The Professional Way to Fall Timber.

last but not least a good chainsaw this [Music] and that that is is holding it hi and welcome to the cinnabar today we're going to take a break from shooting vinnie's firearms because well work comes before play today nights are getting colder we've even had a couple of early season snows and most importantly hunting season is over so we can fire up the chainsaws now and start thinking about getting our winter supply of firewood in so today we're going to talk about fallen timber now i spent quite a few years working in the woods and most of that time i was falling timber so i'm hoping i can share with you some some tips some real basic pointers on how to fall trees safely um you know take it seriously folks this is this is a dangerous business and and while we all kind of like to do manly macho things like this uh you really need to know what you're doing and if you're not comfortable with it don't just try to fake your way through it because you know it's cost a lot of good men their lives so take this real seriously and that that starts with our personal protective equipment and don't skimp here you know starts with a with a good hard hat for obvious reasons we want eye protection we want some some good ear plugs for for ear protection um some some good gloves saw shafts don't skimp on your saw shafts you know you can get away with it a whole lot but if you run a chainsaw long enough these chaps will save your bacon some good work boots um i kind of like that having fiberglass towed work boots i don't really like the steel-toed ones but you need some protection for your toes when you're running that saw that particularly lemon and bucking you can get that the saw right next to you your feet and they'll save your toes um also if you're doing a lot of cutting gets invest in some cork boots you know when you're up on top of a tree doing lemon and what not you need some good traction okay some of the other tools that we're going to need obviously a good fallen saw as sharp as possible some some wedges in case we need to wedge that tree over and even if we don't just for safety's sake we want to put a wedge in and a back cut and we'll show you how to do that and obviously a good axe to pound those wedges in and of course you can use an axe for several different things the other thing we need is a plum and you can you can make a palm out out of a chain like i've done here with a little weight on the end of it or or a just a piece of string with a weight on it because we want to size that tree up and and don't just rely on eyeballing a tree they'll fool you they'll fool you a lot sometimes they're leaning a long ways and it looks like they're straight up and down just depends on what the terrain looks behind them and whatnot there can be some real optical illusions so as we size up that tree we're gonna we're gonna hold that plum up there and see just exactly which way that tree leans this tree i've already sized up it's it is just about straight up and down so so we don't have to worry about uh having a big lean in it um sizing it up we can see that there's a couple other trees nearby here down the hill we want to keep it away from from those trees because this one is straight up and down um we can pretty much follow wherever we want to and and if you know what you're doing even with a tree that's got a big lean in it or a lot of weight on one side of the other we can directionally follow those if we if we know what we're doing but you got to be real careful about that and understand the the concepts involved so we're going to get busy on this tree here we're going to take this tree up the hill this is a dead tree and and it's going to be kind of brittle so the last place we want to do is take it downhill where it's going to get up a big head of steam and it's kind of uneven that way it's kind of even here so it's going to fall a little a little lighter and go right uphill and that keeps it away from these other trees now as we're sizing it up one of the things we want to look for is any what we call a widow maker there's a broken limb that's hanging in there or that type of thing or if it's got tree limbs that are hung up with a nearby tree that's going to affect a lot how this thing falls so there's a lot of different things to look at when you're sizing up a tree one of the things about this tree too is that it's it's dead so it's going to be a little more brittle it's going to break that hinge a little easier than than a live tree would with a lot of moisture still in it also if they're really rotten and this one isn't you stand the danger of what we call a fold back where um you know part way up the tree once it starts some momentum that that top can fold back and fall back in the direction of opposite direction of where you're following it so there's a lot of a lot of things to be looking at okay so stick with us we're going to get this thing faced up and we'll explain to you what we're doing while we're facing it up and then we'll put a back cut and put it over okay so we're going to put our face cut in now um basically we're going to put a good flat horizontal cut in about a third to a half of the diameter of the tree okay this is this is going to give us the direction that we're going to follow the tree most saws like this still here have a sight line that's molded into the plastic that you can use and it'll give you a pretty good direction on on where that tree is going to fall it's 90 degrees to the to the chain okay our second cut we have a choice we can make a conventional cut which comes in from the top and meats or a humboldt coat cut which most mills want because it makes a square end on the log that comes up from the bottom and