The Official Work Pictures Thread

[Tucker943]

Oh Butch, it was a total goat rodeo. We were one step away from calling in a wrecker. My stress level was nuts, and I was still early on in quitting the stogeys.

 

[rangerdanger]

The deal with tree work is you can work your butt off on the the hardest tree ever and do an awesome job but people mostly look at the clean up. I can hear the neighbors now and looking at the name on the truck. I know you are hearing the same thing from others but even if the HO didnt care about the yard I could never do that.

Yea, it's getting leveled out tomorrow though, so it won't look nearly as bad. Should all turn out ok.

 

[sotc]

Stig, when my new guys get up high I usually like to tell them I'm glad they are climbing cause that one scared me. Or something about the roots moving every time they do that..

 

[stig]

Usually we tease the hell out of him with stuff like that, Willie.
These trees were too bad for any of that, so he only got encouragements shouted up
When we first looked at the biggest of the trees, we asked Martin if he wanted to do it. He politely declined, saying that it was way too big and tall for him.
When he came down his only comment was:" It'll take 4-5 more fof those, before that gets to be comfortable".
He did a real fine job on it, only place where the rookie-ness showed was in failing to place himself so he could take more than one branch out, wo having to move.
He is walking tall today, which is fine, because he is off to the island of Fynen on his own, to harvest grafting stock from ash trees, with a biologist from the forest research. center.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Props to Martin!

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Nice job kudos to Martin... WTG stepping up. Takes a lot of muster to get up past your comfort level on the right now ....

 

[SouthSoundTree]

Nice all.

Adrian, I'm sure with some grading work it will be fine. The power of the loader could help, but I guess you don't have a bucket???

Lawn damage in the Pacific Northwet is a concern I have with a mini, but I suppose some strategic plywood/ mats might just be part of the course.

 

[Tucker943]

The man that taught me to climb had little compassion for my comfort zone. Had a rope set for me at 100 feet in a beech tree. I made it quite a ways up and was starting to get jumpy, and very slow and nervous. He kept telling me "trust the gear and you'll be fine"......

To prove his point he grabbed the tail of my climbing line and took off running away from the tree. Yanked me right off the tree and out into mid air. That took a year off my life. Scared the heck out of me.

 

[littlenick]

Yea the ruts were pretty bad. I was under a time crunch with that job because the home owner is in the process of putting an addition on his house and they were waiting for me to get the trees out. The ruts are no big deal, ill take the tiller over with the mini and get that yard looking good as new in less than 30 minutes.

 

[Underwor]

Finished cleaning up the tree we dropped on the river channel last week. As you can see in the photo, the truck steered real easy heading back to the shop. Burned most of the little stuff right on the ice. It is about 2.5+ feet thick in most places this year. The biggest problem again, was about 12 " of slush under the snow. Wears you out just walking. All went well however and that mess is out of the way. The temperature was 0F when we started, 34F by 1 in the afternoon. Beautiful day. I am sure there were sunbathers out somewhere.

 

[Underwor]

One of my coworkers just posted this photo from today's cleanup.

 

[Jed]

Bob: Very well done sir. My mom's from Grand Forks. You folks are some tough folk! The fire looks to be about the nicest thing about the job.

 

[woodworkingboy]

Bob, I don't know how you work in those temps. You're a better man than me, for sure. I'm a pussy with cold hands.

 

[Underwor]

We actually planned this based on the weather. We could go through the yard across the river from the tree as long as it was frozen. We started at 7:30 am and were out of there about 10 am. No tracks. I pulled most of the stuff with the truck after I got it moving with the winch. The big chunk on the bottom was the top of the big log. We had to leave it in the river as it was frozen in too solid to break it loose. City will get it later when it floats down to one of the culverts. This is a dead channel that is used mostly for storm water storage in the summer. The river was straightened some following the 1969 flood.

 

[cory]

We started at 7:30 am and were out of there about 10 am. No tracks.

