rbtree
Climbing Up
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2005
- Messages
- 1,924
Jed, Popcorn/ pouch fungus, sap-rotter fungi? Makes wedging questionable. Normally, doug-fir is like cheating, I think. Sapwood rot changes things. I can't see the condition of the wood from the picts.
Reg, please share what the Consultant says. Interesting to hear.
Nico Dankers (I believe) has done some presentations on managing large PNW conifers. I didn't make it to ISA's annual training conference for the last two years, and missed it the time before. He was/ is with Tree Solutions, Inc. in Seattle. Scott Baker is the principle consultant/ owner there (fully consulting arbs). They have a tomograph. Scott came down and did some work with it on a 7' Doug-fir in Oly (not for me). Shell off a tree, but they work differently than hardwood, I sorta gathered. That, and it broke out at about 4"' at 170.
Scott and I go back almost twenty years. We climbed together on a few jobs, back when his consulting biz was much smaller. Awesome fella!
Most typical tree thinning around here done by clowns like Evergreen, and is nothing but lion's tailing. That said, crown thinning a conifer is rarely if ever effective. The only work that can really reduce risk is end weight reduction, and even crown reduction... or over thinning, which "may" reduce stem failure but will result in increased branch failure, unless end weight reduction is done. And over thinning can affect tree health as well.
Yesterday's Seattle Times, Ciscoe Morris's article was timely and pretty accurate, but it didn't address proper conifer risk reduction pruning
http://www.seattletimes.com/life/chinese-trumpet-vines-look-great-if-and-when-the-flowers-bloom/
Scott and I at a tree climbing jam comp