meets now take your time on this okay we don't need to get in a big hurry even professional fallers not every time do their cuts just match up perfectly and that wedge just falls out so if it doesn't line up just perfectly the first time get back in there and clean it up real good because this is a extremely important cut as far as where that tree is going to go [Music] okay [Applause] [Music] hmm [Music] um wow [Music] wow [Music] wow [Music] wow [Music] now okay as you can see i was just a little bit high on that that cut it didn't quite come together so we just dropped that saw a little bit and clean that up just just takes a second to to get that done okay it's time to put our back cut in but before we do we really need to be thinking about safety now because this is the point at which this tree is going to go over and it's the most dangerous point in the in the cutting down of a tree so what we really need to focus in on is where we're going to go once this tree starts to tip over now obviously we don't want to go anywhere in the direction of the where the trees fallen the next most dangerous place is directly behind the tree i talked a little bit about fold-overs earlier where the top can come out and come backwards on you or if you're if you've got limbs that are hanging up they'll throw back that way so we don't want to go directly away from the tree so the safest angle to get away from is about a 45 degree angle out that way it gets as far away from the tree as possible but not being right in the in the dire opposite direction where stuff's going to get thrown at us okay here it's we're on the edge of the high desert there's not much brush or things in the way if there's obstructions on your path out of there get them cleaned out take the time if you need to cut some brush out of the way or some downed trees or whatever it is get those out of there okay now when we put the back cut in we want to put that back cut in just a little bit higher than the face cut okay one of the things it does is it makes it a little a little easier to get that wedge in there um the tree doesn't tend to sit back on us if if that that cuts a little bit high it also gives us a little notch here if that tree is wanting to slide back on the stump it's got a little place that's going to hold it and keep it from doing that okay what we really want to make sure we don't do is when we get this cut going that we cut part of the hinge off and the the place that we tend to do that more than anything is right here on this corner and if we cut that off then that tree gets released from from that side and it's going to come right back towards us where we're cutting so we want to really make that that hinge uniform all the way across and we'll look at that after we get this this tree off of the stump and we'll kind of explain the hinge and how it works and what it's supposed to look like and hopefully i'll make one that looks really good okay as soon as we get that this bar in far enough we're going to put a wedge in behind it into that back cut it's way easier to put the wedge in before the tree starts to lean typically or especially if it wants to lean back um if that wedge is already there then you can drive it if it isn't and you've got to drive a wedge into that that saw kerf after it's closed that's a real chore [Music] [Music] now [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] wow [Music] hey [Music] [Applause] [Applause] okay so let's take a look at our stump here and this this one's pretty textbook um you can see a good deep face here um just a little less than than halfway into the diameter of the tree we want to keep a deep face a good deep angle if we have a real shallow angle then that face closes and it breaks that hinge and that hinge is what controls that tree going in the direction we want if it breaks really early then that tree's in free fall and if we've got a lot of weight one way or the other it can pull that tree one way or the other okay so our our back cut is just maybe an inch or two higher than the face cut which keeps it from sliding back off and keeps the weight going going in the direction we want it to go you see we're good and and even across the the hinge if we have it way wider on one side of the other it'll pull to where there's more wood so if there's more wood on this side say it'll pull that tree in that direction and that we don't want of course if as i talked earlier if we nip one side or the other off then that lets that tree fall in the opposite direction where you nip that off because now we're not holding on that side and that's a real dangerous thing to do so if you notice i was checking a lot where where both sides of of my chain were so to make sure that we got an even hinge all the way across and then of course we we had to do a little wedging to get it over so that that worked out really well you got to see some wedging we put in one wedge got it almost to the hilt and it still hadn't gone so we had to stack a couple of wedges on top of each other and and make those work so this was a a good tree to to film for you to show a lot of different things so now we need to get some of these limbs off and and get it down to the landing where we can make some firewood now this one's going to keep my shop warm a whole lot this winter there's a lot of wood in this old girl [Music] [Music] [Music] wow [Music] until next time happy trails from the cinnabar you

Channel: The Cinnabar

Views: 4,818

Rating: 4.9714284 out of 5

Keywords: Fall Timber, Fell Timber, Firewood, Stihl, Chainsaw, Stihl 660, Wedge, limb and buck, fall trees, Cutting Down a Tree, Tree Felling, How To Cut Down a Tree

Id: uaB8ejJeDsE

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020