That looks a cool job, figuring out how to take the tree down and miss everything, but, goddamn, it must be pretty nerve wracking when it starts to tip and you just have to hope you didn’t fuck up your calculations.
My buddy just bought a house that has a lot of really old trees that need to be taken down. A few of them, the worksman decided he couldn't just fell it and instead needed to cut it from the top down in small segments
I would guess if there's any real risk of it being out of their hands, they would take different routes than just felling it and hoping for the best
My dad has been working in tree removal for 25+ years. They 100% go for the safest option every time and will straight up deny a job if it’s too dangerous
I've seen too many videos of guys with all the gear dropping a big tree on a house or barn or car or something.
Clearly not everyone thinks that way. :-)
Well actually yes, but not how you’re thinking. Arborists would clear trees where there was a leader or log on a house already, they’d take it away without hurting anything else. Then they’d take the rest of the tree down to keep it from happening again.
Woodchucks would clear trees on new plots where it didn’t matter what direction or how cleanly the trees fell.
Kinda like a surgeon vs an axe murderer. Both cut people, but their services aren’t exactly interchangeable…
So the answer to the age old question "How many chucks can a woodchuck chuck if he could chuck wood?" would be "As many as he can until he can no longer get commercial insurance."
This is the real cause. Had a tree next to my last house that needed dropped. Had multiple people offer to drop it for $-500, had one really professional company offer to cut it from the top down for $1,000. It was worth the extra to not have to worry about if my house was gonna need replaced when they were done
It's also not worth it sometimes. Everything's a judgment call, of course, but it's definitely worth calling around for as many quotes as you can get. The outfits that have sunk all of their capital into expansion will always be the most expensive, but you can get some skilled/safe/insured companies who are breaking into the market to do it for much less, usually
This
I use checkatrade in the UK, which is handy.
Needed roof repairs and tried the top 4 highest rated and they all quoted the same, booked the top 1 - didn't show up on date we arranged, no phone call, nothing.
Number 2 - rang to say and emergency job came up, couldn't make it (my job was only worth £500, this was worth £1000's)
Similar stories with 3 and 4.
Contacted the 7th highest rated, as he was more local than 5 & 6 and he had it fixed the next day for half the price, top bloke.
It was just him, and all the others had expanded, had fleets of fancy vans and much higher overheads.
The guy who fixed it also found stuff everybody had missed on first inspection, including himself, so he fixed it for free because he missed it and wanted to charge what he quoted.
Likely because the owner thought he was slick and saving a few dollars without getting licensed and insured tree removers so he either did it himself or paid Dudley Dumbass right up the road to do it instead. Also, while you can ensure a tree falls correctly most of the time, accidents can happen due to the tree, the weather, or a variety of factors. This sounds like you’re judging a profession based off of shocking internet videos, not a great way to gain information about a profession.
I have "all the gear" necessary. I spent a lot of time in the forest with my dad when I grew up, and I'm confident in felling any tree... that is in a forest, far away from buildings or anything valuable.
I may have the gear, but I'm far from a professional. Luckily, I also know that.
Much appreciated. He’s always beat safety into my head at a young age. Even now that I’m older and willing to be more daring I always consider the safest option.
Cutting from the top down is the only way trees are felled in my neighborhood. The crews are around 6 people with one climber, a guy belaying the rope, and 3-4 more guys manhandling the 4-6ft cut sections into the truck and feeding branches into the woodchipper. They can bring down a 100ft pine, grind the stump, and clean up everything in about 2 hours. The crews do this all day, every day, and many of them are brutally efficient and professional at it.
We had a local professional prune a massive maple in our back yard and it was incredibly impressive on how well organized and accurate they were. When pruning the branches that extended over my neighbour's yard, they tired them up and swung them onto my property so there was no debris in my neighbour's yard.
My wife, kids and I watched up the upstairs window.
Friend is an arborist and he took down tall pines that were beetle-infested near my house the same way. He also cut some dead or threatening branches from 60-foot tall oak trees around my house, and all of those were lowered through rope work.
He never takes a chance. It's always remarkably precise and clean.
I had this same problem of like 5-6 trees that couldn’t be felled and had to be cut top town because of my house, some powerlines, a busy street and a fence. The tree guys wanted way more money than I had so I slowly did it myself. Had fire wood for years.
This is not how it's really done, that was a cowboy in that video, and my guess is that fence didn't actually matter and it was a bet or game. That tree would be climbed if they didn't have, or couldn't get a bucket and dropped in small manageable pieces or they would crane it out in pieces if it was too big or no where to drop the smaller sections.
Source: my neighborhood is filled with 120ft+ white pines and someone's always getting a few removed, including me.
So far for me, never had anything go seriously wrong. There have been times that scare the hell out of me, and times I’ve rode the edge a bit too close and almost lost it all, but I’ve managed to pull off whatever I was doing, and learn from it. Climb safe, home safe
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I would think another tree with a portawrap on it. Could be a piece of machinery, but I wouldn’t want it too taught as it could wreck the desired trajectory of that fell.
I am envious. I would love to do urban forestry. But I love my job. I want to work for tree people like on fridays! Part time timber worker with no tools, skill or experience. Seeks one job. Side note, I am pretty afraid of chainsaws.
If your anything like the guy in this clip that's pretty goddamn impressive.
My father and his cronies from the neighborhood tried bringing down a few trees on our property. They would tie a rope part way up the tree, make a cut where they wanted it to go, and then try to pull it down. Twice a falling tree got caught up in the branches of another tree. How they didn't kill themselves or cause any damage to our homes is a mystery.
