Tree felling vids

Obviously I'm rocking gloves working as a fitter, and I've kinda found the ones i prefer so that's what i run for tree work too. Leather drivers are awesome work gloves, once broken in you can feel as well as if you were bare handed. Some guys even smear them with oil as needed to make them softer or to help preserve them. This allows you to work with hot stuff and still feel the tools so you can work. They work great for rigging, allowing you to safely work with wire and chain, and work wonderfully for ground stuff on trees. In the air running a saw i like the grippy palm gloves, but everything else leather.

I've also found that Tillman is worth the price. I will get months out of a pair of their drivers, I'll get 6 months out of a pair of welding gloves at it pretty much full time. I try to take care of them and they last and last, what more can you ask for? This time a year I'll run 2 pairs of welding gloves at once, so you can switch out to dry gloves before you start getting shocked. Just tossed pair number 2 in the truck, got lit up earlier this week thru my lower back from the damn wire lanyard for extraction from yet another vault. They have different thickness gloves for different types of work, the tig gloves are super thin for the most minimal coverage possible for feel and dexterity while their mig gloves are a good general thickness and make absolutely wonderful work gloves. Stick gloves come in different types too.

The 1350s are their mig gloves that i love, when i was welding production i actually requested them from safety after i had a pair of the cotton Munk style gloves everyone used simply burst into flames from the heat. They looked into it and saw they were happy with the prices so they got a few pairs. It wasn't a month later and everyone in the whole plant had them for all tasks from pushing a broom to welding :lol: Safety even went so far as pushing them for fork trucks because of the propane bottles and the freezing skin risk. The cuffs can be annoying if you aren't used to cuffs so some people cut or roll them down, and scraps of old gloves are still handy for random stuff. They make excellent softeners when rigging, biting better on steel than even wood. This keeps steel chokers and chain in place by increasing the friction so they don't slide, a huge advantage when rigging steel with steel rigging.

Stick welding I'm completely sold on their 850s, the smooth elk hide stays flexible even from heat, and the berries just bounce off. Long cuffs keep the sparks out and with my padded arm pad from outlaw leather I'm decked in leather all the way to my left elbow. Only comfortable way you can do position work imo, the ability to anchor your off arm comfortably on hot surfaces is huge, not to mention the greatly reduced risk of shocking yourself from a drenched jacket grounding your arm. The gloves are thick enough it takes awhile to sweat thru them, and are so effective at resisting heat I'll run the first part of the rod with my left hand fingertips holding the rod like I'm shooting pool. This gives me tons of control and feeling when lighting up and doing the tie in, and then dropping my hand back to support once it's shorter and easier to control.

In tough overhead and jammed in places this makes it much easier to control the rod even if forced to hold it wierd or do it with your off hand, and helps to keep your fingers pointed towards the fire to protect your arms from berries bouncing in a cuff. The fitter cap and pancake hood completes the gear, being light and small but also perfect for deflecting fire with its simple shield shape, the brim of the fitter hat covering the ear as a last defense to the dreaded ear berry. The pancake being basically goggles keeps everything away from your eyes, and is minimally there to help you breathe fresh air away from the work. It all adds up to an exoskeleton of leather allowing you to safely crawl under and anchor your arm, lay on your back on a mud board and use your gear to keep the fire off you while you simply work.
 
Lotta good info there, thx.

Weird though, I bought a dozen Tillman work gloves, #1528k, the leather seemed good quality but the stitching on almost every pair fell apart after a day or two.
 
I found this vid interesting largely because the treework involved, trimming tall skinny coco palms in Hawaii, is so foreign to me, bears little resemblance to treework in the NE, and using those machetes looks dangerous AF, steel core lanyard or not!

 
I prune coconuts, and this stuff is inacurate and dangerous. They might have been doing it that way for ages but damn.
No second tie in, hacking at stuff just above their steel core. The dry brown sheath behind the flower spike is hard af, hacking at it...geeze.
A silky sugoi works really well, much safer, more accurate and leaves a cleaner tidier, cut. And you can throw another lanyard through the head without worrying about hacking through it and sit in your harness instead of standing on spikes all day.
I put an adjustable FS below the head and put my main line in it, and rappel down when finished. Avoids a second set of spike marks and is easier and more fun to descend.
I would never work a coconut with only one tie in and hack at it like that, sorry.
 
If I were to do a coconut, I believe I would do it exactly like you describe, Bermy. Makes much more sense to me.

Two is one and one is none, as they say.
 
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Not to mention it's wobbly af up there and bugs and compost.
Just the ergonomics of being up there on spikes, one tie in and having to swing a machete (mega cringe 😬)...why not work more safely and smarter with a Silky?
 
Based on seeing other of his vids in Hawaii, the owner/arborist instructing him seems to have it quite together, otherwise. And vid said he'd tried other ways and ended up choosing this way, so to each his own I guess.
 
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I am not sure that To Each Their Own applies. Is this legally compliant?

Remember the palm on fire video?

I try to not support videos by watching poor quality (IMO) techniques, etc. I just glimpsed a bit. Was that flipline looking rough? Maybe it is not from cutting tool damage.
 
Does he have ANY redundancy in his method? Redundancy can be overdone granted, but one attachment point...sheesh.
At the end of the day, he's there I'm not and the job is getting done, he does it his way and collects the $$$.
I Wish him long life and no injuries.
 
CurSedVoyce said:
Faster if he does not set a climb line. Safer? No. Hard to be productive when you're dead or broken. Just plain dumb. Sorry.
Click to expand...
Yep. I go up with flipline 540 wrap, then set my extra lines once I get to the top.

In the wider context, we all compete against the 'fast' ones when we take extra time for redundancy...who wins in the end?
I compete every day with the builder/landscaper/handyman with a chainsaw. Wonder how much their P/L covers outside scope of work, if they even have it.
They go for years no problems then BAM, one day, somewhere, the damage is way bigger than they can fix on their own.
 
Had a guy pay me 75.00 per since I did not spike his palms. Now, if I lived where you had to be more productive on palms to keep food on the table, probably just spike them. Set my line at the top. But you bet your ass I would set a line. Last ones I did were in bloom and buzzing with stinging insects. One nest is all it takes. Or a damn cut.
Find the niche. Funny how good customers appreciate safety.
 
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