The Official Work Pictures Thread

[ruel]

Here's a job I've been working on recently. From the high point on one island, trying to reestablish a view of another one. Corridor to the right of the spruce in the middle.

Pretty much all 80yo spruce, island was mostly cleared during wwii used for u-boat spotting.
Visible tops for 100s of yards down slope, loooong view.

Here's sven pondering over a sizwell stump, apparently leaning 90° to the right, pretty good swing.


I'll try to remember some finished pics in the next few weeks.

 

[cory]

Sounds like a nice job!

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Big Ol pigs Stig. Nice work.

 

[flushcut]

I wish I had that log here. Bear hunters would be drooling over that log.

 

[Jed]

Stig: excellent pics... thank you so much, but... was your comment about the triple hinge serious, or facetious?

 

[stig]

Serious for sure.
That tree had very bad side lean towards a building.
I had the poor excuse for a tractor pulling straight against the lean, and signalled for him to pull as I finished cutting towards the hinge on the side opposite to the lean.
With a hinge that bad, I think a triple would have helped.
It cleared the building with about 10 feet, which was actually better than I hoped for.
That was honestly one sketchy fall.
This is where Daniel Murphy comes in as usual and tells me I know nothing about felling trees.
No worries, I've learned to live with that.

 

[Jed]

Well... Since Daniel is not here, you have only me to reprimand you. I've always thought that Logger Wade's "triple hinge," was absolute rubbish. I mean: I understand the purported advantages in principle, but in practice... I'll confess that I've never tried it, and am too ignorant to even imagine how it could ever be better than a solid plug of wood.

Please let me know if your "in the woods," experience has proved otherwise, and why you think that this is an improvement over a solid plug of wood of equal, or slightly lesser thickness on the tension side of the hinge. Thanks.

 

[lxskllr]

The triple hinge makes sense to me intellectually, but I don't have practical experience.

 

[SeanKroll]

Seems like an extension of a Whizzy/ Sizwheel or Stig's German Cut or a tall face-cut or full gap, in that it lets more tension fibers be more flexible without as much fiber breakage.

Some slow-motion footage would be killer.

Only tried it a few times, if that.

I speculate that maybe you can get three 1/2" strips to bend without breaking easier than a solid 1.5" hinge. Seems that the rear of the thick hinge is going to break earlier, reducing your tension fibers through the length of the fall.

Further speculation, you might get a tree to move to the lay easier/ sooner with three flexible strips rather than one thick one.

An idea for work very close to the truck, use a narrow kerf bar for the bore-cuts, allowing you to have more tension fibers in a smaller horizontal distance, to keep the rear of the hinge intact longer.

Seems like strong spiral grain could really reduce the effectiveness, if bore-cut vertically.


Thoughts?

 

[Tree09]

You put them on the tension side, right?

 

[SeanKroll]

Yes, to keep the tension side flexing and holding.

A video shows a logger cutting out his compression side hinge (20% of the hinge width) to swing the tree into a lay beyond the 'gun' of the face-cut as best as I could read it.

Triple hinge- sizwheel combo...

Daniel Murphy posted it for discussion at that other place...Pat Lacey is the feller of a 5+ footer. Shows a smooth trick popping out his face-cut.

 

[stig]

Jed, Since I work mainly in hardwoods, there is a limit to how thick a hinge I can set.
Go over that and it doesn't flex, but simply breaks.
First time I saw the triple hinge, it was a revelation to me ( you know how some "beheld a great beast" , well, others get that way from simply seeing a hinge)
What happens is, by cutting those vertical release cuts, you allow the whole fat block of wood, that would normally simply break , to act like 3 individual narrow pieces of wood that can flex instead of breaking.
I have used it to pull off some otherwise impossible falls.
The most impressive ( To me anyway) being a large Ash with terrible side lean over one of the oldest sweet chestnuts in the country.
That worked so well, that we ended up making a trip out to the tree that evening after work, so all the guys could see it.

Notice how it lies exactly in line with the face cut?
That thing had the worst side lean you can imagine.

 

[SeanKroll]

Stig, did you cut your back-cut from the tension side to the compression side? Are you the helmeted fellow in the background, or someone farther back?

Conks between the flares?

Pull, wedges, or falling with gravity?

 

[stig]

Compression to tension. It had a bit of front lean, so he just cut and let gravity handle the rest.
No conks, it was a healthy tree.
That is Mathias a former apprentice.
He was a top notch faller till a German rear ended his motorcycle on the freeway.
Today he can't log or anything else.

 

[SeanKroll]

I would have expected compression to tension.I was looked like a kerf on the tension side and wondering if it was superficial to start, to set the height from the triple-hinge to the far side or something.

 

[biggun]

Climbing freelance today for a mate. Dead and frigged willow tree. Luckily there were decent anchor options on the left hand tree and only a statue to avoid. Didn’t mess about and had it to sticks in under an hour... clear up was a bit of a twat as it exploded on impact. Just got to hide the timber in the woods behind.

Luckily the avant is here.

 

[pantheraba]

UGLY!!!

 

[SeanKroll]

Wow. Really ugly to start, with a side order of willow weakness.

 

[Burnham]

Indeed. That one is nasty in the extreme.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Fugly for shore!

 

[pete mctree]

Really nasty Rich. Good job 👍

couple of pics from a wind thrown ash I started the other day. Back next week with the 880

 

[Steve Mack]

Yep!
I think our birth years in our profiles went out with the new 'House.

Maybe Brandon can put them back in?

If you go to Your Account - Details - and tick both age boxes it'll show up if someone looks at your profile name but it won't show unless they do that.

 

[lxskllr]

Did some cutting in the mulberry today. It was way warmer/sunnier than I'd have liked, but I had the time. The climbing was a little iffy. Hadn't done rope work since summer last year, and I wasn't super comfortable in the tree. My limb walk wasn't 100% a walk. There was some scootching on my butt involved too :^D I took off more than I originally intended. I didn't see a good place to put another rope while I was on the limb while factoring in comfort. I'd have probably fallen if I tried to throw the rope. Where I cut it was reasonable, but I didn't make a good pruning cut. I should have stopped to consider it more. The tree has little value, so any damage doesn't matter aside from me not being happy with my work. Here's a pic...



It's the tree with the fresh cuts. If you look carefully, there's a little branch hanging below the horizontal. That one was my buddy. I could hook my foot around it to cut the limb. It was so helpful, I spared it's life and left it(I actually forgot to remove it when I was done :^P ). There was more dead stuff higher in the tree, but they'd have been tricky to get to. Things went so well, I didn't want to push my luck.

Things that went wrong...

Dropped my fuel bottle twice, and dropped a glove.
General slowness, and discomfort in the tree.
Pruning cuts weren't good.


I'll rate my performance a weighted 7/10. By professional standards it was dismal, and I'd give myself a 2/10 on that scale, but for just being a dumbass with some rope, I did alright. Didn't hurt myself, or destroy anything.

My new throwline bag is the bees knees. The opening isn't as big as a cube, but it's big enough, and easy to flake line into it. Much better than the trick or treat bag I was using :^D

 

[Ryan]

How did you get into the tree and what was your setup when the cutting started? High tie in plus a positioning lanyard or just a lanyard around the main trunk? Leaning back with the weight on your back sucks compared to sitting in a saddle.

I don't want to pick you apart but would rather know what you did to offer advice for next time.

Good job btw and thanks for being comfortable enough to post about it.

 

[lxskllr]

High tie in. Here's pic in-tree, but it doesn't show much...



Here's my gear from another job. I didn't use the spurs or big saw today, but this is more or less what I have...