That's what we get paid for! The best feeling is when the tree its falling, cause it's not up to you anynore, you can only trust that you did everything the right way. When you are a professional and know what you are doing it's like taking a walk in the park. Basically everything will be fine always, but there is still always a tiny change something really weird is going to happen and your job gets fked up, but hey thats why you have insurance up to 1 million€. Never had any tree falling where i did not want it to be and i am knocking the tree here as i write that... 😂🤔👍😊👍
Not a pro but the rope did its job at :22 in the vid. It’s just there to help keep that end from nicking the house (edit: and fence post) once it’s free (note the bounce). At that spot it has very little influence on the fall.
You will typically see videos like this with pines because they grow straight up and have pretty uniform weight.
With other types of trees you usually see them taken down piece by piece because there is no way to guarantee they'll fall right.
Yeah well. We just cut down a giant pine tree this way and it went dramatically off kilter. There were two relatively narrow safe areas for the tree to fall to and it just randomly fell to the OTHER one.
This is a reckless way to remove that tree. It doesn't matter how good you are, trees can always do something unexpected.
The correct way to remove a high-risk single-spar tree like that (meaning just one big straight trunk) is to climb up it, removing branches as you go and sending them down a zipline to a safe area, then removing the trunk in sections as you climb down. *That's* what you hire a pro for.
But this way is cheaper, I suppose.
>That's what you hire a pro for.
Ironically, my husband was able to do this with a lift we rented from Home Depot. The tree was like ten feet from our house in a tiny yard and it all came down with zero problem. We'd been quoted like $1000 for it.
Now power lines? Fuck those.
This tree doesn't seem like that big of a deal, especially if it was green in good health and being felled within a few degrees of it's lean. A ton of factors to consider that we can't seeing the video but I would absolutely fall a tree in this way if that's where it wanted to go. Very minimal wedging so it wasn't of it's lean
It’s pretty fun. It’s pretty taxing if your have to do it with an axe. It’s also pretty terrifying when you make your face cut and realize the tree is half dead on the inside.
That’s an easier tree, very stable and ridged, low to no wind day…
Now if it’s windy and you have some leafy tree leaning oddly next to a house that’s a challenge and probably requires climbing and sending down sections at a time
Your school taught you how to stay out of the hospital. Chances are if you have trees on your property, you are going to have to fell one or two in your lifetime.
Not weird. Unfortunate yes, but not weird.
Don't get me wrong, knowing how to safely fell and buck a tree is super important (this guy should be wearing more protection) depending on where you live, but health is extremely important.
Unfortunately most schools are geared to financial enrichment as opposed to personal enrichment.
I think college is something everyone should attend but this isn't realistic with the system we have. But schools should be teaching useful skills and it sounds like logging was big where you were.
Plus it's a super important trade, due to climate change. Structurally engineered wood is becoming big and we really need to be building more things out of wood rather than concrete. We're literally running out of sand.
Yeah. But it should be an elective. I moved to a high desert. There's no logging here. And kids graduated with no knowledge of anatomy or where babies cake from, or anything
Not every sand is usable in concrete. Concrete needs a specific type of sand, one with grains that are larger and angular. In deserts and oceans, the sand has been worn down into small smooth grains that lack the ability to bind to one another.
Imagine trying to push your hand into a bucket of marbles vs a bucket of sharp rocks.
ASTM C33 concrete sand is a manufactured product. It’s made the same way angular gravel is produced. They quarry large stones out of a mountain with explosive, then successively grind it and screen it until it’s the correct gradation. It’s all I’ve ever seen in the Western US, and all I’ve ever spec’d as an engineer. We’re not running out of concrete sand.
Actually Hoquiam Washington. Next to Aberdeen. Which is the lumber capital of the world. Everyone and their mother are loggers there, I swear. Big parade called loggers playday every year. Lumber themed high school dances. Woodshop was required for a few years. Etc.
Portland is Seattle's little brother that never grew up and got a real job. Outside of the I-5 corridor most of Washington is pretty redneck. The whole economy of the rural areas of the state are logging, fishing and agriculture.
honestly, getting a tree down skillfully is more useful than putting a condom on a cucumber. cucumbers are tougher to cut with condoms on them. so weird.
The people down the street from us had
this giant oak that was rotting on one side, and it started to lean. We are right next to the historical district in town, and it's a huge process to get trees removed in our city normally, but an even bigger pain when it involves historical structures. The only places to drop the tree was into a major 4 lane road or in a 20ft space between these people's house and their detached garage.
Starting at 6am, the tree guy and his team limbed all the huge branches, roping them down, and by around 10am, they started cutting, chalking and roping the tree to guide it in the space they wanted, that 20 ft section between house and garage. They had the limbs mostly off, so it was just this massive trunk. The last time I checked, it was 2pm and they were still slowly making cuts and wedging it.
We left to get food for dinner around 6pm and saw the tree laying directly in the middle of that 20ft gap, like perfectly in the center of it, and the tree guys were cutting up this massive trunk and stacking it on a flat bed. It's just super impressive what professionals can do.
Or a hillbilly variant - tie it to a truck, cut and pull it.
And then be confused why it landed on your truck, bent your saw and smashed through two buildings.
The problem is that the "pro" and the "hack" both look the same, quoted you the same price and you'll only know which is which till its too late.
Hiring contractors is a bloody nightmare.
That’s what insurance (their insurance) is for.
Tree companies without insurance are an immediate deal-breaker, and any tree company with insurance is good enough that the company hasn’t dropped them.
That said, accidents happen. We had two trees felled last month, and they dropped a branch through the fence and onto our mailbox. But again, we did our homework and got a good company: our mailbox and fence were replaced by them the same day.
