Blow down salvage

[Firewoodjoe]

Will large blow down oak and maple still makes sawlogs? They're not broken up just uprooted.

[Southside]

I have sawn both and they were fine. Sometimes the maple are still alive

[John Mc]

Better chance of it working out if they were uprooted vs snapped off.

[Firewoodjoe]

That's my thoughts. Thanks. All one direction also will help. I may not cut it. Others have looked at it also.

[Ron Scott]

Uprooted and not splintered, twisted, or broken is usually ok. Be aware of a possible decrease in grade however. We're going through a lot of tree damage here after last weeks heavy storm.

[Firewoodjoe]

That's what this is. Have u heard how many acres is in the manistee national forest Ron?

[Ron Scott]

I haven't heard just how much acreage was damaged yet. They are still doing an assessment. I believe that the Baldwin/White Cloud Ranger District was hit the hardest. Priority is being given to opening up the trails and recreation areas.

Quite a bit of damage on private lands also.

[olcowhand]

You're not kidding , Mr. Scott.
I was out of town on business this last week, and my wife called to tell me the wrath of our Creator was visiting our humble home. There was either a tornado or some kind of wind that was estimated at ~90 MPH. Our house is surrounded by Maples, and she said these trees were bent over almost level. The destruction is beyond words.
We have dozens of trees (of all diameters) blown down and uprooted. Others (dozens more) have been sheared off at heights of 12'- 20' high.
Pics to follow, but I just cannot believe the force of wind that could have done this. There are places in my woods that have 1/2 or more acres of the canopy opened up where there was no daylight that showed through before this.
Unlike other parts of the country this year (see latest posts of "Post what you're currently cutting"), I think firewood and some saw logs are going to be very reasonable this year in our area.
I still haven't had a chance to walk all of our woods, but there is no way I'll be able to process all of my damaged wood before it starts to rot....
Steve

[Ron Scott]

Very sorry to hear that. Nature made a big change in many home and forest landscapes leaving a lot of wood for salvage along with property destruction. Foresters, tree service companies, and loggers are busy.

[mike_belben]

Glad youre still here to post about it.  

In about 2012 or so an EF4 went thru springfield mass.  It sucked up houses, brick buildings and serious trees.  A slurry of flying bricks broke every window near it for 30 miles or so into monson.  Most impressive damage to me was the brass plated flagpole in front of smith and wesson.. It had curved like a shakespeare ugly stick with a 10 pound smallmouth on it just from the flag catching wind.  astounding force.  

[jd540b]

I am just finishing cleaning up a bunch of oak blowdown from almost a year ago. They have all been fine and log yard bought every stick-around 20k bf.  As long as they are still attached to the rootballs, they will stay good for quite some time.
The one recommendation I will make, especially with fresh blowdown is to bore it them just like you would a strong leaner.  If you just start sawing them off from the top, they WILL split.  That has been my experience anyway.  You don't need to put a face cut in them, just hold a strap at the top to keep them together and cut that last.  You can also sinch them together with a choker and some tension away from you. 

[thecfarm]

Sorry to hear about the mess there guys,
There is a place in West Sumner,ME that something went through,maybe 10-15 years ago. Not a lot of acreage,all I ever saw was from the road,5-10 acres? But what a mess. Would be a hard place to get a tractor through. It's all grown up now,can't tell anymore from the road. Trees easily a foot across blown over.

[dsroten]

Blowdown stuff is what got me started logging.  Sometimes its a twisted up mess and the trees will move in funny directions real quickly when you lay a saw in them.  But like others said, if its on the rootball it should make fine logs.  I've cut a lot of small blowdown jobs and gotten the timber for free, or in exchange for pushing the brush up in a pile.  What I've been doing is measuring off my butt cut, and making my first cut there, leaving butt attached to stump.  Then I'll take the skidder or tractor or whatever is handy and stand the butt up and then saw it off.  No busting the butt log this way, and no sticking my saw in the dirt trying to get it all the way through.  

[mike_belben]

I did a blowdown cleanup for about a week at a camp up the road.   I know it was 900 acres and his take of the sawlogs was just shy of $20k on shares, with plenty of tie and grade logs left behind.  Big oaks just stacked ontop each other.  

My strategy for tangles is always start at the tips.  I begin by just giving a quick and dirty haircut with a tophandle, throwing off all the branch litter i can.  Then trim off the firewood worthy limbs and pile them on the forks.  These will go on my limb processor.  Now i start bucking off the stem at the crotches unless its really straight.

  Tie logs start at 12" small end so when i get to that diameter the tape measure comes out and i start looking to make sellable top logs between the crooks. When theres no more crooks, im looking at my butt log and will then cut the rootball off and see if its got a sound end. Since all the top weight came off there is way less chance of a butt splitting when ya put the saw in.  I just try to make sure i do this in a way that no one comes in and snatches the buttlogs overnight.  If they want firewood its easier to back up and take the small stuff ive already piled then  risk starting a saw to cut my logs. 

[olcowhand]

That's good advice, Mike. Thanks.
My neighbor is a Pro Forester (retired, until he had to pull his gear out for this event), and he said the same thing. He's got a skidder and trucks coming this week.
It's amazing how well a good, methodical description of a process can help me visualize how I'll go about it.
Steve

[mike_belben]

Glad to be of some use steve.

