LEARN the 'KEY NOTCH' tree falling technique

hello and welcome to climbing arvest.com my name is Dan holiday in this video I'm going to show you how to perform a fing cut that does this hello you might be thinking what the hell is that but this has actually got a really useful purpose um if you are worried about the the tree coming off the hinge coming off the stomp when it lands and crushing something a deck maybe a retaining wall anything like that then you can use this to lock the trunk in place as it lands so if you don't want it to roll and pivot when it lands this stops it doing that um so it can stop it hitting yeah like I say retaining walls decking plant pots any of that kind of stuff so keep watching and I'll will explain how to do it this awesome video is brought to you in partnership with chip drop chip drop is a lowcost if not free service that you can use to find a convenient drop site nearby so sign up with chip drop today and find your next drop site I'll walk you through this technique step by step and then towards the end of the video I'm going to give you a really useful and important piece of information when considering this technique so you do your traditional felling cut you need to start your fing cut higher than you would typically do it because you need the space for the keyhole there's going to be a reason you would do this fing technique and that's probably to avoid it either rolling from one to one side or to protect something underneath like a retaining wall the second step is to plunge in on the vertical plane um starting at the bottom of the face cut the longer this is it the better because it'll guarantee that it will the the tree will fall into the slot and it won't pop out if you do a really short vertical cut then there's a chance that the tree might fall out depending on the grade of the land that you felling the tree onto note that the bottom of the keyhole will be the final resting height for the tree once it falls once you've done the the two vertical cuts to make that Keyhole you then want to plunge in at the bottom to join up the two vertical Cuts then plunging again just above so you're going to take out a small section as you can see here you take out that small section and that is because as the tree pivots over that vertical section as it pivots will actually go slightly lower so you need a space for it to go lower and then the final thing that we'll do in preparation is we'll make slightly angled cuts on the bottom of the face and this is so when the tree falls over that the flat portion of the face will break the hinge but then the angled portion will allow the tree to slide down and lock into place easier cuz there's always a chance if you don't make those angle Cuts if the grade of the land is slightly uphill it might not have enough space to break off and then pop forward the next step is to make one of the the one side of the back cut first just make sure that all those cuts are lining up properly and they've all met but don't overcut into that vertical portion um because you don't want to uh sever it all the way through and then finally make the second of the back Cuts so if the tree is got slight lean always leave the the part away from the lean till last cuz that will be the piece that's uh under a bit more tension rather than compression and then make sure you leave a decent size hinge because obviously you've cut the middle of the hinge out with that Keyhole section so we had a pull line on this tree uh cuz it was a lot of the canopy was on the back side so we had a pull line just to make sure it came over and you see there's a nice thick piece of hinge for the size of the tree um because that middle section is taken out there we goes you see it fall into place so when you're felling a tree if you do like a felling course you'll be taught that you know the two outer edges of the hinge are the most important important uh and the center if you're struggling if it's struggling to go over you can cut out the center first to reduce a bit of that um holding wood and there you see under that lower section if you were trying to protect something then it wouldn't have landed on the ground and smashed it you can see there's a little drain there which by the way was already had that crack in it um but if you were trying to avoid something like the drain and that was directly underneath uh you can use this technique so you didn't go into the drain uh just a final recap so you do you've done your face cut you do the two vertical Cuts you take out that lowest section to make a gap make your two angled cuts at the very front of the bottom of the face so it slides off nicely and you do your two back cuts and there it goes and it slides in so this piece pie cracked down here obviously when the piece landed and I think it maybe pivoted slightly but this piece is the piece that's not attached this it's the piece where the face is this piece is still solid that's through there so this could happen quite often if the piece lands and then twists um and obviously now it's easier to to snud up the branches off of the trunk because it's raised off the ground and then finally here's that bit of bonus information that I promised you at the beginning so very important to remember that when you're doing this key lock Keyhole felling technique um it takes away the ability to steer the fall of the tree using the hinge So In traditional falling you would be able to cut more on one side than the other as the you the tree is falling if you want to guide it a little bit more to the right or a little bit more to the left but with this system because it locks into place using that middle piece of wood the steering ability is taken away that is a very specific faing technique for a very specific situation but when that situation arises it's absolute gold so I hope you learned from this video if you did please share it with a friend um who would find it useful also if you're a new viewer then please subscribe to the channel and if you want to check out some more useful chainsaw tips then check out one of these two videos and thank you very much for watching as always I'll see you on the next one [Music]

Channel: Climbing Arborist

Views: 628,510

Keywords: Arborist, tree surgeon, tree climbing, tree removal, climbing arborist, chainsaw, climbing spurs, tree faller, treework, tree cutter, tree work, tree service, arborist apprentice, professional arborist, professional tree climber, basic chainsaw techniques, tree falling, tree falling techniques, how to tree falling, key notch tree falling, tree felling, tree felling technique, tree felling how to, crazy tree falling technique, expert tree faller, professional tree faller

Id: TdEoYs3SO_s

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2024