a very useful tool.