How to Balance a Tree Limb in Rigging w/ Mark Bridge

hi I'm Nick Marner this is mark bridge my good friend we're here at Arbor Fest Expo and this is the tree stop calm micro rigging lab so what we've created here is a hands-on experience that anyone that attends can come to they can use all of the tools in the timber that we've provided and build their own rigging scenario and then execute that rigging scenario in multiple fashions right so the mark way versus the Nick way and try it multiple times but can't say enough about mark mark is a global authority on these types of things co-inventor of the tree motion Pinto pulley hitch climber pulley hitch climber eccentric the Nutri motion I could keep going that's enough yeah all that stuff are all brainchild of Mark and the tree motion team without much ado let's dive right in walk us through what you want to show us here today mark Thank You Nick well it's obviously something that we discussed before wasn't it the situation we had here is we've got a big we're working this is a big spread e trees a red oak or something like that just something with a broad canopy and we've got a building underneath it and this orange limb is what we're going to remove next isn't it mate yes sir this is the trouble limb this is to trouble them so I'm being a bit nervous about this this is me so I kind of here I'm trying to work out how to get rid of this limb without clipping the building so what I'm thinking it is we've got our rigging system in here yep got a very traditional setup if I'm high put the block in so what we thought about was to do it in two ways I think we do it a conventional way first sure more traditional the way you know I might have done it we might I might have done it yeah 15 years ago some way I might do it if I had to myself so what I'm thinking is I'm just going to try and fit because you can't see this from the camera obviously but the line of the building the corner of the building is kind of here just on the inside of the limb so I reckon if we face this out out and down we can actually swing it clear of the building and if you just let it run it we drop it around into the landing zone is over and you know that probably works 99 out of 100 times 90 out of 100 times no problem yes so I say let's go for it yeah well one thing here is a really long limb it's heavy wood now I'm a little bit concerned that if I tie it here there's knock the hinge maybe isn't gonna hold long enough to swing it around far enough so I think what I'm gonna do is I'm actually going to attach it a bit further out okay so if you keep that a little bit tight on the lot on the lowering Villard they'll actually support the hinge and bring it round a bit further you okay with it absolutely I can certainly put some pressure on there okay just take out the stopper not so I'll half hitch that and then just timber hitch it back here that's how you know he's European you don't impose dropping the timber hitch tight all right and then I'll yard up on it on our porter out get it under a little tension we saw it go up there a little bit I'm gonna go ahead and take a wrap and I'll stand back so what you'll notice is I've decided to bring my climbing line and myself down this side I don't want myself in the front because that's where it's gonna be swing also the rigging lines are gonna be coming around the front as Nick let's the piece runners get it run that's obviously not the place to be so I've decided to go around the back of the tree all around the backside of the limb to be well clear of where this piece is moving to and I think that you know what you're gonna show here I think some people can probably see coming but I think your positioning is a very common position it would be taken so let's go ahead let's see what happened so I'm just gonna face this cut make sure to leave a really thin hinge because we can manipulate it ourselves mhm okay I'll put in the good in the face Nikki you okay yeah it's facing downwards and a little diagonally I bent a trim saw bar doing this in real life once okay joke okay I'm going through the back stand clear yep do the trick I'm gonna have to help this on its way beyond though so that's gonna do something like that which of course is not great because what we were hoping for was that that would snap earlier but with with a heavy Lynwood it would go this way and then snap and and it's coming and I'm right immediately in the danger zone because the way the pivot point is here this is where the limb is pivoting so this is a really high risk in fact that I will get and I have no space to swing back into right so I'm right in the danger zone there this is a super hazardous situation I think a lot of people will even try to balance a limb sometimes in that single fashion um and I I actually had something really similar in another instance happened to me where I had a limb spring back like that and it almost killed me so yeah I definitely noticed that so these pin touch scenarios are a realistic scenario if you consider the pivot point and I think a classic thing on here would be I think a bit nervous about this so I'm actually going to use the leave the hinge wide on the top and narrow on the bottom try and influence the swing on the of the limb by the hinge amount of hinge were that I leave and it's just not going to happen okay my