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Advanced Falling Cuts

Started by RHP Logging, March 26, 2016, 12:43:41 AM

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CCC4

It's not uncommon for the eye of the heart to be in the wedge removed from the face :)

RHP Logging

Yep. From today. Pretty typical stump of mine when I'm not trying to swing something. Flat ground conventional. About 30" ash.

 
Buckin in the woods

RHP Logging

Ohio logger- this is how you swing red oak!


 

Butt cleaned up


 
Buckin in the woods

chep

Rhp

Nice stumps. Love that root flair swing on the red. Your videos on YouTube have been pulled? What's the deal? Do you have a channel otherwise accessible?

Cheers

RHP Logging

Thanks! I deleted that account. I'm going to be putting up a new one under the same username as I have here when I get the time.
Buckin in the woods

Ohio Logger

RHP, I love it. I wish I could do it over and try it on that tree. I suppose there is a point that there is just too much side weight, and I would guess that tree had to be close, but I would like to try it. I have been having a lot of fun swinging some small (18" and less) cherry on our pipeline job. I don't see why the open face notch is a down side to swinging trees. Can someone explain why you would use such a narrow notch as some of these pics show. I don't really want any tree coming free from the stump for as long as possible. A lot of my trees with flexible wood will stay attached the whole way to the ground. Now when a body is select cutting, that is not always a good thing. I am not knocking what you are doing. More just curious. I typically get close to that 70 to 90 degree notch ( usually closer to 70), but I cheat. I angle my bottom cut up from the bottom a lot of time. That lessens the amount of cutting down on top of the grain which is a real pain.

I like OH Logger's post about experience v. Osha. I agree 100%. As far as my own experience level, I have been in the woods more or less full time for about 5 years. But my experience on the pipeline work has probably increased my number of tree cut far more than years would indicate. Although they would average a good bit smaller than most loggers. We are cutting everything 3" and up. Plus with power lines and roadways, it can test your skill a good bit. I like this thread even though I don't understand exactly how to do some of these cuts, I get the gist of what you do and can see how it would work. While I am not comfortable with these cuts, someday I aspire to at least being able to use them occasionally. Good luck and be safe!

mike_belben

I reread this thread every so often and grasp a bit more each time.  The production rates quoted by some guys here astound me, and make me realize im slow as mollasses. 

GOL is my thing but it can be a real bear levering some of them over against the lean and you really are trusting you have the weight figured right in the setup, which ive figured wrong a time or three.  Nothing makes my heart pound like furiously beating wedges after ive already nipped the trigger and the tree is just sitting there contemplating its crash toward earth while im choosing between beat wedges or beat feet.  Those are the moments that make me consider moving away from GOL on some trees that look noncommital on direction.

Im getting more comfortable with deeper and narrower notches to help undermine the trees balance in my favor, and it has helped, but still skiddish about getting away from wedges. I use a bunch. 

Ive gotten a handful of leaners to go 90* from the head lean using a tapered dutchman hinge with the compression wood cut out but i still use wedges to keep from pinching the bar, then pound on them to get the fall started.  Its still a static felling though, i cant make a tree question mark its way through the canopy on command while live cutting through the fall.  Any time i try i screw it up and take 3x as long.

Heres a 30" stump cut using a dutchman that went about 15* shy of the full swing target, the stem landed perpendicular to the notch but i wanted it to pull a  little further from that wood pile to the open spot .  Would a little more hold wood have done that or do i need to cut ramps in the notch?

 






The lean was onto the wedges toward a neighbors house, and also up hill opposite the pie tab. 

