The Biggest Tree I've Ever Felled

hey there welcome to Farm Craft this tree has to come down I don't want to cut it down but it's dying it's going to come down one way or another and it's leaning right towards that walnut tree and it's going to destroy that when it when it goes I really want to get it down before winter because an ice storm is very likely to take this thing down and again rather than destroying one tree it's going to destroy two so let me show this to you so this is a beech tree and a massive one it has probably been here since my house was built which was 1850. now a camera doesn't really show you perspective very well I know you guys are looking at this thinking it's just a tree I measured the diameter at breast height the dbh and it's 60 inches oh just just shy of 60 inches across there that thing is huge we've been here for 14 years now and a couple years after we came so it used to have three main leads that went up and the one that was on this side fell this way and then several years ago I actually have a video on it this lead fell that way and I ended up making a bowl out of one chunk of it that was kind of a fun video I guess I'll leave a link here um but now this is the only one remaining and it's all leaning that direction right towards that walnut tree and if you take a look at this thing see the cracks see the rot this is all rot foreign solid you know the trunk is not supposed to look like that that's all bark damage disease I mean this thing is gonna go it's just a matter of time thankfully I have a boom lift so I can take this thing down safely I'm still gonna have to cut the base of this thing which is not going to be easy my chainsaw bar is 28 inches and this thing's especially down at this down at stump level is more than 60 inches across so I'm hoping that that trunk won't be rotted in the center it very well might be but I would love to be able to cut it down and then count the Rings I'd love to see how old this thing is and we're going to do that if I can foreign [Music] here's the method to my madness you're tempted to just go straight to the top and start taking it down the problem is is as I cut those things are going to fall down and they're going to hit these lower limbs which is going to put a lot of strain on the whole tree and could knock the thing over and I don't want to be anywhere near this even with a lift while that thing's falling I would probably be fine because I'm on the I'm it's leaning away from me but either way I don't want to do that so what I'm going to do is basically take the limbs off from the bottom up that limb there is is my my first Target and I'm going to take the ends of it off and then work my way back and once I have that one off I'll get the other ones and work it back to the trunk and then basically so every time something Falls there's nothing underneath it for it to hit that's the idea [Music] it started out really easy just getting the small limbs off of the trunk mainly getting them out of the way so the basket and the boom aren't hitting them all the time and then after that we'll actually get to work all right [Music] [Music] [Applause] all right that far limb there will definitely take some weight off of this tree [Music] thank you [Music] and you can do that with a lift you would not do that with a ladder [Music] I have a video on the cutting techniques that I'm using on taking this tree down I'm not going to explain them again in this video but I'll leave a link here a lot of rotten there [Music] one of the main considerations in taking down a tree with a lift is just to make sure you can get yourself in a position where there's no chance of the limb hitting your basket or coming back towards you so you want to keep the pieces small enough that they're easy to manage and just keep everything safe [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] this might give you a little perspective on the size of this tree that is my big saw and that's a 20 inch bar and I was having trouble reaching all the way across that log to get this to fall this section would be a pretty good sized tree if it was on the ground [Music] compare the size of that to that [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] so that's got a a healthy lean that way and I'm going to go ahead and uh and do a face cut on this I'm going to make sure it doesn't do anything Goofy [Music] foreign it might not have been clear it had a little bit of a lean towards me so I was leaving that hinge on that side a little long so it wouldn't come and and hit my basket don't want that [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign that's quite a view using this Boom Lift is almost like cheating [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] look at the side the more I think that Center is just not going to be I'm not going to be able to count the Rings unfortunately we'll see I'll try it's likely to rain tonight or tomorrow and I don't want to leave the lift over here it's going to end up sinking into the dirt maybe even getting stuck so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a rope up in there and then I can pull it while I'm cutting the bottom and have control over which way that sucker Falls because even now it's still got a fair amount of danger to it that's still a big tree you don't want coming your direction let me get this rope ready you know I was thinking some of you guys might want to see how to coil a rope