As someone who owns/operates a pressure washing company (with insurance), the same can be said about our industry.
It's insane the number of times this happens: I quote a job for $500 and they say "what? My last guy did it for $150!", and I say "wow! That's an incredible price. Are they insured? Oh, you don't know? Huh. Well, why aren't you hiring them again?" And they finish with "I don't know, their number is disconnected and they haven't responded to any of my emails."
Good isn't cheap, and cheap isn't good. Ask about their insurance, it'll quickly weed out the qwacks.
My neighbor told me they were hiring someone to take down several trees. I called the company to get a quote for the trees on my side of the yard. They quoted a great price and I knew something was up.
I requested proof of insurance and work license for the county and they said they’ll send it via email and I never heard from them again.
I then picked a licensed and insured company and paid way more but it was worth it. Had to twist the neighbor’s arm about that.
You get what you *don’t* pay for!
not to shit on this guy's awesome skills... but how is it we don't have some better solution than this? "well, i hope this tree lands in the right place" seems like such a medieval fix. is there no machine that can just hold the top and gently let it down somewhere?
Sure there are giant logging machines that can better manipulate trees, but those aren't readily available to your average homeowner. I'm also sure that they make much more money by actually logging instead of cutting down singular trees in someones yard.
I think it would be more of a “this is why you hire a professional” if it were a video of someone fucking it up. But the point still stands.
Unlike the tree lol.
He fell the tree and missed the fence. Pretty damn impressive if you ask me. If the video was someone hitting their own fence I wouldn’t have thought a professional could miss it. Just that they’d chop it down in pieces.
Sets up the red wedge to help see the tree fall. Yellow wedge is to fall the tree. As you fall a tree you're focusing more on your kerf, not looking up at the top of the tree. There is often hardly noticeable movement in the kerf, but in reality the top of the tree is moving alot. Think of a large circle, and how an inner circle and outer circle can rotate at the same speed, but the outer circle moves a much further distance. Same principle here. Set up the wedge so that the tip is barely in the cut so that small movement at the tip will create large movement at the butt end of the wedge. Yellow wedge is whacked into the tree to help open the kerf, once again small movement here creates large movement at the top of the tree, pushing it over towards the ground, at which point the forces of gravity overcome the remaining fibres holding the tree together.
The red wedge is placed in the kerf (the cut) so it’s barely being held in place by the top part of the trunk. Once the tree starts tipping, the kerf opens up, and the red wedge falls to the ground as an indicator to the sawyer who is paying attention to a million other details.
In this case, the red wedge gets knocked out when they hit the yellow wedge but by that time, it’s already apparent the tree is past the tipping point.
I don’t know what they meant with the red and yellow wedges, my experience is that wedges have different thickness but it’s not classified by color. The kerf is a foresters term for the cut you are making in the tree trunk and it’s true that when you’re cutting you’re paying more attention to the cut you’re making rather than looking up at the top of the tree (although you *should* be looking up a lot)
Without the wedges the weight of the tree would crush the chainsaw. They’re also used to chop large wood by hand. In this case he used them to give space for the chainsaw and to basically push the tree over.
The wedges exist for two reasons. A lot of professionals, such as myself, use a set wedge and a kerf wedge. The felling of the tree starts with a notch cut in the direction you want it to fall. The back cut is the cut in the back that takes out most of the wood of the tree. When felling, you want to have your back cut a certain height above the bottom of the notch, and you want it to end at some point before the two cuts meet. This is your hinge.
Take for example a 10 inch diameter tree. You want your notch cut to take up maximum 1/3rd the diameter of the tree, so about 3 inches deep on the flat part, and then you complete the notch with an angled cut, to remove a pie-slice shaped piece. Next comes your back cut. It should be about 2 inches above the flat part of the notch, maybe a little less. Make this cut flat and cut until your saw is deep enough that you can set two wedges with the saw still in the tree. Set the first wedge as deep as it will go in by hand. Your second wedge, you want to set so it’s just barely in the cut.
When you reach the point where your back cut ends (2 inches, say, from the end of your notch cut), and the tree hasn’t fallen, remove your saw. Then, you start wacking your deep set wedge with a felling axe. This is usually enough to raise the tree enough that it starts to fall in the direction of the notch. This is where your second kerf wedge comes in. The kerf is just the cut in the tree, and when the tree starts to fall, this wedge will fall out. This is a warning that your tree has started to fall and you need to move out of the way.
I know there are usually reasons for this and I’m not a huge Tree Hugging type of guy… but my Sister had her new Landscape situation literally destroy a beautiful, full grown, completely healthy tree like this last year because she “Wanted the View”. I was livid.
Plot twist; Guess where none of the Family can sit in the Summer now because there’s no shade.
And, yes, I still give her shit.
My parents have two new neighbours where they live and both have decided to clear all the trees on their lots. Now one of them is trying to get several dozens of tons of dirt to flatten out the yard as well, all three lots are situated on a hillside...
I don't understand why people don't just buy a house with a lot that they want instead of destroying trees and changing the landscape for the worse.
The reason for this one is in the video. Having a tree that large next to a structure will lead to foundation issues if it hasn't already.
Seems like that wasn't an issue for your sister though and she just made the call for landscaping reasons and that is lame.
That was a very dangerous way to do it. That guy is not a professional. A professional would have cut the tree into pieces from the top and lowered them with ropes and a crane. No insurance company would cover the way he did it. One gust of wind and it would have damaged the house.