Praise The Lord

treeslayer2003

read up on the siswheel. on oak, use it with a soft dutchman, also i deepen the wheel on oak for a little more flex.

chep

Hope RHP  LOGGING is still around. I have learned some cool tricks off his posts for sure. Sounded like he may have got offended and left the forum...hope not
Anyways been in some decent red oak.
First set is a siswheel setup on a leaner. Saved out the regen and  the tree (not me in the photo but my falling partner willy)






Cheers

mike_belben

So is the siswheel just a big clearance cutout for a fat hold tab to flex more before coming off?   
Praise The Lord

John Mc

I've wondered a lot about a lot of the siswheel pictures I see on here. It's always hard to tell from photos what the real situation is - nothing replaces being there in person. Jut from the pictures, it looks as though a lot of these could be done by using a standard notch and just aiming the tree in the appropriate direction. Are some of these being done "for fun" or for practice, or is there something I'm not seeing in the pictures, or do some of you just prefer using a siswheel to using a standard notch and perhaps needing a wedge to drive it over?
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.   - Abraham Maslow

chep

The siswheel is not for fun. We are full time loggers. It is a tool in a directional felling plan.  We use Gol methods on most of these trees. The big oak with the sis wheel was leaning heavy downhill with beauty save trees in its path.  The notch was aimed 30 degrees above the intended lay.
A siswheel is just elongating your hinge wood on one side (the side you want to hold and swing the tree. It allows it to bend and hold not just break as the notch closes. It can be done very successfully with bore cutting. It is more effective not bore cutting (ie chasing the backcut) but if set up right it works fine with gol methods.
Every tree is different and only time and experience can teach you how to assess the right tools to use on each tree.

John Mc

I know what a siswheel is. What I was asking is whether some of the videos posted were more for demonstration purposes, since what I can see from pictures it looks as though some of them could fall in a straight line, rather than needing to redirect on the way down.  I do realize a lot of this is probably just because the photos don't do it justice.

What would be really cool is to see a split frame video of a siswheel: one from the normal ground level, and one from an overhead drone showing the path of the fall (perhaps with some graphics added like the commentators do on the football replays).
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.   - Abraham Maslow

chep

Johnmc
The job I am on now is 1 hr 40 min. From you. Pm if you ever want to take a field trip. See some cuts look at stumps. I'm sure we both have plenty to learn and share

John Mc

Quote from: chep on July 29, 2017, 02:49:01 PM
Johnmc
The job I am on now is 1 hr 40 min. From you. Pm if you ever want to take a field trip. See some cuts look at stumps. I'm sure we both have plenty to learn and share

PM sent
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.   - Abraham Maslow

treeslayer2003

chep, tell your pard good job on the wheel. it broke out of the stump so i assume it went as intended. btw, i prefer to use it with a humolt notch, i just feel like it steers better......could be all in my head.
yes Mike B it is intended to hold one side and flex so it pulls the tree into the face.
John, it absolutely will bring a stick around and with out pounding wedges. i learned to do this on jobs where every stick was leaning toward a smz or property line. you get really tired of relentless pounding. the very few times i got to watch the top [usually running away] it really does pivot around in a half circle, hence the wheel term. caution to guys not used to these methods, it is imperative all your cuts match precisely, otherwise it will not hold. i can't stress this enough, it will not work with any sort of over cut any where. remember i learned to do these through trial and error and tips from west coast fallers and one in the mid west lol. there is no one here to learn from. so i know exactly what it takes for it to fail.

treeslayer2003

Mike B, since i know you are experimenting with these cuts, i must caution you on that face cut, i couldn't get away with that in whits oak here. i would made that humbolt much steeper. the oak here can be splitty, so take my advise for the suggestion that it is........i just don't want to read about one chairing on ya. of course you will end up with a taller stump.

mike_belben

Thanks for mentioning. 

Do you really think the notch is that much of the recipe for barber chair?   I was having them all the time when i first started cutting culls on my homestead, actually started a thread on this forum called white oak barberchairs and got lots of good advice.. Have cut about 70 trees since without issue.

Gutting out the center and reducing the hinge down to the minimum seems to have eliminated it.   I havent made a connection to facecuts and BCs.
Praise The Lord

treeslayer2003

it really depends on the wood. gutting will usually eliminate chairs. i just prefer a steeper face.

