SeanKroll
Treehouser
If I was cutting on steep or really convoluted ground, where hard end or side binds come up fairly often...the answer to your query would be..."me, and many other wise fallers".
Only once can I remember needing the razors on a fall, as opposed to bucking. That was something I never will forget, and never have figured out the cause. I put in a perfectly normal conventional face on a stone dead (but not so long dead as to have lost it's structural integrity) 40"ish Doug fir in a campground.
I had a nice lay down a graveled road in the CG, and only needed to miss a new and expensive vault toilet by 15 or maybe 10 degrees at half the tree's height (200'+or-) out there on the other side of the road/lay. All well so far. Started the back cut, and maybe 12" short of hitting my intended hinge thickness, that bastardo set straight down on my 36" bar pulled by my Stihl 066. No warning. Just cutting strong, then bound dead.
Lucky for me, this was a campground job, so the pair of razor wedges where in the truck only 300 feet away. With them, and FOUR 8 inch hardheads, and TWO 12 inch double tapers, I was able finally to stand that tree up and finish the back cut, then send it on it's way. Missed the $9k vault toilet by 25 feet, just as planned
Stump autopsy showed some relatively minor heart rot, but over a foot of solid wood all around the stem. I still don't know why that one set down. To be clear, it did not just set back...the whole width of the backcut of the tree settled straight down, then shifted to the rear. It was weird, and still seems so after many a replay in my mind of the scene.
Burnham, I take you to be one to do fine at sizing up a situation and preparing for it, like a good professional sawyer would.
Bucking for timber logs puts sawyers into much different situations than when things are left to lay, or cut short. A very different world than accessible, front-country work.
Did you see conks or ID the pathogen?
I've only had one hinge squish down on the felling cut. It was weird! Phaeolus schweinitzii conks. Heart-rot. Leaning, so I didn't wedge it. Less leaning that I guessed, I guess.
I'm surprised how compromised hinges that have crazy concentrated weight on them don't crush regularly. Trees are amazing.
And, I think that the tension strength is something like double the compression strength. Someone correct me, if I'm wrong, please.
A large, hollow, neutral pull-tree gets a number of wedges in its backcut just to prevent all the load on the hinge area, stacking the odds in my favor. A 6' or so hollow-like-a-drum cottonwood with 4-6" of rind, started me on this line of thinking. Needs wedges in it anyway, just make it lots, and then pull with authority, leaving it only forcing on the hinge and a concentrated part of the stump for a short, short time.