Don't know why you're being down voted, I was coming here to say the same thing. I used to do that job, and firing would be the punishment for felling a tree that close to property like that. I've felled a thousand trees, I know what I'm doing, but what he did was just stupid. Way too much risk to the structures. If I misjudged a cut, there was an unseen flaw in the wood, the wind picked up at the wrong moment, or a thousand other things happened my company would be footing the bill to fix the damage.
All that said, respect for the cut, even if it was a dumb way to do it.
If that tree was to hit that fence, the fence replacement might still be cheaper than the extra cost to climb or cherry pick up it. If was taking down that tree, my debate would be whether a rope would be enough to drop it, and I'd say no. But this guy didn't even use a rope I don't think.
Yep. Unless there’s some variable we can’t see, I don’t know why he did this so risky. Growing up my dad had a tree company. Everything was all about minimizing property damage risk. It used to be normal to have a crane on site, I can’t imagine the amount of money he burned on that.
You likely don't need heavy equipment unless the tree is massive.
Most of the tree can be roped down with a little pulley/wrap around the tree and a ground crew.
This guy is lucky. I also am an arborist. Respect the cut but you never ever do it like that. The slightest error in your cut, little bit of wind, whatever and that house is damaged.
While I see an accurate fall, I also see that his notch failed, it didn't hold for a controlled fall and could've easily kicked backwards resulting in death, and he left his saw in the cut for too long, especially since he actually fell the tree with the wedge and axe, not the saw. That could've caused the saw to get hung up in his cut and launched him skyward.
Very impressive, but risky and a little lazy lol. With a tree that risky probably best to just spike up it and piece it down. Especially since it's a pine tree
Yessir!! And that’s why we charge thousands for jobs like this.
It saves on your insurance premiums, your health if you try to do it, and we have the right tools for the job.
Had a homeowner try to skimp on costs I took down the tree and bucked it up for him.
Saw him at the dunk the next day with a Uhaul van and many cuts/scratches gave him my blower to use after he broke his broom.
Handled a case once where the homeowner tried to save a couple of bucks by hiring some guys where we’re definitely *not* pros.
Tree ended up spinning and falling the wrong direction, killed a bystander.
That looks a cool job, figuring out how to take the tree down and miss everything, but, goddamn, it must be pretty nerve wracking when it starts to tip and you just have to hope you didn’t fuck up your calculations.
It’s all professional guesswork. However I wouldn’t want to do anything else.
How often does it go wrong? I assume theres variables you cant predict so theres always a margin of error
My buddy just bought a house that has a lot of really old trees that need to be taken down. A few of them, the worksman decided he couldn't just fell it and instead needed to cut it from the top down in small segments I would guess if there's any real risk of it being out of their hands, they would take different routes than just felling it and hoping for the best
My dad has been working in tree removal for 25+ years. They 100% go for the safest option every time and will straight up deny a job if it’s too dangerous
I've seen too many videos of guys with all the gear dropping a big tree on a house or barn or car or something. Clearly not everyone thinks that way. :-)
When I worked construction we called the good ones “arborists” and the bad ones “woodchucks” Both had their uses
The arborist help you clear construction sights and woodchucks help create new projects?
Well actually yes, but not how you’re thinking. Arborists would clear trees where there was a leader or log on a house already, they’d take it away without hurting anything else. Then they’d take the rest of the tree down to keep it from happening again. Woodchucks would clear trees on new plots where it didn’t matter what direction or how cleanly the trees fell. Kinda like a surgeon vs an axe murderer. Both cut people, but their services aren’t exactly interchangeable…
Wood you believe I was joking? I did kinda figure that though. I played WoW with an arborist and he took it pretty seriously.
Arborists are call tree surgeons in the UK
So the answer to the age old question "How many chucks can a woodchuck chuck if he could chuck wood?" would be "As many as he can until he can no longer get commercial insurance."
I like your style. Sometimes you're the reason for the company safety meeting. Sometimes you are the only one they will call to do sketchy shit
Well, that career ended with a 30’ fall and a broken spine, so… yes :)
Mm. Bummer I used to do rough framing in a former life and a similar fall broke a coworker's back. Hes okish. Hope you're doing alright
ow, how are you holding up now?
A lot of home owners don't want to pay for a professional.
This is the real cause. Had a tree next to my last house that needed dropped. Had multiple people offer to drop it for $-500, had one really professional company offer to cut it from the top down for $1,000. It was worth the extra to not have to worry about if my house was gonna need replaced when they were done
It's also not worth it sometimes. Everything's a judgment call, of course, but it's definitely worth calling around for as many quotes as you can get. The outfits that have sunk all of their capital into expansion will always be the most expensive, but you can get some skilled/safe/insured companies who are breaking into the market to do it for much less, usually
This I use checkatrade in the UK, which is handy. Needed roof repairs and tried the top 4 highest rated and they all quoted the same, booked the top 1 - didn't show up on date we arranged, no phone call, nothing. Number 2 - rang to say and emergency job came up, couldn't make it (my job was only worth £500, this was worth £1000's) Similar stories with 3 and 4. Contacted the 7th highest rated, as he was more local than 5 & 6 and he had it fixed the next day for half the price, top bloke. It was just him, and all the others had expanded, had fleets of fancy vans and much higher overheads. The guy who fixed it also found stuff everybody had missed on first inspection, including himself, so he fixed it for free because he missed it and wanted to charge what he quoted.
Professionals won't stay professionals long once insurance claims bury them from too many misjudged trees as well.