this is a nice way to coil a rope that doesn't get tangled up that's how a rock climber does it I'll show that at the end of the video that way folks who don't want to watch it can just quit watching at that point foreign well I would love to get to work on the big boy and get that down but first I got to get this whole mess cleaned up and uh it's gonna take some time so let's get to work so all the big stuff will end up is firewood and all the small stuff I'm putting on my forks I don't have to handle it again I'm going to dump that on a burn pile that's our annual bonfire [Applause] well it's raining [Applause] I have an outdoor wood boiler that I really like and I heat my house primarily with wood we also have two geothermal heat pumps that we use for air conditioning and backup heating my wife Jennifer's brother and I installed our HVAC system and one day I think I maybe do a video on that give me a thumbs up and a comment if you want to see that uh I'm tired of getting rained on I'm gonna go edit some video I just hit something bad down in there I saw Sparks Fly you're done if you look at the teeth you can see that the top has been taken right off of them and this is an old chain but I ought to be able to sharpen that down again and get it cutting a little longer a lot of people would argue to just throw this chain away it is old can't argue with that these teeth are almost done a lot of people would also say to use a grinder because I got to take quite a bit off I can't argue with these either of those but I'm going to hand sharpen this let's see how long it takes thank you okay there's that side done thank you one more tooth to do let's do this one up close [Music] foreign [Applause] at this point the tooth looks pretty good but I continue filing just to match the length to the other teeth let me mention here many many people think that back dragging a file like I do is going to dull the teeth it's not these are way harder than this and I'm not even putting any pressure on the back drag it's just keeping the angle right in fact Fireball tool did a test of it not with a chainsaw file but with flat files and it had no effect it didn't dull the files at all in fact you remove material faster when you add the Back Drag to your cut it's just like a hacksaw those teeth only cut One Direction too but do you lift it up with every stroke no of course not you go back and forth it's the same thing I've taken so much off of these teeth that I need to do the Rikers as well and I'm going to use a guide for this because it's just easier and faster and if you don't know what I'm doing here I've got a whole video on this uh I'll leave a link all right back in Action let's see if this thing will cut now [Music] oh [Music] my God so not perfect but given how bad that thing was it's gotten pretty well I can certainly use that still a lot of cleanup to do but you guys have seen enough I'm tired of filming it so yeah I just cleaned that up real quick with the excavator I didn't figure you guys want to see that not [Music] yeah obviously with all the work I've been doing on that thing I am not going to pass up an opportunity to play with my new toy and uh you know really it's not playing it made this so much easier this was a this is a lot of work and uh what a help [Music] foreign [Music] did I knock you over or did the wind do that sorry foreign this hole in the ground used to be an ice house kind of like a root cellar but they stored ice in it and there's nothing of it left it's totally rotted away and for years before we owned the farm they were dumping trash in it and doing Burns here so while I'm here I'm going to clean that up too all right finally got that mess cleaned up at least for the most part I've been thinking on this and what I want to do is do a plunge cut I want to see what the inside of that log is going to be like and a plunge I mean I can get almost 28 inches deep into it I should be able to get some idea on how solid that thing is and that may dictate how I end up taking it down so this plunge cut starts chattering and I've never had a saw do this before it actually does okay at first but once I get to the deeper Heart Wood it really starts acting up I'm not sure exactly why it was doing this but I think maybe the rakers were just too aggressive for this wood interesting though because this chain is sharpened just like all my others and I've not had any problem cutting the wood up into this point but cutting on this big trunk here seems to be different what I was looking for there is I was watching the sawdust coming out and feeling the cut obviously if you hit a hollow area you're going to know but there was no rot I think it's solid at least to that point I am going to go ahead and get this rope set up to pull and I'm going to be pulling to the base of this tree here that's a sassafras tree not that it matters any decent sized tree will do all right so this is the puller I've shown this in a different video it's basically a come along but rather than using a cable like most of them do it uses a rope and this rope is designed to be used with this puller get up so now I'm going to need to pull all the rest of that rope through there but it's much easier to do if you can hook this on something the side coming out of the back of the come along is not being used in the pool so I can use it to go around the tree for all my tree work I use one design of knot it's a bow line or a bowline is what