DMcCoy

I would like to thank John Vader for his diagrams on felling.  Made a significant difference in how I cut.

This was a multi-stem Red Alder with a hard lean.  Firewood tree so I was not concerned with pull out nor lost length.  The stump is sitting up in the air so it will get get cut into camp fire wood.  Has a little heart rot which I expected.

Red Alder is well know to barber chair, so I use a fresh chain so I can cut quickly.  I fell this in the direction of the lean.   I like this cutting technique to avoid barber chairing.

1st cut - wedge.
2nd cut - plunge cut, cut forward to make the hinge then back.  Left a thick holding strap.
3rd cut - 24" bar wasn't long enough so I cut the buttress.
4th (felling)cut - Cut the holding strap well above the plunge cut, from the back toward the center.


 


mike_belben

I been developing my own cut for leaners that must go sideways of their lean and cannot risk having them miss the mark.  I call it the whole enchilada and its a blend of almost every trick i ever saw put into a stump.  I will aim to explain it clear enough for novice cutters to gain some understanding of the forces at play here. I apologize for how wordy this will probably be.



view from a treehouse deer stand, of shooting lane over my skid road to a run that crosses my landing.  Those two curvy white oaks in center had to go and wanted to eat the boundary fence, which i couldnt afford but didnt want to climb and leash these out of laziness i guess.  I put one down exactly where it was supposed to go with this funky cut, then  went and got the phone for pics of the same setup on number 2 to explain it.


The pic below is of the first tree and the stack of face pieces.  The top one is the standard notch i started with, then the block face i changed to, and finally the siswheel clearance tab below.  Atleast thats the way i understand the terminology, maybe im wrong but theres no SAE nomenclature on these things. Dont ask me who came up with "siswheel" for a name or who decides whats right or wrong. You can call it a tootsie roll if you want, i dont care.



So in goes the blockface and a half the siswheel chunk.



Then the rest of the siswheel comes out and a bore cut goes through but not parallel to the notch, its tapered in the swing dutchman style, more on this in a minute.




So thats a blockface above a triangular 'siswheel' clearance cut.  The blockface makes it so that the face pieces never actually close, atleast on this diameter tree and face depth... And it exposed a length of fiber so that the hinge fibers bend over a more gentle radius rather than snapping over a short radius.  A face notch closing is what forces the hinge wood to tear and turn the tree loose during its fall.  So your notch face angles control the timing of closure and hinge tearout. In this case i wanted zero tearout and was willing to injure the buttlog to ensure that the stump controlled it all the way to the ground.

But then again a barberchair is never good right?  Too much hingewood resisting the top's gravity seems *in my opinion* be what causes them. The top says im going and the stump says youre staying.  The buttlog says i hate when you two fight and blows apart.  So the challenge is selecting cuts that keep the top from following its gravitational lean, and keep the top on your target despite that lean, but undermine the stumps ability to chair the buttlog. Its complicated!

The fibers that the siswheel exposes are the hold wood keeping the tree from choosing to obey gravity instead of your wedges and its such a critcal concept, i hope im explaining this well.   There is so much lean that half the tree is in compression and half is in tension.  This tension side fiber is whats holding your tree up against gravity's evil clutches. The magic hold tab.  You can cut out all the compression side of the hinge and it wont matter, but too little hold wood is a disaster.  the tension fibers furthest from the center have more influence than do those closest to the center so we give them the most room to breath, hence the wedged shape of the siswheel.  It took me a long time to get that.


a "swing dutchman" hinge is used to put almost all the fibers of your hinge on the tension side that hold your leaner up. You are cutting away compression fibers and leaving extra thickness among the tension fibers.  It looks like a pie cut left on the stump after the tree is felled. Again the siswheel pie cut right there below the blockface is to give this hold tab a lot of fiber length, which creates the freedom of movement for the tab to bend instead of snapping.  another little detail that gives the stump a longer retention time before tearout.