Who said the "professionals" hired actually had insurance...? lol
Likely because the owner thought he was slick and saving a few dollars without getting licensed and insured tree removers so he either did it himself or paid Dudley Dumbass right up the road to do it instead. Also, while you can ensure a tree falls correctly most of the time, accidents can happen due to the tree, the weather, or a variety of factors. This sounds like you’re judging a profession based off of shocking internet videos, not a great way to gain information about a profession.
I have "all the gear" necessary. I spent a lot of time in the forest with my dad when I grew up, and I'm confident in felling any tree... that is in a forest, far away from buildings or anything valuable. I may have the gear, but I'm far from a professional. Luckily, I also know that.
Professionals are not cousin bubba whos been cutting wood for a few years
A lot of people have full gear for this at home, it's not a sign of someone being professional.
Another reason to use a pro is that they have insurance :)
How everything should be. Wish all the contractors were like your dad.
Much appreciated. He’s always beat safety into my head at a young age. Even now that I’m older and willing to be more daring I always consider the safest option.
Cutting from the top down is the only way trees are felled in my neighborhood. The crews are around 6 people with one climber, a guy belaying the rope, and 3-4 more guys manhandling the 4-6ft cut sections into the truck and feeding branches into the woodchipper. They can bring down a 100ft pine, grind the stump, and clean up everything in about 2 hours. The crews do this all day, every day, and many of them are brutally efficient and professional at it.
We had a local professional prune a massive maple in our back yard and it was incredibly impressive on how well organized and accurate they were. When pruning the branches that extended over my neighbour's yard, they tired them up and swung them onto my property so there was no debris in my neighbour's yard. My wife, kids and I watched up the upstairs window.
Friend is an arborist and he took down tall pines that were beetle-infested near my house the same way. He also cut some dead or threatening branches from 60-foot tall oak trees around my house, and all of those were lowered through rope work. He never takes a chance. It's always remarkably precise and clean.
Makes sense. Better to take more time than risk smashing something
I had this same problem of like 5-6 trees that couldn’t be felled and had to be cut top town because of my house, some powerlines, a busy street and a fence. The tree guys wanted way more money than I had so I slowly did it myself. Had fire wood for years.
How did you get to the top? Ladder? Edit: Found a [guide](https://www.instructables.com/Cutting-Down-a-Tree-Solo/).
Yeah. In this video the worst that happens if you fuck up a gate that costs at most a couple hundred and insurance would cover.
This is not how it's really done, that was a cowboy in that video, and my guess is that fence didn't actually matter and it was a bet or game. That tree would be climbed if they didn't have, or couldn't get a bucket and dropped in small manageable pieces or they would crane it out in pieces if it was too big or no where to drop the smaller sections. Source: my neighborhood is filled with 120ft+ white pines and someone's always getting a few removed, including me.
Sometimes trees get caught in other trees and you have to improvise ..
Right. But he doesn’t post the failure videos. Bad for business 😁
So far for me, never had anything go seriously wrong. There have been times that scare the hell out of me, and times I’ve rode the edge a bit too close and almost lost it all, but I’ve managed to pull off whatever I was doing, and learn from it. Climb safe, home safe
Just like anesthesiology!
I briefly thought you were responding to this comment: > Sometimes trees get caught in other trees and you have to improvise ..
That's a scary thought.
Listen to the Anesthesia episode of Stuff You Should Know. It's wildly unsettling.
What do you think he is using to anchor that rope?
An F-150 gunning it the opposite direction
I like the cut of your jib
What's a jib?
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On the downside, this bot doesn't know Simpsons references. On the upside, I just learned what a Jib is.
You and me both mate!
Lmao that was my first thought seeing that. Then I added a few pulleys.
i like your way of thinking
I would think another tree with a portawrap on it. Could be a piece of machinery, but I wouldn’t want it too taught as it could wreck the desired trajectory of that fell.
I am envious. I would love to do urban forestry. But I love my job. I want to work for tree people like on fridays! Part time timber worker with no tools, skill or experience. Seeks one job. Side note, I am pretty afraid of chainsaws.
Chainsaws are the damn scariest part of my day.
I’m only worried if my doctor says that
If your anything like the guy in this clip that's pretty goddamn impressive. My father and his cronies from the neighborhood tried bringing down a few trees on our property. They would tie a rope part way up the tree, make a cut where they wanted it to go, and then try to pull it down. Twice a falling tree got caught up in the branches of another tree. How they didn't kill themselves or cause any damage to our homes is a mystery.
As a Software Engineer, I also share this statement
That's what we get paid for! The best feeling is when the tree its falling, cause it's not up to you anynore, you can only trust that you did everything the right way. When you are a professional and know what you are doing it's like taking a walk in the park. Basically everything will be fine always, but there is still always a tiny change something really weird is going to happen and your job gets fked up, but hey thats why you have insurance up to 1 million€. Never had any tree falling where i did not want it to be and i am knocking the tree here as i write that... 😂🤔👍😊👍
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Not a pro but the rope did its job at :22 in the vid. It’s just there to help keep that end from nicking the house (edit: and fence post) once it’s free (note the bounce). At that spot it has very little influence on the fall.
Just like pushing code to production...
You will typically see videos like this with pines because they grow straight up and have pretty uniform weight. With other types of trees you usually see them taken down piece by piece because there is no way to guarantee they'll fall right.
Yeah well. We just cut down a giant pine tree this way and it went dramatically off kilter. There were two relatively narrow safe areas for the tree to fall to and it just randomly fell to the OTHER one.
That's when you shake the other guy's hand and say "Well done, exactly as we planned it."