theory is that or my feet mop but the way I view rigging is that either you get your piece hung correctly and then a correct cut will assist it but if it's not hung correctly you can do whatever cut you want it's it's going to go it's going to go wrong so we're going to try and do the same or we're going to repeat the same thing or cut the same limb cut the same way Thank You Nick feeling mildly jet-lagged and silly here so we're just going to spin around the it's got a swivel on it so there's a couple of things I'd like to think about here that scenario before that limb coming round is whilst the rigging point is overhead we're not snatching into the above the mass is not above the pulley is what I'm trying to say it remains the dynamic rigging scenario in the sense that there's the orientation of the road is changing it's dropping its shock loading there's all sorts of stuff going on there what I'd like to try and do now is I would try and mitigate those things by pacing a block above the the problem limb so I've got it hung up here with a ultra salt restoring is I think they're really cool you see here this has pockets on it so when you go to put that block in you don't have to tie a knot or anything you just simply choke the block through that nearest pocket I think these are really cool big thanks to Nick Araya out of California he hand spliced all these miniature slings for us from the porter wrap anchors all the way up to these now there's a number that there's a number of things I'll be considering is I'm setting up this pick one of the things I'm trying to define is where the center of gravity of this problem limb is okay so I'm kind of thinking there's a lot of heavy wood at the back and there's thin limbs and further at the front so I'm kind of thinking yes it may be here but as you know it's a rhetorical question this this is heavy oil edge is really heavy the water tent will be this end of the limb so often lip limbs are going to tip you know the bigger waters even though the thicker wood it really doesn't matter has to be very very heavy word for that to make a difference so my rule of thumb tends to be your attend to go for the two-thirds one-third so it's fairly far forwards that tends to be what I operate with yeah I still think this is a little bit far forwards I want to come a little bit that a little bit with us the other thing we're doing is if you consider vector for the forces acting on this limb okay we actually have one force acting downwards and one force acting outwards and the resultant vector will because it's a pulley here we'll have these two will have these this angle so the resultant vector is more or less here so it's actually really noticeable I mean even a small amount of force here and you can see us tipping this down yet with just my finger what I mean I can pull pretty hard and you still see the limb dropping a little but I mean that force if I put that much into here I can you know break this screw out whereas the way Lily evident this force is acting is it's actually pushing this in now as you all know with the matchstick you know bending the matchstick will snap it try to push the matchsticks together is really hard you think big matchsticks and this is what's happening now as we were talking about before Nick these are models so I think they're over simplifying it's too easy too it's to oversimplify to say place the block further and further forwards and you'll get a good compression on here there's no tapering of the wood yeah and what's gonna happen is as that limb gets thinner thinner and longer is that you can start introducing a sort of yeah a wave type motion into that limb which is problematic as well you're also starting to bend this Anchor Point so there's many forces you're looking at I still think this is interesting so the way I'll go about this is that ask Nick to put a bit of tension on the line and I tend to work from the front backwards so I'll place the front leg of my balance at first and in fact what I'm going to do here and I leave it pretty open I want to have a bit of space so that we can maybe winch up a bit so I'm going to come down a little bit in this instance I'm just going to birth hitch it and get a couple of half hitches over the top then once I've done that is so this leg of the thought the why apart as it were I might have that down a little bit lower I'm actually gonna use to to adjust to get this orange light deflecting this to deflect it or basically I'm trying to get these points over the center of gravity and the final one is good pool is going to be this so this one I'm adjusting this angle here again I'm going with a clove there you drop me Nick if this isn't making sense no I love it I hate the clove hitch it as a rigging not because you dude because it rolls you guys struggle and the rolling I don't really think is an issue because you can just tie it off with her I do I like it because you can actually adjust the length of it you know you just roll it through the clove and then as I move back the final leg is actually pulling this backwards to bring it all into line nicely this is really cool that's actually a bit short I'm a big tree nerd and like I love the idea that we're able to replicate the same problem or the same scenario twice in a row and show the effect of how it works and the impact of our