Those Evil Pine Trees

[BrotherBart]

Yesterday afternoon I popped a cold one and went to take Michelle the woodpile cat for her evening walk in the woods. As I passed a big pine tree in the woods behind the house I could swear I heard it chuckle. Two hours later it was on the ground and all but the top 36 feet of eight inch rounds bucked. The sucker stepped off at 86 feet of trunk. The second tallest pine on the property. After I split this up I will go back for the rest.

And then next year or the year after I will subject my chimney to the evils of burning this sucker. :coolsmirk:

 

[GunSeth]

You sure showed that smelly tree who's boss!

 

[drdoct]

So did you sit in that lawn chair and put your beer on top of the zep drum? I like the way you have to leave the saw 'guarding' the rounds while you step away to take a picture. Evil Pine Indeed.

 

[BrotherBart]

The funny thing about the pines around here is that there is no sticky sap and very little pine smell to them.

I put the saw on top because I can't take a picture of myself on top of the wood doing a Tarzan yell. :lol:

 

[LLigetfa]

I guess you got the last laugh. That tree looks sound and probably would have made a nice pole or poles.

 

[LLigetfa]

I like the way you have to leave the saw 'guarding' the rounds while you step away to take a picture.

It's like posing with the rifle over a large buck. The saw deserves some of the credit.

 

[BrotherBart]

So did you sit in that lawn chair and put your beer on top of the zep drum? I like the way you have to leave the saw 'guarding' the rounds while you step away to take a picture. Evil Pine Indeed.

After splitting, that chair actually sits over between the drum and the splitter and you are right. I sit my beer on top of it.

 

[Pagey]

Not to alarm you too much, BB, but your chimney is on fire and your palms are now hairy. Also, you have blurred vision. Do not operate a car/heavy machinery.

 

[Todd]

Nice job BB, have you gotten to those big Oaks yet?

 

[billb3]

I'm glad it was a tree that chuckled and not a neighbor.

Standing on a white pine stump left from cut down last year here will yield quite sticky shoes. The pitch still hasn't dried out.

 

[BrotherBart]

Nice job BB, have you gotten to those big Oaks yet?

Went down three days ago and tackled one of them that I have circled for years. Decided if it was my time to get whacked by a widow maker from 70 feet up then so be it. Went down with the big Poulan and made the front notch and started on the felling cut on the back. For the first time in my life it went backwards on me. AND DIDN'T GO DOWN! The darn thing sat up there at a 45 degree angle held by nothing but an inch of hinge and my saw bar that was firmly vised under it. I had cut it where either forward or backward it would not hang up in another big tree. So I pull out the other saw and as I started to cut out the hinge (sufficiently puckered, me not the hinge) the sucker rotated on the stump and hung up in the top of a tree ten feet to the left of the felling direction. To make it even more interesting, when it started down I turned and headed out my escape route 45 degrees from the stump. Stepped on dry leaves that had wet leaves under them and went down hard right next to the stump but managed to not fall on the running saw.

Not a good afternoon. That pig can sit there hung in that other tree till hell freezes over for all I care. Just for the sake of sanity before I dropped the curvy big pine I sat a beer can seventy feet out on the line I want to drop the tree on. Smacked that sucker right into the ground with the tree. :cheese:

 

[heaths]

________________________________________
Wow! Been waiting for this! Thanks guys. Thanks Barry.
simulationcredit

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Is there a neighbor you have helped in the past? Perhaps you could ask a neighbor with a tractor to push it over- or pull it over for you- safely at the end of a long chain or rope. There are safe ways to 'get a rope around it' that do not involve climbing. My neighbor with the acreage uses his tractor to push over 'medium' size trees fairly often (standing dead).

 

[BrotherBart]

Is there a neighbor you have helped in the past? Perhaps you could ask a neighbor with a tractor to push it over- or pull it over for you- safely at the end of a long chain or rope. There are safe ways to 'get a rope around it' that do not involve climbing. My neighbor with the acreage uses his tractor to push over 'medium' size trees fairly often (standing dead).

The woods around here are thick with trees so getting anything in there won't happen. I have a long heavy cable and a 3/4 Suburban but it isn't going to make it into those woods.

 

[stee6043]

Is there a neighbor you have helped in the past? Perhaps you could ask a neighbor with a tractor to push it over- or pull it over for you- safely at the end of a long chain or rope. There are safe ways to 'get a rope around it' that do not involve climbing. My neighbor with the acreage uses his tractor to push over 'medium' size trees fairly often (standing dead).

The woods around here are thick with trees so getting anything in there won't happen. I have a long heavy cable and a 3/4 Suburban but it isn't going to make it into those woods.

Mabe this is not normal but when I've done this in the past I've simply moved up the tree about 2' from the original cut and create a new cut. Relief cut on the top about 1/4 the way through the tree and then finish the cut from the bottom. Finishing the cut drops the tree more vertical and you really don't know where she's going to go but typically it won't be hung up anymore.

I've done this about four times this year. More than once I've had to repeat the above three or four times before the tree is short enough to get untangled from the other trees. That's why I do 2' sections. Once done I can cut those again into decent sized rounds. Am I the only one? I couldn't stand leaving a tree hung....my luck would be the tree would fall on my dog the next day....or worse.

 

[BrotherBart]

I have done that before. That way and also back cutting a section five feet up, wrapping a chain around it and using the garden tractor to snap the section out to drop the tree down. This sucker is just too darn big for those adventures and the way it is hung up, it wouldn't come down then anyway. This thing couldn't be more secure it if was laying on the ground. These are thick woods with hundreds of tall oaks. The chances of getting whacked by a large limb breaking off of a live tree as you are walking through are greater than this thing falling on you.