My Dad tricked me into cutting an Osage Orange (Hedge)

[Bspring]

I live 9 hours away and the few times a year that I make it to their house I spend a day or two cleaning up around the house. My Dad knows that I don't like cutting live trees so he took his ax to this perfectly healthy Osage Orange! He doesn't like them, says they are ugly, have thorns and it was blocking the sun from his Magnolia. I was so impressed that at close to 80 years old he almost cut one of the densest trees in North America with an ax. He would have cut it all the way but chickened out for fear that it might fall across the drive way and block him in.
He doesn't heat with wood so unfortunately it will just rot. I thought about giving it away on craigslist but then realized that when someone showed up he would tell them they could cut them all.
I of course would love to have that wood but as we all know it would not be worth it to transport it that far and may not be legal either. He knows I like them and actually brought me a sapling and planted it at my house. I think this was to butter me up before I saw what he had done to his tree.

 

[spirilis]

I'm impressed at how well the tree is standing with what's left!

 

[CentralVAWoodHeat]

Yikes! That thing could fall at any second. One good blow to the back of that hinge would be all it takes to send it falling....problem is it is leaning in the opposite direction of the felling notch. If it goes that way, there will be no kickback stop and it could really kick back pretty badly.

Good luck! It's making me nervous just looking at it!

 

[fespo]

God Bless him, that is some hardwood to do it with a ax

 

[Applesister]

He should have cut it when it was smaller and he was younger...lol.
I say that about all the poplar in the horse field. "Should have cut the weeds back when they were smaller."

 

[Bspring]

He should have cut it when it was smaller and he was younger...lol.
I say that about all the poplar in the horse field. "Should have cut the weeds back when they were smaller."

That's what I say about the poplar also. Thing is that he doesn't have any and likes poplar. I also call them weeds and have sent him home with some. BTW, there was no hinge on that tree. It looked like a giant beaver had worked it's way all the way around it. When I finished it off it got hung up in the other trees around it and I had to carefully take it down from there limb by limb.

 

[Firefighter938]

It would be tough for me to leave that amount of Osage behind. Every trip home I would take some back with me. Even if it took 20 years that wood would be solid as today.

 

[Applesister]

That is exactly how beaver cut trees down. Ive got pictures of them and they manage to drop the trees right into the edge of the swamp/water.
They look just like that. They knaw on them all the way around and leave a small section in the middle.

 

[Stinkpickle]

I would use a small explosive charge to finish it off safely from a distance.