Tree Topping Cut Explained

okay so I finished early today so I'm going to make this video while it's in my mind in December I got quite bare footage done several videos from a big job up near Port Alberni I was involved with and lots of big fir trees coming down all with route decay so one in particular which made it its own video called riding a huge tree top where I top out a heavy headliner the stem sways back and forth quite dramatically with me only so lots of comment lots of views lots of comments on that video lots questions some speculation good and bad so I just wanted to explain in my own words what was going on there because of seeing I don't know I seem to keep answering the same things all the time from people even outside of the video to contacting me personally so I'm gonna speak about it so that can be no misunderstanding about it okay so I'm just gonna make sure files I can the video won't be too long so let's just start by talking about motion for many so when we fall trees on the ground it's easy to assume that the weight of the tree is ultimately I'll sat on the stump to start with and then when we fold the tree you know ground level are just above we just probably assumed that the weight moves away from the stump as this older it's traveling that way it's gonna just get less and less as it moves away when you climb in you get a different sort of perspective because you no longer falling and stood on the ground the ground and the stomp and the roots are absorbing the weight distribution of the piece that you of the tree as you're falling it yes now you know stood as part of a tree so when you top in the tree it's no longer you know as that as the tough part begins to fall or tip or move it's no longer on steady ground it's on a flexible thing which is the remaining stem underneath so what happens and what you will experience especially if you're doing very tall trees of disproportionately skinny trees is that as the stem starts to fold it pushes back so he has the top fold it pushes the stem back and then it breaks off and falls on their stem the stem will wobble back and forth or maybe it'll just go back to where it was you know so you know you're probably gonna start experience in the actual pushback perhaps 84 on a ball field oh you will feel that a little bit of a push back falling you'll move back forward you have Ditka laughs a little bit so now as you get up in open above 200 feet of trees that as tall as that that's all gonna be magnified obviously Oh increased and it becomes you know quiet a serious sort of factor to consider all of a sudden you can find yourself being pushed back 1012 feet or more see you have that huge slow extended stumble or when you're taking very very big tops it'll be quicker and so it's something you have to consider always it's not it's something that I think gets overlooked by a lot of Falls all the respect in the world the tree falls some of them leave comments about tree topping and they don't factor that power in dicey you're not on stable ground any noise is this yes it's different you're pretty much making the same cuts but with little sort of tweaks here and there obviously you know in a position to move away either you are stuck on a stem so it's always important as well when you're doing that kind of work that you've positioned yourself if not directly behind the stem then at least almost behind it you know maybe favor one side I usually favor one side a little bit just so I can I can see where the connor the face codes or the under poise will tell me what you don't to be doing is decide on its comfortable and convenient as it feels at the time because you can see right into your face court and you can see as your backcourt advances but then when this this wobble happens you know you get pushback the last place you want to be is on the side okay so we know that barber chairs are a very real issue and lots of people have been killed by them nobody can ever say it's not really a practical argument to make and say well that was gonna bother to bond nathan above a chair but i made these special courts that that made sure he didn't on the other hand you can't to say to someone who made these extra precautionary cuts you didn't need to do that because it wasn't gonna happen anyway yes you can't say either way it's not a practical argument to make so I think obviously knowledge and experience is a huge thing you know you have to make sure you what you interpreting things correctly we know that barber chairs happened when a tree has come up and are likely to happen if a tree has a very heavily heavy head lean or maybe as some internal splits inside pre-existing you often see that we hemlocks but there's telltale signs seem on the outside so so that was the case here that's what I was faced with a very very heavy head leaning tree no I was tied into a tree beside it because there was actually two trees I had taught to take down there was the one on the video and he was actually a big one on the other side that I got to after unfortunately even - so many years of you know videoing with the helmet camera I still do make mistakes and think that it is recording when it isn't so we missed from a spectators point of view we actually missed the battery because it was a bigger one than the one I got on video but you know these these things out and disappoint at the time no doubt it'll happen again won't be the last time so um so I transferred into the tree that I was gonna call made their undercoat I prefer to use the humble core I've used both the conventional face cop now the Honorable Court did slightly there was slightly different effects but I think the main thing is that whichever one you choose when you soften you on a keep the cop reasonably no no that's a narrow I don't mean shallow as in not very far in I mean now don't make a big open face call there's absolutely no point in doing though no good will come of it because you're already gonna get first thing we're doing these super tall trees you're already getting a push back what you don't want it's injured still to be holding and dragging you forward as well so I'll make my face cop and now this is the interesting part I'm gonna move the camera I'll just stop it move the camera [Applause] so we're looking down on this stub here so this is where I cut the face out with yeah this is where I'll make the bat cup and this is where the hinge is gonna form that's about where I want to get to so we know we've barber chairs if you if you know what I'm talking about just look online look on another video on YouTube barber chair tree work and you'll find something which I'll explain you I'm not gonna go and explain any of just waste more time well what basically happens is as you advance we you've taken this front piece out and then you're advancing with the back up with the intention and leaving this stripper wood encore but before you get to that stage if it's a heavy Hadley know the pressure becomes so great on this ever reducing strip of uncut wood though it instead of reaching that point and folding over it kind of gets so far and then the whole tree splits of the middle and it kind of literally breaks in half separates one way and the other end and sort of can't collapse down on top using a terrible thing when it happens a lot of people have been killed by or seriously injured so there's always something you gotta be mindful of