I've used spider legs. Mixed results. I misjudged the weight and when I finished the cut it swung and dipped and tipped and flopped all over the f@$kn' place and happened to miss sheds, roofs, poles, wires and fences. Looked like I planned it, I looked like a hero, but it was all pure luck.
Couple of storm damaged poplars that I looked at a few weeks ago. There was literally no access, nowhere to park, busy city street. I told the guy I'd get them down for him but I wasn't able to effect the cleanup. He passed, and I gave him a couple numbers for the other local big-iron tree services. Two weeks later he calls me back and says he can't get anyone to do the cutting.
I'm your huckleberry, but still not taking any of it away with me. . . haha
I'm normally the one passing on work if I can't get my trucks to it, but the one picture doesn't look too bad as far as access. Chip truck could fit in the neighbor's drive and back up between the houses, not a long drag at all. Would need to dolly out the logs and get permission from the neighbor for access but I've done a lot worse.
I hear that. I could have backed a trailer into his tiny single car drive, parked across the street, and wrestled everything out. . . But I really didn't want to. lol
Lot easier for the guys with a mini and a grapple truck.
It was far away from my home territory, really a job I could pass on and not feel bad about later.
I've used spider legs. Mixed results. I misjudged the weight and when I finished the cut it swung and dipped and tipped and flopped all over the f@$kn' place and happened to miss sheds, roofs, poles, wires and fences. Looked like I planned it, I looked like a hero, but it was all pure luck.
Re. The spider leg debate... I haven't done it in years, reason being by the time you've rigged it all up, got the balance wrong and generally arsed about you could have rigged it out in smaller pieces.
A quotable quote, to be sure! And the reason we rarely use a butt rope, unless there are targets galore -- rig it out small enough for the drop zone and to be manageable. Our climber is very good at judging COG and ties things head heavy or butt heavy as needed. One less rope to manage, one more man free on the ground to be chipping, cleaning up, etc. We did have to use butt ropes a few weeks back in the fancy manicured backyard with the broken bur oak leader. But for sure no spider legs.
The reasoning behind 134dl is to get more time out of the chain before having to shorten it since I don't have the tools for that.
The oiler mod worked great today and kept the 42" chain moist. I didnt pay much attention, but I think the lowest position was 1/3 tank oil to 1 tank gas, now near 1:1. Highest flow went from near 1:1 to around 2:1. I ground a steeper angle on the oiler piston leaving the high end untouched. I just marked the low end 1mm down, ground, and polished.
I figure it was all the oil plus the fact I used a square ground chain that made it cut surprisingly fast. The tree felled easily, thanks be to God.
Now the only thing left to do with a new 42" chain is hit metal... twice
This chain could be yours!!! It's for sale (too messed up and too rarely used for me to care about fixing it when I could enjoy a perfect cutting new one).
$50 Echo 310 to the rescue to finish off the metal I hit.
I always try to leave the section of trunk from 3' to 10' off the ground until last if I can. Many times I can load that entire section of trunk in one piece, avoiding having to cut where the metal is most likely to be. But on big trees it's just part of the job and an unavoidable risk.
I ran some square chain for a while a few years back, never had much luck with it on our oaks and pines. I ended up round filing it for the second half of the roll. That worked quite well and only took about 3-4 swipes per tooth on a new chain to get a nice round filed edge on it. I bet with a new 7/32 file you could have that chain cutting fast and straight in about 15 minutes.
As I've mentioned before, pines are a bit of a rarity (we are usually dealing with hardwoods) -- so to do 3 pine takedowns in one day was a treat!
Victim #1: 45' white pine (a little free deadwooding to the silver maple over the driveway, courtesy of the chipper truck, ahem):
Job #2: Removed two 30' pitch pines, one dry and crispy, the other declining. Goal was to leave a nice clean row of light, small Bradford pears, remove the pitch pines and trim up a hackberry in the middle of the row. I did the felling, laid them across the driveway, ready for limbing and chipping. First one had a favorable lean, went right down (so nice to have the 395 [new sprocket] & 372 [new chain] back in action!). The second one had a back lean into the line of Bradfords, so I did a big open face notch, slightly high back cut to counter the lean. Set the hinge and with one wedge set, I was able to stand up & push it over with one finger. Love it when it lays down nice & slow, never breaking the hinge! Then we deadwooded a pin oak and stump ground the pines.
Had a visitor on my arm, then on my helmet:
Job #3: Removed a dead American Elm for the neighbor of someone we've worked for recently. Also fished a broken ash leader out of the ditch for him and loaded it on the log truck.
Tomorrow's fun: Remove a storm damaged co-dominant Hackberry. 5' DBH, cracking from the main crotch downward to the ground, 20' split. Stay tuned for the rented spider lift (to lighten the tips), log grapple craning out leaders, and targets galore (houses, sheds, power lines). More rigging than Las Vegas! (And pretty sure the only spider legs will be on the spider lift...)