I call it it's spelled bow line I just tie the same knot and it's essentially the same knot in two different ways there's the standard bowling and then there's the bowling on a bite and I'm going to show you both of them right here so standard bowling you put the Rope around I'm tying a slip knot here so I'm going around this make a loop turn the back of your hand towards you and make the loop with the Palm with your palm now towards you so you just turned that clockwise see this is on top of this this would not be right it's got to be like this so then it's the rabbit jumps out of the hole goes around the tree here's the tree is around the tree back in the hole and then tighten that up a little bit there's your bowling and that is a slip knot why do I like the bowline it's a strong knot it's easy to tie and it doesn't matter how hard you pull on it I mean even pulling on it with machine forces this knot is always easy to untie you can always do that and once you do that the whole knot is going to open up even after it's been loaded really hard all right [Applause] now I'm going to tie the same knot but in a different way because I don't have the end of the Rope to work with we're going to do it right here and it's it's called a bowling on a bite and it starts out as what's called an overhand knot go over it and then back up through it's a very simple knot so this is just an overhand knot but you can turn this into a bowline by putting the loop over what you just tied and then pulling this through and you're going to have to look at that a few times to uh to figure that out so a bowling on a bite gives you a different look but see the loop going around it's it's a double bulging essentially there's two Loops of everything instead of just one here and again you can pull on that as hard as you want and you're always going to be able to untie it easily just by doing that I'm sure there are many better tutorials that show you how to tie this but these are two knots really useful really worth learning now at this point you can just pull it through [Music] ratchet and now you can just ratchet on that I am going to start working on my Notch I'm going to do a big horizontal here and then I think I'm going to do a Humboldt on this one I'm going to take my time with this this is going to take a while to get this cut out until I'm happy and it's getting dark so this tree is going to sit with a partially finished Notch overnight I would imagine oh yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] it's actually pretty close [Music] foreign I must say I'm pretty happy with that it's a little over a third well I don't know it's pretty close [Music] foreign well I think I figured it out I've been using a depth gauge to file my rakers after many filings I've actually filed into the gauge a little bit which means I'm going deeper than the gauge is set for this is supposed to be a 25 thousandths depth gauge in other words it sets the the depth of cut of each tooth I show this better in my uh how to sharpen a chainsaw chain video but the space between the Riker here and the top of the tooth is what matters so this is a 25 000 gauge and it's got slop in there so that raker is set to cut greater and in fact I have to go all the way up to 35 thousands before I have any drag on it so my depth gauges are ten thousandths too deep which on normal size firewood and with a 20 inch bar with the saw is not a problem it can handle that but with this 28 inch bar and hardwood it's just digging in and it keeps stalling that's my issue depth gauge is too deep so before I do the back cut I'm going to put a different chain on here that doesn't have this issue and I'm gonna get a different depth gauge tool I really shouldn't be able to file this thing this thing should be too hard to file but you can see right there I've definitely I've taken some off of it that's stupid come on Oregon [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Music] so I had the back cut done as far as the saw could reach I started pounding wedges and also tightening the Rope to pull but this tree wanted to fight I decided to cut the hinge a little thinner multiple attempts of pounding wedges the tree kept spitting them back out at me I tried metal wedges I tried stacking wedges I even made some of my own wedges out of white oak in the wood shop oh I can't reach all the way to the center of the tree with this bar even here it's not getting to the middle and from here if I cut all the way to there see the end of my bar comes out right there about right here well that is a good eight inches away from the hinge so there is a piece of wood in the center of this tree that's there's like an eight by six in the middle holding this thing up if I can't give myself somewhat of a notch right here so that my saw can get in several more inches and cut that out [Music] [Applause] [Music] this allowed me to reach in from the back and cut the center out [Music] all right let the battle commence I do a bunch of wedging double wedging and even triple wedging and the tree just keeps fighting and it's amazing once it's down you'll see what was holding it up foreign foreign so I'm surprised that thing was so hard to uh to pull over I mean I really had to pull and wedge that thing it wasn't leaning away once I did the extra notch on the back and plunged I was able to get all the way into here and you can see there's there's nothing in the center all I had was a hinge here