Enhancing this tab flexibility is that bore cut going in behind the tab.  [I stole it from logger wades "triple hinge."  I prefer a single bore to box the swing dutchman tab, wade does 2 bore cuts to make a 3 piece tab.] Running the bore slit down toward the roots a bit lets the hold tab peel away and flex even more.  

Now on the compression side im severing the hinge line to make the pie shape.  Note that vertical strap of tension wood.  critical.






then i put in one wedge,  cut some more and get a 2nd wedge.. Really pound them both in and finally go back to whittle a bit more on the tab until she goes over.


First one down.. Aiming second one at the first..



Jackpot.  



Landing exactly perpendicular to the notch face, no rotation, no drifting off the mark, no barberchair, no significant fiber pull in the buttlog and really not even a broken top or a bang.  This is the slowest, most boring fall you ever saw, its as slow as a wet ground uprooting. The buttlog does not sever from the stump.  You have to cut it free after and trim up the last few inches.



Stuck wedges into the kerfs to illustrate the planes of bore cut














*please note* 

This is not a swing cut.  Its just another way to get a heavy leaner to go left or right instead of straight forward toward its lean.  But its easy on the sawlogs and pretty safe for a novice IMO.
Praise The Lord

mike_belben

Say the lean is straight north and you want the top to lay straight west and to do it gently, this will works well, and youd set your aiming sights exactly west.

If you first needed to bend north for clearance before circling west youd have to add in the ultrasoft part of a swing dutchman, which im not great at.  

If you wanted the north leaner to land south west youd probably have to throw it off the stump by tearing the hinge mid flight.  So for that, regular notches timed to close sooner is probably the ticket.  I think youd have a hard time aiming the notch much beyond 90 degrees off the lean and still getting the tree started with just wedges.

  But if you set a regular notch plus siswheel and borecut for extra flex, your hold tab will stay attached as the compression side of the hinge breaks while leaning west.  That last bit of south side fiber will hang on longer and give a southern pull to tug this westward fall to southwest.  It may not land exactly as controlled as it would staying attached to stump, but you can only do so much with a chainsaw i reckon.  

Anyway, just one more thing for the toolbox
Praise The Lord

olcowhand

Quote from: mike_belben on November 13, 2018, 10:27:35 AM
I been developing my own cut for leaners that must go sideways of their lean and cannot risk having them miss the mark.  I call it the whole enchilada and its a blend of almost every trick i ever saw put into a stump.  I will aim to explain it clear enough for novice cutters to gain some understanding of the forces at play here. I apologize for how wordy this will probably be.



view from a treehouse deer stand, of shooting lane over my skid road to a run that crosses my landing.  Those two curvy white oaks in center had to go and wanted to eat the boundary fence, which i couldnt afford but didnt want to climb and leash these out of laziness i guess.  I put one down exactly where it was supposed to go with this funky cut, then  went and got the phone for pics of the same setup on number 2 to explain it.


The pic below is of the first tree and the stack of face pieces.  The top one is the standard notch i started with, then the block face i changed to, and finally the siswheel clearance tab below.  Atleast thats the way i understand the terminology, maybe im wrong but theres no SAE nomenclature on these things. Dont ask me who came up with "siswheel" for a name or who decides whats right or wrong. You can call it a tootsie roll if you want, i dont care.



So in goes the blockface and a half the siswheel chunk.



Then the rest of the siswheel comes out and a bore cut goes through but not parallel to the notch, its tapered in the swing dutchman style, more on this in a minute.




So thats a blockface above a triangular 'siswheel' clearance cut.  The blockface makes it so that the face pieces never actually close, atleast on this diameter tree and face depth... And it exposed a length of fiber so that the hinge fibers bend over a more gentle radius rather than snapping over a short radius.  A face notch closing is what forces the hinge wood to tear and turn the tree loose during its fall.  So your notch face angles control the timing of closure and hinge tearout. In this case i wanted zero tearout and was willing to injure the buttlog to ensure that the stump controlled it all the way to the ground.