I haven?t done it in years, reason being by the time you?ve rigged it all up, got the balance wrong and generally arsed about you could have rigged it out in smaller pieces.
About the only time it's worth messing with is if you need to keep a really long piece more or less horizontal due to easily damaged stuff underneath. And even then, it only makes sense if the outer end of the piece is very difficult to access.
I've learned to walk the side of the limb with spikes to get "out yonder" to set that distant end tie. With the right TIP side-limb-walking can be good.
My bud called the placement of these spider leg tie-ins...good call on his part. I can't take credit for it working. This limb reached so far out over the house with no rigging points I'm not sure how else we could have done it...fish-pole would have been maddening.
I think personally the reason i don't hate spider rigs is the rigging i do as a fitter (which I've done substantially more than trees, ie i know nothing lol). As a fitter, you often have to cut something loose and have it not move at all, with only one pick point. I spent a bunch of time in the fab shop, so you usually tried to do everything with one choke when pulling a fabrication out of the positioner. However, some fabs absolutely require 2 points, and many others require 3 (big L shaped ones). We often have to pick something level and then invert it, all while suspended in the rigging. So as i was learning tree rigging, spider legs came in handy with the long leaders over structure. I have since come to the conclusion that the two rope way is vastly superior in about all ways tho, for most stuff. The exception is when you can redirect the rigging line above the cog without much effort, like tossing it through a crotch or something, or have the rigging point over where it needs to come down. A pull line is very handy in some situations.
A trick we use to check the balance is to calculate (ballpark calculate for most stuff, on heavy heavy picks it literally is full on calculated in construction) the cog in two axis, and then go from there. The line is tensioned, and then you jerk on the lines to see if they feel about the same amount of tension. If not, lower and adjust, then repeat till you get it right. In construction, you usually use chain falls and come alongs as your different legs, so everything is easily adjusted without letting off. You can actually level stuff in both directions, and then even invert the piece using the rigging. We often have to then transfer the load to a different lifting device, and then drift the piece over to where it needs to go, sometimes even with a third lifting device to move it sideways.
That is all easily accomplished when you can simply walk over and adjust stuff, or when multiple people are all working on the same piece. This of course isn't the situation in tree work. So the two lines way is usually much easier to adjust. This of course is obvious to most members here, but some haven't had the chance to do much rigging so maybe this helps someone lol.
Another cool trick i learned to do is when picking a large L shaped piece where you don't have a lifting device to adjust for the third leg is to use the poldo tackle (we're talking straps here, not knots on rope). You use the fixed length straps on the two ends, and then using an extra short strap to choke the bend, you use a poldo tackle to adjust the length rather than a chain fall. I pulled that trick out last year on a pipeline tie in, i think about everyone's jaw dropped where i didn't need two excavators to fit the piece up.. levelled it in both directions to the existing mains, and just floated it in all in about 5 minutes. I became the rigging go to guy after that lol.
And with good reason! Good info there. I'd love to see some of that happening.
You are right about trees...rigging points can be pitiful or non-existent. I got lucky on our spider leg doings...I've had them do like Peter described...chaos and havoc.
Like Gerry Beranek, the only thing that scares us is bad trees -- inherently unsafe, unclimbable, unriggable, ready to fail! Yesterday's battle was a co-dominant hackberry (70' height, 120' crown, 6+' DBH) -- homeowner heard a loud crack a week ago, thought it was a transformer blowing. While cleaning up overgrowth and vines from his yard, he noticed this huge split where the co-dominant leaders' included bark was coming apart at the seams. The neighbor beside him was very scared (rightfully) with every rain in the meanwhile, since it was likely to fail over his garage apartment and house. The canopy stretched over 2 house roofs, a garage with 2nd story apartment, a shed, fence & new sod, house lines and main power lines & communications cables. At least it was alley access, so we didn't have to do traffic control. The tree was not safe to climb, as you could actually watch the halves of the split moving when there was a breeze.
We bought 2 fresh mondo ratchet straps ($70 ea.) to secure the tree so we could begin work. Rented a tow behind spider lift with 55' reach and began to piece it out (couldn't rig off the spider lift, no material handler capability). Then we brought on our log grapple, but dropped off the grapple and installed a hook instead so we could crane out leaders with slings -- worked like a champ. Things were going well until mid-afternoon when we had 3/4 of the brush down, when a huge storm rolled through. High gusting winds (70MPH) and severe thunderstorm watch, possibly tornadoes were predicted. Thankfully, the storm went north of us and hit the KC metro area more to our north, but we did see about 15 minutes of strong gusts as we were piecing out the last of the brush. Tossing it down, a lot of it went sideways!
At the end, both neighbors went halves on the hazard tree removal and were very happy and relieved to have it down. Not bad for a day's work!
We take it to the limit, boss. 500 lb. capacity basket, climber is ~130 lbs. We had a scale up on the basket and know that for sure the piece was only 369 lbs. Sometimes we turn it up to 11...
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