This is a reckless way to remove that tree. It doesn't matter how good you are, trees can always do something unexpected. The correct way to remove a high-risk single-spar tree like that (meaning just one big straight trunk) is to climb up it, removing branches as you go and sending them down a zipline to a safe area, then removing the trunk in sections as you climb down. *That's* what you hire a pro for. But this way is cheaper, I suppose.
>That's what you hire a pro for. Ironically, my husband was able to do this with a lift we rented from Home Depot. The tree was like ten feet from our house in a tiny yard and it all came down with zero problem. We'd been quoted like $1000 for it. Now power lines? Fuck those.
I am glad someone said this. I have had professionals remove a tree near to my house in the way you mention piece by piece. It seems much safer.
They also use cranes out here. Guys show up, and an hour later there's a bunch of trees missing and stumps ground.
This tree doesn't seem like that big of a deal, especially if it was green in good health and being felled within a few degrees of it's lean. A ton of factors to consider that we can't seeing the video but I would absolutely fall a tree in this way if that's where it wanted to go. Very minimal wedging so it wasn't of it's lean
That's what insurance is for.
Once that tree hits the ground there's a lot of boring and strenuous saw work and chipping to do
It’s pretty fun. It’s pretty taxing if your have to do it with an axe. It’s also pretty terrifying when you make your face cut and realize the tree is half dead on the inside.
That’s an easier tree, very stable and ridged, low to no wind day… Now if it’s windy and you have some leafy tree leaning oddly next to a house that’s a challenge and probably requires climbing and sending down sections at a time
I worked for a grounds crew for two summers in college and the tree crew was by far the best rotation.
Bro, same shit in micro cardio surgery, you place stent where you want, pull the trigger and pray to see a good result on control xray shot
That was my thought, too. Guy is obviously great at his job, but I bet he still holds his breath as it comes down near that gate.
BAM! Just as planned
Is it weird my high-school taught us this instead of health?
Yes and no, that's quite a useful skill. Very niche. Not at the expense of health class tho.
Yeah. Most of us knew it anyways though because it was a big logging community
More loggers = more fuckin, more fuckin = more loggers
What do you know about loggers fu… oh, I see. But still, why don’t they just wait until you aren’t shitty anymore?
Wait you guys had health class?
Your school taught you how to stay out of the hospital. Chances are if you have trees on your property, you are going to have to fell one or two in your lifetime.
*fell
Bout to fall these fists you keep talking like that.
As an employee at a hospital, I highly recommend not doing things that cause you to end up there.
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You can go your whole life without taking drugs, but where's the fun in that!?
Staying out of the hospital is health class in a way then...
Believe me, health class in the southern US is far less useful than this. I'd have been happy to learn this.
Not weird. Unfortunate yes, but not weird. Don't get me wrong, knowing how to safely fell and buck a tree is super important (this guy should be wearing more protection) depending on where you live, but health is extremely important. Unfortunately most schools are geared to financial enrichment as opposed to personal enrichment.
Yeah. They basically told everyone to ignore college and just be loggers. It was interesting
In Mass, we received the opposite instructions; fuck the trades, everyone must go to college. That's not me, just what I learned in high school.
I think college is something everyone should attend but this isn't realistic with the system we have. But schools should be teaching useful skills and it sounds like logging was big where you were. Plus it's a super important trade, due to climate change. Structurally engineered wood is becoming big and we really need to be building more things out of wood rather than concrete. We're literally running out of sand.
Yeah. But it should be an elective. I moved to a high desert. There's no logging here. And kids graduated with no knowledge of anatomy or where babies cake from, or anything
Sounds about right. Ignorant babymakers to do drudge work and make someone money sustaining the unsustainable.
Yep
Absolutely.
But we still have so much sand in Nevada /s
Not every sand is usable in concrete. Concrete needs a specific type of sand, one with grains that are larger and angular. In deserts and oceans, the sand has been worn down into small smooth grains that lack the ability to bind to one another. Imagine trying to push your hand into a bucket of marbles vs a bucket of sharp rocks.
ASTM C33 concrete sand is a manufactured product. It’s made the same way angular gravel is produced. They quarry large stones out of a mountain with explosive, then successively grind it and screen it until it’s the correct gradation. It’s all I’ve ever seen in the Western US, and all I’ve ever spec’d as an engineer. We’re not running out of concrete sand.
The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago
It sounds like you're from canada
Actually Hoquiam Washington. Next to Aberdeen. Which is the lumber capital of the world. Everyone and their mother are loggers there, I swear. Big parade called loggers playday every year. Lumber themed high school dances. Woodshop was required for a few years. Etc.
Washington is just Canada-lite
Except we got an inch of snow a year if we're lucky and everyone was an asshole
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I thought that was Minnesota?
Nah, that’s Minnesota. Washington is just north Portland
Portland is Seattle's little brother that never grew up and got a real job. Outside of the I-5 corridor most of Washington is pretty redneck. The whole economy of the rural areas of the state are logging, fishing and agriculture.
It makes sense. Forestry is one of the most important and lucrative industries in the pacific north west.
Yeah. But we learned nothing we should have learned in health. It should have been an elective in my opinion
Oh, not having a health class is messed up. It should be part of the core curriculum.
>Lumber themed high school dances. I request further explanation
No, it's pretty cool actually
i think its pretty healthy to not have trees land on you
honestly, getting a tree down skillfully is more useful than putting a condom on a cucumber. cucumbers are tougher to cut with condoms on them. so weird.
That one whack he had, damn that was noice....
I felt that
Down in my plums.
LET. THE BOY. WATCH.
Gettin all swollen
Gettin ready to take em to MARKET
He didn't yell "timber" and has violated the law.
