Maintaining my woodlot.

[Lumber-Jack]

Yes the title of the thread is a joke, ;-) really I have only one tree in my yard and I decided it needed to be topped down to a manageable size and allow a little more sunlight to get to the grass on the front lawn. Also the amount of leaves that would come down and get into, not only my yard, but the neighbors yards too, was getting ridiculous.
It took 3 times longer to set up the scaffolding then to top the tree down the way I wanted it, but hey, it didn't cost me anything and I'll get a bit of firewood out of it.

35 ft to the top of the scaffold

The toughest cut

High voltage lines were pretty close

 

[Lumber-Jack]

And the results...
Any guesses as to the type of tree/wood it is?

Pile 1

Pile 2

and the shorter tree

 

[Thistle]

Piles 1 & 2 look somewhat like a youngish Shagbark Hickory or some kind of Maple.A closeup of the grain/texture of that split piece could tell me more.

 

[mecreature]

Chestnut

 

[muncybob]

1 & 2 looks like the maple we have around here except ours don't have those "hairy" ends on the small branches.

 

[nrford]

Norway Maple

 

[zzr7ky]

Carbon - In my younger days I was an arborist' gopher... When aggressively reducing the size of trees, one can reduce the over-production of new shoots (bottle brush affect) by doing the following. Assumes dormant or nearly dormant tree/shrub.

About 2/3rds of the way from the trunk to the edge of the tree's drip circle, Take an ordinary shovel in wet earth, drive the shovel in as close to full depth (7" ?). Repeat this every other shovel width al the way around the tree. So seen from above it would look like a dotted circle around the tree.

It was explained to me that this kept the tree's hormones in balance so it wouldn't over produce new shoots due to an imbalance in the root to shoot equasion. I've done it since the 1970's with reliable good results.

It looks just like the annoying Silver Maple we have around here. Fast growing, sewer loving, modest BTU... I'm not gentle with them if they are in the way of progress.

All the best,
Mike

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Yep some kind of maple, definitely not native that's all I know, as the only kind of native maple we have around here doesn't get very big.
Here is a picture of it with leaves in the fall.

Mike, thanks for the advice, but it's a little too late now to try what you say, because I put a lot of fill in around the tree and a few inches of topsoil on top of that, then planted grass last summer, so any surface roots at this point would be down pretty deep. Although I did do some significant root pruning on the left side where you see that little retaining wall.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Hey Carbon, I'm glad that was you rather than me! That is a nasty job for sure. And yes, it has to be some sort of soft maple.

 

[Wood Duck]

I think that is either Sugar or Norway Maple based on the leaves. The bark looks more like Sugar Maple.

 

[nrford]

I think that is either Sugar or Norway Maple based on the leaves. The bark looks more like Sugar Maple.

You have some funny looking sugar maple there in Pa. then!

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Here's a question, is there any chance this stuff would be ready to burn next winter if I split it small and stack it in the sunny front row of my woodshed?
If not, then maybe I should stack it at the back row and forget about it for a couple years.???

 

[nrford]

Here's a question, is there any chance this stuff would be ready to burn next winter if I split it small and stack it in the sunny front row of my woodshed?
If not, then maybe I should stack it at the back row and forget about it for a couple years.???

Yes, split small and stacked somewhere where it could breath well and stay out of the rain, you should be able to burn next year

 

[JustWood]

35' of free standing scaffold!! You got some BALLS dude!
I did a stint replacing stained glass windows in churches right out of high school for about 6 months. We did 40' of free standing on casters inside looking down on pews and it made me sick. Sneeze and you were eF'd!

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Thanks nrford, that's what I'll do.

Lee I'm afraid you're the one with BIG knockers, I would never go free standing 35 ft let alone 40 ft. on wheels :ahhh: ???
It's hard to see in the picture but both sets of staging have a corner tied to large tree branches around half way up. Also the two stages are braced together with 2x4s or 2x6s, and a couple cross braces with one cross brace secured to a large 6x6 solid gate post. We got lots of wind here sometimes, I had to be safe, it took me (and my boys) a few days to set up that scaffolding to get it like that. Mind you we only worked for a few hours of those days and I was cutting branches as I went up. The tricky part was setting the scaffold around the lower branches I wanted to save.
Oh, and my buddy's little electric chainsaw polesaw thingy sure made things a lot easier.

Here a cropped area showing one of the branches tied to the scaffold and a couple of the wood braces.

 

[remkel]

Man, as a safety professional I have to say thank you- you just provided me fodder for many a scaffolding/fall protection safety class.

As for the tree, Norway Maple....I know I would not be putting any of my taps into that tree.

 

[firefighterjake]

Getting that queasy sick in the pit of the stomach just looking at how high that scaffolding is . . . and it doesn't matter to me that it is tied off . . . not that I'm a big fan of heights . . . but if I have to go up . . . give me a nice ladder truck any day.

 

[Creekyphil]

Norway Maple

+1

 

[oldspark]

Norway Maple

+1

I'm on board with that.

 

[CTYank]

Norway Maple

Definitely.

IMHO, that's a horrible coppicing job, the sort of butchery one sees in some European cities.
Better a mercy killing- take it down & start over.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

Norway Maple

Definitely.

IMHO, that's a horrible coppicing job, the sort of butchery one sees in some European cities.
Better a mercy killing- take it down & start over.

CTYank I thank you so much for your disparaging comments, however IMHO I must disagree.
I would like to have left the tree to grow freely (certainly would have saved me a lot of work), but because of the space confines and proximity to my neighbors and other considerations to take into account, major pruning was a necessity. The huge amount of leaves was the main problem, most of which, I'm sad to say, all seem to end up in my neighbors yards. The other consideration was that the power company has already pruned the front of the tree a couple times, since I moved here 3 years ago, and left the tree sort of distorted on that side. If you want to see butchery go follow those guys around while they do their work. Anyway, because the tree is quite healthy, I'm sure it will recover quickly. The remaining branches will fill in just fine and in a couple years you'll hardly notice that it was pruned at all, especially once it has leaved out.
If by some remote chance I'm wrong, cutting it right down and starting over could always be employed as a last option, but I choose to let it live rather than snuff it out forever as some might callously precribe.
;-)