and then over there at the very end I took out the whole Center and it still fought me that much coming down surprising well there's a hundred so I get around 190 right here so and you know some of these rings are really wide I uh find it hard to believe it grew that much in one year so I may have under counted a little bit but you know for a reasonable estimation this tree was 200 years old so yeah it was here when the house was built that was 170 years ago if you guys want to go through this footage count the Rings yourself and post in the comments what your count is so these areas here unfortunately I'm not even going to use for firewood one there's a lot of rod in it there's a lot of dirt in it and there's also probably a lot of metal in it over the years people nailing up birdhouses and things to this it's they're so big for me to process that I'm going to work for hours for very little return so those are going to go on the bonfire now everything up there I will we'll take here when I measure straight across I'm getting right around 51. that's the more narrow side if you go the the bigger side this is more like 55. I know some of you are going to be disappointed that I'm not going to make anything special out of this tree I mean I already made a bowl out of it um but yeah trying to work with that nothing's inspiring me there all right here's our knots and you saw how hard I was pulling on this thing so how hard is it to untie this [Music] see once you do that the whole knot opens up so basically it's no effort at all to untie it [Music] there that gives you an indication of how hard I was pulling on that thing scarred the trunk of that tree so this knot right now is it's pretty hard but that will always loosen up for you [Music] there's an awful lot of rot falling and it's just not good wood this is just soil [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Applause] you back in a couple days well those big logs are phenomenally hard to split and it was too much for this old piece of junk this is a harbor freight I've had for a long time it's split a lot of wood but it's never been a nice machine you can see the oil here if I hit retraction it spews oil so it blew out the seals on the rod uh the engines never run very well it's one of these Subaru Robbins I've had the carburetor off countless times cleaning it out and if you look down here the whole beam is just bent so it's under built and has never performed well I'm thinking about just scrapping it and getting a new one but I don't know for now I'm just going to leave this wood here I'll figure that out later foreign so I've been thinking about this log splitter I'm gonna need a new log splitter if it was only two problems that would be one thing the beam needs replaced the cylinder needs rebuilt if it was just those two I would do it but this engine is a piece of junk and it has never run right no matter what I do it's just constantly a problem so I think in the future I want to get more into blacksmithing I can use the cylinder maybe the beam and turn it into a a blacksmithing hydraulic press with an electric motor that I can use in the shop but this yeah I'm going to need a new log splitter but I'm not going to buy one this year this is like the only splitting I I think I'm going to need to do so I'm just going to do this stuff sort of by hand let me show you this though check out how hard this stuff is to split I mean it's ridiculous this is a splitting Mall that has a fairly narrow taper you know a thick Mall will bounce off of things a lot but this one's not bad even an ax has trouble on this it'll stick in but good luck splitting it I've tried it just gets stuck so we're gonna do some cheap just to get it split I want to get this stuff out of the way I don't want to go shop for a new log splitter right now [Music] not easy but uh I'd I'd be pounding at the first log still without the chainsaw cuts all right I got all that wood cleaned up that was a lot of work no thanks to that thing here's a bunch of that wood um that's 12 feet long it's about six feet tall obviously a little more on the floor but somewhere around two cords of Beach right here and here's the rest of it and then that over there so that's another couple cords so about four cords of wood out of that one tree and if you consider two of the main leads had already fallen off if those had been there I would have gotten probably at least two maybe three more cords out of that tree but uh but yeah that's a lot of wood that'll heat my house for a while so what was my total time on this project well believe it or not I only use the lift for an hour and a half I must say I was surprised when I went back to the footage and looked how quick I did the lift work cleanup came in two phases phase one was after I did all the lift work and cleaning up all the treetop stuff except there were some logs that required splitting that I didn't do in this phase and that took me eight hours and my total time dropping the log including setting up the Rope cutting the wedge setting up and cutting the back cut making wedges driving wedges all of that was just under two hours about an hour and 50 minutes and phase two cleanup which included splitting all the wood and fighting with my log splitter took another eight hours of course these times include the time I spent running cameras and I also processed the wood down to get it ready to burn if it was just wood removal you wouldn't need to