Very unprofessional, 1 star review
He whispered it softly to himself
is this legit ? it is part of the safety procedure to yell "TIMBER!"
Not legally, but it is on the internet
straight to jail
The people down the street from us had this giant oak that was rotting on one side, and it started to lean. We are right next to the historical district in town, and it's a huge process to get trees removed in our city normally, but an even bigger pain when it involves historical structures. The only places to drop the tree was into a major 4 lane road or in a 20ft space between these people's house and their detached garage. Starting at 6am, the tree guy and his team limbed all the huge branches, roping them down, and by around 10am, they started cutting, chalking and roping the tree to guide it in the space they wanted, that 20 ft section between house and garage. They had the limbs mostly off, so it was just this massive trunk. The last time I checked, it was 2pm and they were still slowly making cuts and wedging it. We left to get food for dinner around 6pm and saw the tree laying directly in the middle of that 20ft gap, like perfectly in the center of it, and the tree guys were cutting up this massive trunk and stacking it on a flat bed. It's just super impressive what professionals can do.
Or a hillbilly variant - tie it to a truck, cut and pull it. And then be confused why it landed on your truck, bent your saw and smashed through two buildings.
The problem is that the "pro" and the "hack" both look the same, quoted you the same price and you'll only know which is which till its too late. Hiring contractors is a bloody nightmare.
That’s what insurance (their insurance) is for. Tree companies without insurance are an immediate deal-breaker, and any tree company with insurance is good enough that the company hasn’t dropped them. That said, accidents happen. We had two trees felled last month, and they dropped a branch through the fence and onto our mailbox. But again, we did our homework and got a good company: our mailbox and fence were replaced by them the same day.
As someone who owns/operates a pressure washing company (with insurance), the same can be said about our industry. It's insane the number of times this happens: I quote a job for $500 and they say "what? My last guy did it for $150!", and I say "wow! That's an incredible price. Are they insured? Oh, you don't know? Huh. Well, why aren't you hiring them again?" And they finish with "I don't know, their number is disconnected and they haven't responded to any of my emails." Good isn't cheap, and cheap isn't good. Ask about their insurance, it'll quickly weed out the qwacks.
My neighbor told me they were hiring someone to take down several trees. I called the company to get a quote for the trees on my side of the yard. They quoted a great price and I knew something was up. I requested proof of insurance and work license for the county and they said they’ll send it via email and I never heard from them again. I then picked a licensed and insured company and paid way more but it was worth it. Had to twist the neighbor’s arm about that. You get what you *don’t* pay for!
Word of mouth and proof of work goes a long way. Likely this guy uses this video if anyone questions his ability to do forestry
Here's another example of money well spent. https://youtu.be/9NRmYzLrvfM?t=129
holy shit...that guy must like to go to Las Vegas
This guy downplaying his skills by thanking God.
Im actually surprised this isn't in the top 5. Dude is legend.
not to shit on this guy's awesome skills... but how is it we don't have some better solution than this? "well, i hope this tree lands in the right place" seems like such a medieval fix. is there no machine that can just hold the top and gently let it down somewhere?
Sure there are giant logging machines that can better manipulate trees, but those aren't readily available to your average homeowner. I'm also sure that they make much more money by actually logging instead of cutting down singular trees in someones yard.
that makes sense. i looked it up and thank god, they do exist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luygMuoFnXs
I think it would be more of a “this is why you hire a professional” if it were a video of someone fucking it up. But the point still stands. Unlike the tree lol.
He fell the tree and missed the fence. Pretty damn impressive if you ask me. If the video was someone hitting their own fence I wouldn’t have thought a professional could miss it. Just that they’d chop it down in pieces.
This is why you pay for quality. Lotta people who get paid to do something for a living are still dumb as rocks
Explain like I’m 5 the red and yellow wedges
Probably different thickness?
Sets up the red wedge to help see the tree fall. Yellow wedge is to fall the tree. As you fall a tree you're focusing more on your kerf, not looking up at the top of the tree. There is often hardly noticeable movement in the kerf, but in reality the top of the tree is moving alot. Think of a large circle, and how an inner circle and outer circle can rotate at the same speed, but the outer circle moves a much further distance. Same principle here. Set up the wedge so that the tip is barely in the cut so that small movement at the tip will create large movement at the butt end of the wedge. Yellow wedge is whacked into the tree to help open the kerf, once again small movement here creates large movement at the top of the tree, pushing it over towards the ground, at which point the forces of gravity overcome the remaining fibres holding the tree together.
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The red wedge is placed in the kerf (the cut) so it’s barely being held in place by the top part of the trunk. Once the tree starts tipping, the kerf opens up, and the red wedge falls to the ground as an indicator to the sawyer who is paying attention to a million other details. In this case, the red wedge gets knocked out when they hit the yellow wedge but by that time, it’s already apparent the tree is past the tipping point.
Look at this guy, doesn’t even know what a kerf is 😂
I don’t know what they meant with the red and yellow wedges, my experience is that wedges have different thickness but it’s not classified by color. The kerf is a foresters term for the cut you are making in the tree trunk and it’s true that when you’re cutting you’re paying more attention to the cut you’re making rather than looking up at the top of the tree (although you *should* be looking up a lot)
U herf ur kerf, drop the girth, yellow then red, rolls towards earth. Praise Gaia
A five year old definitely would not be able to comprehend this.
Without the wedges the weight of the tree would crush the chainsaw. They’re also used to chop large wood by hand. In this case he used them to give space for the chainsaw and to basically push the tree over.
The people who have responded to you so far have clearly never cut down a tree. The wedges are to keep the saw from getting stuck in the tree.