Working frozen ground around the daily temp changes as winter starts to give way is always a mad hustling challenge. Good Job.

 

[lumberjack]

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[CurSedVoyce]

Jeezus Carl..... What you get away with hauling back there !


Nice mini ex though... also on my bucket list.

 

[lumberjack]

We strapped it down and trimmed the load before heading home. Also, we were only 5.5 miles from where we were dumping, all in the county. Three left turns and we were where we were dumping!

After the first load we got smart and picked up the power pruner... makes trimming the load far easier!

Still had a couple limbs that needed trimming, but here's the gist of it.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

You have some serious cool kit my friend. You ever gonna put a flat bed on that frame?

 

[MasterBlaster]

Ha. I've loading them to where you couldn't see the trailer, with brush sweeping the road. But, like Carl said, the dump wasn't far and my fingers were crossed!

 

[Burnham]

We had to take down some dying ash trees in the park today.
Tall ones!
Since Richard is still gimping around and I got my leg whacked yesterday, The apprentice had to step up.
He was quite a bit outside his comfort zone, but did a fine job, nonetheless

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You have a gem there, Stig...but you and Richard already figured that out. Tell the young man Martin that an old climber and faller out in western Oregon sends his regards...well done.

 

[pantheraba]

Here is one I did today. A good friend, Herb, is a contractor...does renovations of homes, landscaping, etc. as jobs demand. He has a very large bobcat with a grapple that does wonderful heavy work...picks up huge logs, digs large holes, etc. I picked up a 13 tree job through him last week. The owner is from California and is buying foreclosures here, remodeling them and renting them....he used Herb for the renovations. Herb uses me for treework.

Twelve trees are to be deadwooded, remove limbs over the house and wires that are potential hazards and that fill gutters with pine straw...one was to be removed due to concern that it may be girdled internally and might fail. I did the removal today. I set a line up high, did a heavy pull test to see how the suspect area reacted...it held well so I limbed, topped it , etc.

This offending mechanism of injury was a metal bracket that supported a floodlight. The metal 'loop' and "I" bracket were grown over.

What is your experience with circumferential metal items that become embedded in the trunk wood...do they weaken the tree or do they become part of the structural integrity?

The last tree had a 25 foot widow maker in it before I started...I took it out two days ago. That night we had a good storm. There was another 25 foot widowmaker in the same place the next day so I went back up and took it out.

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Last one I did with metal in it like that was quite dead and quite strong enough not to worry about. The first one I did like that, look compromised as all get out and it still held up well ..... But then I did not rig real big off it either

 

[lumberjack]

You have some serious cool kit my friend. You ever gonna put a flat bed on that frame?

I'm thinking a dumping bed of some description, although it's not a high priority currently (lack of need). As I expand into dirt work/hardscaping, I can see it being a help. I've gotta figure out how I want to handle the sides of the bed in relation to towing goosenecks, being able to load a pallet on the truck, and how much I want to spend. As a positive, when this 550 dies, I plan on replacing it with the same (newer) chassis. In that, the bed for this truck could be transferred to the new truck, extending its life and increasing the budget.

Right now a fair portion of my gross is being placed in my winter fund, in anticipation of slow/no work Nov-Feb. Hopefully there will be work, but I don't plan for it. Assuming I clear/collect the current work load in the next 4-6 weeks, I'll need another $30k in gross to complete the winter fund, then I can move on to the next things. The first of which is paying off some relatively low balance, ridiculously low interest loans. They all still have 1-3 years remaining, but it will lower my monthly overhead by 13%.



Gary, I generally treat encompassing, girdling metals as a structural defect (removal recommendation of varying severity). It's obviously a change in the strength, rarely positive, and usually not worth further assessment, IMO.

 

[pantheraba]

This one held well, Stephen, but it was still niggling in my mind that there was metal in the tree below.

Got it, Carl....thanks for the input.