sharing a hotsaws 101 reply

murphy4trees

TreeHouser
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Nov 28, 2008
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Philadelphia PA suburbs
When I asked Jack how much of the tricks and techniques in his toolbox did he invent vs how much he learned. this was the reply:

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hotsaws101
20 hours ago
Daniel hi. Some of it I had heard of but never witnessed it being done. This one is not something I had heard about before trying myself. Am I the only one to think about it, surely not. I used a variation of the sizwell back in the late '70s. Did I understand the principle long before "hearing" about it through the grapevine. I posted a video of the "sizwell" back ~ '09 in the worlds ugliest stump vid. The Dutchmen is a fir type maneuver where the trees will hold on the stump. Pretty hard to do do in redwood country. For the most part it was get the concept and now go give it a whirl. Back slip, roll, holding the tree on the stump, kicking the tree off the stump is indigenous to old growth redwood falling as far as I know. I had heard about the back slip and tried it back in the '80s. I had a friend that cut some old growth reds in the late '70s. We talked about the roll, scarf, snipe a bit for timing purposes here and there. None of it is a really "a guy told me and now I'm proficient" type of a deal. I never really "bucked" under the head faller in the redwoods either. Most was just being in the middle of the strip and figuring it out on the fly. When all that was being used daily in the '80s, they (the mill) were getting $3500 a thousand for the sawn lumber. I fell some trees that had between 50,000 and 100,000 BF in them. That's trees 250/300 feet tall & 12/16 feet on the stump. I think my "in" was that I could get there really quickly because God gave me an understanding of physics. In the end it was a lot of thinking and refining by practicing while working in the industry. Thanks for watching.

Daniel hi. Thought about it a bit. I posted a video ~ 10 years ago with a fir that went up through the trees while the butt was slipping down to the side and at the same time going back. That was a combo of the back slip and patented funky face. Sometimes through improvisation techniques get blended also. It's hard to remember everything and sometimes the "trick" doesn't pan out as planned.... Then there is the double/triple hinge method that seems to be all the rage in the last few years. A variation of the concept has been around 35 years that I know of.
 
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Imagine, a $350,000 tree, Just wow
 
$3500 per 1,000 BF? so, a tree with 100 thousand BF would be 100x $3500 = $3.5mil right? Imagine how that might help your property value if you had one of them trees growing in your yard.

I must have added an extra zero somewhere, not sure how that happened. I just cut trees, I don't count them :D
 
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That’s preposterous !!! There wouldn’t be a tree left standing for that coin ! $350-600 per 1000board feet is more in line with reality ....... where are you getting this $3500 / 1000 board feet nonsense from ? @Nutball
 
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Maybe I'm not understanding what Mr hotsaws is saying, but that's what I gathered from the "$3500 a thousand" thousand trees? BF? what?
 
BF is board feet, a measure of wood 1" thick and 1' square. The mill got $3500 for every 1000 BF and a big tree had 100,000 BF so $3500/bf x 100,000 bf/ tree = $350,000 for 1 tree.

I would agree that is why the redwood region was fairly quickly stripped of its trees. Cha ching!!
 
A 2”x4” by 8’ is equal to 5.3 board feet ... assuming no waste you could get 189 2”x4” by 8’ft From 1000 board ft ... assuming a cost of $3500 / 189 pc EACH PC is valued at $18.51 ... by the time it got to the local lumberyard for sale the cost wood increase ... for sake of arguement let’s say $20 for a 2”x4” by 8’ .... IF this is the case I’m most certainly choosing alternative building materials !
 
I stand corrected ! That’ll be the day when ol Frankie pays 4/114 for a 2”x4”x8’ though ... get em kiln - dried for 2.99c apiece around the corner (NOT redwood though 😁) .... For that price (4/114) it better come with dinner and a plumber ! Wow ! Ol Hot-sauce has got quite the racket goin there .... $700 port jobs and $350000 drops ...
 
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Nah , Jack is an excellent faller and good saw builder but he’s definitely not my bro / god ... He built me a 241c and a 461R awhile back (both good runners btw) that I paid dearly for for sure ! I began building my own saws and was accused of “stealing his intellectual property “ - that’s where I cut ties with the dude, You pump over a grand into a guys wallet ya think you just might get some answers ... ol Jack won’t tell ya nothin 😆 ! That’s fine I’ll just build em myself and keep the cash in my pocket ... I admit His skills falling trees FAR exceed mine by a long-shot , however Saw performance? Nope ... can equal or exceed
 
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Frankie: Thanks for that last post. I too contacted Mr. Beelar years ago, and was quite astounded by how careful/secretive he was. Still not sure how I feel about that, but I truely do have the deepest veneration for the guy.

Ohhh... to be his apprentice.:big-money::lol:
 
I’ve heard thru the grapevine Ol Jack now has a lengthy , comprehensive questionnaire that a potential customer must fill out now before he will even Consider building a saw for a guy ... I was talking to him on the phone awhile back and asked him some direct porting related questions as he knew I was into performance but he didn’t want to divulge ANY info 😂 ... His response was that he does it to supplement his living ; and that the price of the high-end port jobs was going up to $680 (this took place during the 461R build) ... At that point I decided to learn to how build em Frankie-style ... I guess Jack thinks very highly of his porting and is very guarded / secretive of same - which is his prerogative of course
 
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