put in quite so much work and now the big question how much would a job like this cost now I'm not a professional tree worker so I don't know but my guess would be just to remove this tree and to remove all the wood would be around three thousand dollars maybe a little more are you a professional tree worker comment below we all want to know what this would cost so I hope you guys enjoyed the video but before I leave you this is my biggest tree I love this tree it's another Beach and this thing is just huge and it's in good shape too I've never seen a beech tree this big before look at how many leads are coming up in that thing I counted them once I think there's like 11 significant sized limbs you know major leads coming off of that main trunk [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] rope this is a really good way to do it they never get tangled works with extension cords good thing to know basically you don't coil in in Loops you don't make o's you make flakes uh so you go to one side and then you go to the other side and you'll see what I mean so just get the end in your arm [Music] go over your neck so now I've got a loop on this hand here so now I can let go of this one and then I I hook this so now I've basically made another flake of rope and put that over my head so now this is the the leading end and this is the loop so I can let go of this one and then I make another and you keep going back and forth so you'll see as you do it that you kind of rotate your grip make a loop and then loop with the other hand loop with the other hand and you can see that they're they're in flakes they're not going around my neck because that's going to introduce twists into your rope makes it tangle it just makes it obnoxious you don't want to do that and with a little practice this kind of becomes automatic you don't really have to think about it and it's nice too because as you're doing it you're not having to hold the Rope you can do this in your hand but that's like a lot of arm workout this it's all on my neck so again I've got the the leading end of the Rope I hook it with my thumb and and make it into a flake like that and and this is what I'm talking about it's kind of like a bite but it's a flake of rope in a coil although they call this coiling a rope there's not really a coil is there all right when you get down to the end I'm going to show you probably the easiest way to do it and this is what I do with extension cords too just leave yourself a little bit of extra rope on that side take it off your neck keep keep it in the center you know so that the flakes are even and then you just take that loose end and you wrap it around so come around this way again and you can do that however many times until you use up your Slack and then what's really nice so you can just put the Rope through like that and you're done and that that will stay together pretty well what will kind of if you throw this in a trunk you know this will start coming out and the whole thing will loosen up so what makes it even nicer is rather than just putting it through put a bite through a loop like that and then run it through that Loop and that kind of locks it up better so that's what I do with my extension cords that's a great way to coil a rope um I'll you know we're at the end of the video check off if you don't want to see any more I I can imagine this is boring for a lot of people but let me show you one more way to finish off and I do do this a lot this really locks it in very well so I'm gonna put it back on my neck and all right so at the end what I do let's see I make a couple of short coils in coils a couple of short flakes instead of going all the way down bring it to like halfway and then to halfway so you've got two short flakes on the end of your rope take it off now we are going to wrap this over itself like a fisherman's knot so this is the loose end of the Rope it's just coming up from one of those short flakes to right here and now I'm going to coil it up underneath and then there it is going that way over itself see I'm crossing over it and now I'm pulling it tight like really tight I'm gripping this rope and I'm Levering with my thumb so to lock that in and then you do that a few times I'm gonna probably left myself a little more slack than I needed okay so once you've got enough coils around there that your tail end isn't going to be hanging way out now this half Loop that you did take the end stick it through the half Loop and then just hold it there Now find your other half Loop and find the end that's going to this half Loop nope this one and pull it through until it grabs that rope and now that thing is locked in you can do whatever you want to that it's not gonna It's Not Gonna Come Undone so a little a little more complicated at the end it's quick once you get used to it and uh great way to great way to do it there you go coil and ropes hope you guys got something out of that hope I didn't bore you to death [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: FarmCraft101

Views: 1,099,218

Keywords: tree felling, how to cut down a tree, how to sharpen a chainsaw, chainsaw sharpening, humboldt, jlg lift, cherry picker, boom lift, how to cut down a big tree, how to cut down a large tree, how to cut down a huge tree, tree work, dangerous jobs, tree work bucket truck, old growth trees

Id: CjUdQDJRQ_c

Length: 51min 14sec (3074 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2022