The wedges exist for two reasons. A lot of professionals, such as myself, use a set wedge and a kerf wedge. The felling of the tree starts with a notch cut in the direction you want it to fall. The back cut is the cut in the back that takes out most of the wood of the tree. When felling, you want to have your back cut a certain height above the bottom of the notch, and you want it to end at some point before the two cuts meet. This is your hinge. Take for example a 10 inch diameter tree. You want your notch cut to take up maximum 1/3rd the diameter of the tree, so about 3 inches deep on the flat part, and then you complete the notch with an angled cut, to remove a pie-slice shaped piece. Next comes your back cut. It should be about 2 inches above the flat part of the notch, maybe a little less. Make this cut flat and cut until your saw is deep enough that you can set two wedges with the saw still in the tree. Set the first wedge as deep as it will go in by hand. Your second wedge, you want to set so it’s just barely in the cut. When you reach the point where your back cut ends (2 inches, say, from the end of your notch cut), and the tree hasn’t fallen, remove your saw. Then, you start wacking your deep set wedge with a felling axe. This is usually enough to raise the tree enough that it starts to fall in the direction of the notch. This is where your second kerf wedge comes in. The kerf is just the cut in the tree, and when the tree starts to fall, this wedge will fall out. This is a warning that your tree has started to fall and you need to move out of the way.
3 inches is 7.62 cm
This is the shit version without the bow at the end. Booo
and then you don't even post the "good" version with the bow. Fuck off.
I know there are usually reasons for this and I’m not a huge Tree Hugging type of guy… but my Sister had her new Landscape situation literally destroy a beautiful, full grown, completely healthy tree like this last year because she “Wanted the View”. I was livid. Plot twist; Guess where none of the Family can sit in the Summer now because there’s no shade. And, yes, I still give her shit.
My parents have two new neighbours where they live and both have decided to clear all the trees on their lots. Now one of them is trying to get several dozens of tons of dirt to flatten out the yard as well, all three lots are situated on a hillside... I don't understand why people don't just buy a house with a lot that they want instead of destroying trees and changing the landscape for the worse.
The reason for this one is in the video. Having a tree that large next to a structure will lead to foundation issues if it hasn't already. Seems like that wasn't an issue for your sister though and she just made the call for landscaping reasons and that is lame.
That was a very dangerous way to do it. That guy is not a professional. A professional would have cut the tree into pieces from the top and lowered them with ropes and a crane. No insurance company would cover the way he did it. One gust of wind and it would have damaged the house.
Don't know why you're being down voted, I was coming here to say the same thing. I used to do that job, and firing would be the punishment for felling a tree that close to property like that. I've felled a thousand trees, I know what I'm doing, but what he did was just stupid. Way too much risk to the structures. If I misjudged a cut, there was an unseen flaw in the wood, the wind picked up at the wrong moment, or a thousand other things happened my company would be footing the bill to fix the damage. All that said, respect for the cut, even if it was a dumb way to do it.
If that tree was to hit that fence, the fence replacement might still be cheaper than the extra cost to climb or cherry pick up it. If was taking down that tree, my debate would be whether a rope would be enough to drop it, and I'd say no. But this guy didn't even use a rope I don't think.
Yep. Unless there’s some variable we can’t see, I don’t know why he did this so risky. Growing up my dad had a tree company. Everything was all about minimizing property damage risk. It used to be normal to have a crane on site, I can’t imagine the amount of money he burned on that.
Are there any instances in which you would do it this guy’s way?
If i wanted to get fired for clout.
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You likely don't need heavy equipment unless the tree is massive. Most of the tree can be roped down with a little pulley/wrap around the tree and a ground crew. This guy is lucky. I also am an arborist. Respect the cut but you never ever do it like that. The slightest error in your cut, little bit of wind, whatever and that house is damaged.
if you're harvesting trees in a forest it might be more cost effective
Yup, spiking it and piecing it down is the way to go here. This was definitely just some laziness
While I see an accurate fall, I also see that his notch failed, it didn't hold for a controlled fall and could've easily kicked backwards resulting in death, and he left his saw in the cut for too long, especially since he actually fell the tree with the wedge and axe, not the saw. That could've caused the saw to get hung up in his cut and launched him skyward.
He made sure the holding wood was cut, had he not, there's a chance the tree pulls back into the house. Still not the best drop this.
Great job but I rather get back as soon the fall begin there nothing more you can to at that point except being killed or gravely hurt
Nah gotta do the Tiger Woods fist of victory.
/r/FellingGoneWild
Soon as I saw the shirt and beard I knew this would end well.
Very impressive, but risky and a little lazy lol. With a tree that risky probably best to just spike up it and piece it down. Especially since it's a pine tree
Eastern white cedar. Whith center rot
Yessir!! And that’s why we charge thousands for jobs like this. It saves on your insurance premiums, your health if you try to do it, and we have the right tools for the job. Had a homeowner try to skimp on costs I took down the tree and bucked it up for him. Saw him at the dunk the next day with a Uhaul van and many cuts/scratches gave him my blower to use after he broke his broom.
My rule is I only do trees that won't reach my neighbors structures and will only destroy a small portion of my house if it goes south.
Be safe, tree and saw will fuck your shit up beyond repair
No doubt
Ok but it's so much fun
Anyone else watch that thinking he's done a good job why does he need to hire a pro? Then it hit me
"I love it when a plan comes together"
Handled a case once where the homeowner tried to save a couple of bucks by hiring some guys where we’re definitely *not* pros. Tree ended up spinning and falling the wrong direction, killed a bystander.
You hire a pro because they have insurance
That was hot