But then again a barberchair is never good right?  Too much hingewood resisting the top's gravity seems *in my opinion* be what causes them. The top says im going and the stump says youre staying.  The buttlog says i hate when you two fight and blows apart.  So the challenge is selecting cuts that keep the top from following its gravitational lean, and keep the top on your target despite that lean, but undermine the stumps ability to chair the buttlog. Its complicated!

The fibers that the siswheel exposes are the hold wood keeping the tree from choosing to obey gravity instead of your wedges and its such a critcal concept, i hope im explaining this well.   There is so much lean that half the tree is in compression and half is in tension.  This tension side fiber is whats holding your tree up against gravity's evil clutches. The magic hold tab.  You can cut out all the compression side of the hinge and it wont matter, but too little hold wood is a disaster.  the tension fibers furthest from the center have more influence than do those closest to the center so we give them the most room to breath, hence the wedged shape of the siswheel.  It took me a long time to get that.


a "swing dutchman" hinge is used to put almost all the fibers of your hinge on the tension side that hold your leaner up. You are cutting away compression fibers and leaving extra thickness among the tension fibers.  It looks like a pie cut left on the stump after the tree is felled. Again the siswheel pie cut right there below the blockface is to give this hold tab a lot of fiber length, which creates the freedom of movement for the tab to bend instead of snapping.  another little detail that gives the stump a longer retention time before tearout.

Enhancing this tab flexibility is that bore cut going in behind the tab.  [I stole it from logger wades "triple hinge."  I prefer a single bore to box the swing dutchman tab, wade does 2 bore cuts to make a 3 piece tab.] Running the bore slit down toward the roots a bit lets the hold tab peel away and flex even more.  

Now on the compression side im severing the hinge line to make the pie shape.  Note that vertical strap of tension wood.  critical.






then i put in one wedge,  cut some more and get a 2nd wedge.. Really pound them both in and finally go back to whittle a bit more on the tab until she goes over.


First one down.. Aiming second one at the first..



Jackpot.  



Landing exactly perpendicular to the notch face, no rotation, no drifting off the mark, no barberchair, no significant fiber pull in the buttlog and really not even a broken top or a bang.  This is the slowest, most boring fall you ever saw, its as slow as a wet ground uprooting. The buttlog does not sever from the stump.  You have to cut it free after and trim up the last few inches.



Stuck wedges into the kerfs to illustrate the planes of bore cut












Mike,
That was a very informative and well- constructed post. Thanks.
Olcowhand's Workshop, LLC

They say the mind is the first to go; I'm glad it's something I don't use!

Ezekiel 36:26-27

Magicman

I sawed some logs for a customer a couple of weeks ago and here is the stump:


 
 Yes, the wedge was stuck in the stump.  His first attempt to drop the tree.  Didn't work so he went to the opposite side.



 This one brought it down.  It fell toward the first attempt above.



 
The stump is seen in the background and the first attempt is seen on the left side of the stump. 
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lxskllr

Quote from: Magicman on November 13, 2018, 07:02:03 PM
I sawed some logs for a customer a couple of weeks ago and here is the stump:


 
Yes, the wedge was stuck in the stump.  His first attempt to drop the tree.  Didn't work so he went to the opposite side.



This one brought it down.  It fell toward the first attempt above.



 
The stump is seen in the background and the first attempt is seen on the left side of the stump.
I feel a bit better now. That's worse than the ugly stump I left a couple weeks ago  :^D  No pics cause I already destroyed the evidence  :^D  I mangled it so bad, I had 5 wedges stuck in the back, and still couldn't get it to go over. I recut the face, and nipped the sides. Then it literally took a tap with my hatchet to send it over. Right where I wanted, but with 600% more effort than it should have been.
Next tree I'm gonna premark every cut, and pay close attention to the bar. I seem to have a problem judging level with the saw.

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