not taking very seriously it's probably not a worse place with laughing then up a tree so so what people tend to do obviously they will use a book or imagine this is the this looks like more like a chainsaw bad and so what they do is they will stand the in front of the the face cook and they'll boring right the way in and take a chunk out of the middle so the only piece of hinge that's gonna be created is gonna be these outside bits here you don't have to go that far but what it does it takes by cutting through this section you're taking the tension out of the middle you're releasing all that tension which would build up otherwise as you advanced this way with you saw so the crack or even if there's a pre-existing one it won't kind of evolve now under the pressure so that's both the conventional ways to come through the form another way is to actually come through the back when you're making your you're back up your face core is already out you make your back core and at some point you know perhaps you start on that side get that right and then you would bore a chunk out here with the nose of the saw so you know the saw comes right out of the face coat and then you'd finish on this side and then you'd have YouTube it's a hinge there now what I do when I'm climbing no it just just bear in mind this got a huge head lean on it now I made this coat on the video was probably about 170 180 foot where I made the call so I knit the whole tree not only was the tree leaning but the whole head which was about 45 feet and a big lean on it above where I was gonna call now I'm never that comfortable no I've cooked countless made countless ball courts through the face for decades but I'm never that comfortable making it or I'll avoid it I'll avoid making one up a tree where I'm gonna be strapped right underneath a big leaning head and then I'm gonna start boring through the middle of weakening the whole thing more with me positioned right underneath that sooner avoid that so um so the way I do it it's a little bit of conventional I'll actually make the face call and I'll get the saw and I'll cut make two cups in the side there of the hinge of the side of the tree taking out X amount of the hinge so the hinge now is only gonna be it's gonna be reduced by the time it's been formed it's not gonna extend all the way across because I've made these these two cuts here so instead of taking the tension out of the middle I'm taking it out of the edges instead and the thinking being you know if a cop or a split did start to to come about in the middle as the tension built up with my backhoe it couldn't really extend past these two points because there's no attention there anymore it would seem like quite stretch to it somehow you know start here and then blow out the sides as well so as you sort of been contained to the middle if it's gonna happen at all no like I said before I can't sort of say one way or the other all that definitely needed it all that definitely worked or it wouldn't have worked or whatever I didn't need to be done and that's why he didn't bother chair because it wasn't gonna do anyway yeah I could say it's not really practical argument to do that but what I'm saying and it's not a new technique you know a lot of fathers use it as well though instead of taking the middle of it'll take the sides out you know perhaps in one motion they'll just come around with the saw take that side out and then I don't know how they do this side but it's pretty much doing the same job you know it's not they'll soon is guaranteed same as a ball isn't guaranteed either but if you think about the theory of it this all makes sense and it's always worked for me and I've always found it a safer way to work then actually stood in front boring or stood behind with the tip of the bat I'm always worried as well with ball courts you know that high up a tree in case I throw the chain off you know which is another problem then that I don't want to deal with if I was only 54 it wouldn't matter but when you gain up to 200 feet is I don't want to be sending the saw down and I don't want to be fiddling around over there with knots and wrenches either so if you've seen that video don't confuse the side cause I'll make or any other side codes because I've done that on a few videos where I've been doing bighead leanness don't convinced of confuse those courts or mistake them you know thinking I'm old I'm trying to do is avoid in that you know that the treat so appealing out on one side and holding too strong on one side and going one way or the other that's not what I'm doing on Big Top stuff tends not to happen at all you know if you're doing little tops does more likely it's gonna there's not going to be enough weight to break the top off and what can happen is it can sort of peel one way or the other but that's not why I'm making them cause it's to just contain the potential for a split to occur as I'm making as I'm but Adams on I'm advancing with the back comb not the only I suppose downside to this Court is that they can call it that of something you have to be mindful as it is that you are so reducing the span over the hinge you're making it kind of you're reducing the span of it so I want you would have all this wood to steer one point or two keep it going in a given direction and now you've only got this much are you safe to say that the best wood for steering the tree assuming it's all intact is going to be the two furthest points away not the middle bit isn't really gonna do anything so if this had the heavy head lean and you want it to get it that way a little bit you've kind of lesson in your chances of success by doing this more likely yes you may go that way a little bit and then it'll sort of fall off you know with this with this head weight so um I mean didn't really matter in my situation and nor any situation I've been in in the past without that compromises worthy going back to what we said about the the stem being pushed back earlier what normally happens is that regardless of whether it's a tall or short tree however obviously the taller the tree or the bigger the top you're gonna you know you're gonna feel and experience this pushback you know more obviously but what tends to happens is you know it usually the top pushes the stem back to a point and then it breaks and the stem just shoots right back and then goes back and forth [Music] [Applause] what was weird about the tree in the video on you can see it this has not happened to me before is that not after the the top breaks off there was such momentum there that stem carried on going back it pushed it so hard that it carried on going back and then came racing back I would say you know perhaps there was 24 sway there it's not so easy to detect with the wide angle lens go and I know 24 is you can take my word for it so there was a lot of movement there but that did surprise me daddy didn't just stop at that point and come back it actually pushes it and it keeps going [Music] or shoes back okay okay see I'm running out of battery so hopefully that answers the questions or plays up any misunderstandings about it alright thanks for watching

Channel: Reg Coates

Views: 27,395

Rating: 4.9500523 out of 5

Keywords: Tree work, Tree Falling, Tree topping, tree climbing, Reg Coates, Arborist, dangerous jobs

Id: BR_2sFgBuYY

Length: 22min 16sec (1336 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 28 2020