rigging choices yeah that back leg is a bit short this is literally what I'd have in my rigging kit we've we go out on a job like this I'll have 12 millimeter serious rigging line double grade rigging line just lengths of it that I just tie blake hitches on the front though whatever why'd you explain that these are Blake's hitches um which is really neat you don't need a splice tie to do that yeah right a lot of spider legs we sell spider legs with splice thighs and you can just simply do it with any old piece of rope and a Blake since there's no there's no argument against doing using splice ties and then using projects I just like the flexibility that the Blake gives me because I can put a wrap on take a wrap off it's just to me it's a no-brainer so am i walk in the porter wrap off well are you gonna I think what I'd like you to do Nick is because of where the anchor point is what I'm going to do is I'm going to that cut it okay then I'm gonna move away and then I'm gonna ask you just to drop it a bit or you may have to just jiggle it a bit what's gonna happen is it's gonna swing a little bit this way we let it stabilize and then we just and I can actually just help have that down past the building great okay so is that locked off it is locked off for now but I'm gonna go ahead and unlock it and just make sure that I have good control on it I've got a fair amount of rap so I probably can't let it run okay I'm just going to put a step cut in here if we were using a GRC s actually what I do on this is on the on the on the past on the on the on the lower ratio or just ask Nick to take this up just so that it's it's it's as tight as but not going to the to the other into the so just so that everyone that's with us what is a step cut step cut is just a bypass cut so base the two cuts to pass each other yeah one passes the other I'm gonna leave it quite wide in the middle it's just gonna hold it there give me a moment to get away and then we can then we can drop in and the reason I'm not using a face cut there I'm not putting an option is I don't want to lower it I don't want this to change your orientation I want to hold it exactly in this orientation ideally I don't want to tip or doing it because I don't want any shock blow during it or anything so that's an important designation our goal is to have it come off at this kind of 40 degree angle not too late flatter so I think as as somebody who's tried to do balancing myself I think that's a mistake that I've made is that I'm always trying in my mind to get the limb to come off and lay flat but in reality what I want is for the limb to come off and stay in its exact position okay I think that's really interesting okay Nick I'm gonna do the top cut now all right let's see it and I'm gonna go on the inside here just so that you know I'm gonna copy the group here okay so I just pass the original cut so you know Groot can climb away and he gets himself out out of the way back here okay Nick just give that a jiggle for me so what I'm expecting it to do is just to do that okay so Nick can just drop it a bit it actually sits on the top meg I feel like I can take 50% credit for what just happened and give it a kick and then we can maneuver it around the building that's pretty impressive mark it really did hold the same position yeah well we can bring it up again and you can see literally you know that's doing minimal so this is a super safe option for the climber it's safe the anchor points because it's not shock loading anything this is the one rigging scenario that I've consider using carabiners in steel carabiners steel connectors if you choose to use slings here with connectors because you can ensure that they're positively orientated you know how they're being loaded and I just like it because it's quiet and controlled and the other thing I really like about balancing limbs is it gives you an immediate feedback it's right or it's wrong it's held in position or it tips there's not many things in life where you have that immediate feedback yeah there we go oh yeah mark thank you so much thank you for having men balancing with mark bridge at the tree so calm DIY micro rigging lab we're gonna have this exhibit on the road with us at all of our major events this year if you don't make it to Arbor Fest Expo here in Asheville North Carolina over the next couple days come see us at CCI a will have this if you're around Asheville North Carolina come on down we're selling tickets at the door we have a big party foot locking techno music all sorts of cool stuff going on there a free beer the whole nine yards so we look forward to seeing you guys and girls and if not look forward to more of these rigging demonstrations with other big names like Marc in the next couple days thank you so much

Channel: TreeStuffdotcom

Views: 28,094

Rating: 4.8764844 out of 5

Keywords: tree, treestuff, stuff, trees, arborist, arbor, arboriculture, climb, climbing, treestuff.com, wesspur, bartlett, sherrill, sherrilltree, tree climbing, gear, equipment, product, abr, rig, rigging, limbs, balance, balancing, crane, cut, tree care, negative rigging, demo, live, webinar, explanation, why, how, show, Mark Bridge, TreeMagineers, TreeMotion, Teufelberger, DMM, spiderleg, spider leg, Arborfest, arbor fest

Id: l2GelFIr5Pw

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2019