[barbender]

Good advice here. I haven't tangled with blowdown much from the ground- only enough to know how dangerous it is. We cut a lot of it with the CTL equipment, as we've had a lot of wind events in the MN timber country in the last decade.  The harvester guys that do well in it, work with what they've got. Guys that struggle, try to fight it and horse it around. To be honest, I hate to even hear of guys hand cutting wind thrown timber, I've heard too many stories of guys getting hurt and killed in it. It's often not the big trees you have to worry about, it's the small trees that get bent over and are waiting to catapult you 30' when you nick them with a saw. Be careful.

[Skeans1]

Back in 2007 we had a bad storm here knocked down millions of board feet of timber, a guy I knew was doing what Mike is advocating and it was his last day on the job if you release too much weight from the top they can stand back up.

There's time if something is all tangled between a few tree I'll put some relief cut in then drop something on top to bust it out of the jam.

 Stuff like this you use a long bar a big saw to get out of the way quickly.

[mike_belben]

You can get catapaulted from either end just as easy.  Imagine standing on a barber chair when it splodes!  


I guess i should insert the caveat that if you cant see the free end floating, assume it is under tension in the direction you are occupying.  I work from the tips back and this way am almost always cutting a piece that is off the ground.  If i cant see the free end or its pinned down and must be cut, i use a whittle and watch approach.  Knick, pause, knick, pause.  When you see the first movement you can then know where is safest.  I cut fish gills until the tension is relieved.  If it takes 10 gills i cut ten gills.  

I use a ms201t with a 12" bar and then a husky 61 with a 24. Then a 395 if the butts warrant it.   


A full face screen is pretty important.  A limb wack taking out an eye isnt hard to imagine in the tip tangles.  I wear a petzl climbers helmet with muffs and mesh screen 

[mike_belben]

Those ones skeans posted, its slow but if i had to start at the butts, i'd cut out pie slices from every corner that emerges and take them down like a beaver.

When its fully hourglassed you cant get pinched and the tension is gone.  You get a preview of whether the butt log will spring up or stump lay back over etc. 


 Anything to delay removing the leash until the tree's internal commotion has simmered down and dissipated.

[olcowhand]

Thanks, guys.
As you remember them, keep the tips coming. Having said that, I hope we're not "Hijacking" the original thread regarding the quality of the saw logs from blowdowns.
Steve

[thecfarm]

I think we are all learning. ;) hijack and all. ;D

[WV Sawmiller]

Mike,

   Sounds like a great system. One caution is on that last butt log. If the log is small/light enough and the rootball is big enough it may just stand right back up. I cut a big pine for a friend a big Derecho we had here 6-7 years. It laid across his driveway and I think when I got to about 10' left it just stood right back in place. Pretty impressive and got my attention.

[John Mc]

Mike,

  Sounds like a great system. One caution is on that last butt log. If the log is small/light enough and the rootball is big enough it may just stand right back up. I cut a big pine for a friend a big Derecho we had here 6-7 years. It laid across his driveway and I think when I got to about 10' left it just stood right back in place. Pretty impressive and got my attention.

It doesn't have to be small or light for the stump to stand back up. I was clearing a 20" Red Oak that fell across one of my trails after a big winds storm last fall. It had a nice long, straight butt log that I wanted to keep whole. When I cut it off, the stump stood right back up. I was expecting it to happen, so had cut with that in mind.
A similar thing happened when volunteering to clean up damage from that same storm in the woods at the local elementary school. I cut a hemlock about 12 feet up from the stump, and it stood back up up, settling perfectly into its old hole. When walking through the woods later, one of the kids asked, "How did you reach that high to cut it off way up there?" She eventually figured it out, with a couple of hints: "See the top of the tree over there?"   "I wonder how it got there?"  "How far away is it from the trunk?"  "How tall do you think the part left standing is?"  The only part she didn't finally guess was that it stood up by itself. She thought I had stood it up myself for a joke.

[mike_belben]

I will say it another way.  

It does not matter what the tree does when you cut it. Infinite variables abound, no 2 blowdowns are identical and it isnt as simplistic as felling from the stump.   What matters is that you know for certain what it is going to do, before it does it. Finding out by surprise gets people killed.  If you adopt a mindset of 'im not sure yet so im not gonna cut all the way through this' you will remain at less risk in all parts of blowdown

 When you whittle and watch and see movement, the tree shares it's plans and you make arrangements not to put your head in the mouse trap.   No matter which end you start from.  Watch the kerf, watch for rising or falling and especially dont forget about rotation or limbs you cannot see stabbed into the ground that cause unexpected pivot points.   When im really not sure i chew like a beaver.  Never seen a beaver create a barber chair. 

[barbender]

Good point, Mike. I've never seen a beaver barber chair one, either.

[John Mc]

Not sure if you were directing that re-statement at me, or not Mike. In the situations I described, I was well aware of what was going to happen.

When it's not clear where the tension and compression is, I often use a technique called an axle cut: Four cuts around the circumference of the tree, leaving an uncut cant (the axle) in the middle. Watch the kerfs and you can see where the tension and compression are. Often, you can see this before all four cuts are made.

Occasionally, if releasing the tree seems hazardous, I'll turn this into an Axle Lock: once the axle cut is done, make a bore cut about 6" away to sever the fibers of the axle. This makes something sort of like a mortise and tenon joint between the two logs. When I'm ready for them to separate, I use a machine (usually my tractor) pull the top off. The tenon slides out of the mortise, and the two logs are separated. I'm well away from the joint when it happens, but the tree is held in place until I pull it apart.

    

[mike_belben]

No no, not at all.  I reread my previous posts as if i were a young me looking at my first storm cleanup, searching for info on how to proceed.. And felt like there was more that i know now but wish i knew then.  

A lot of times current me is talking to young me.  Or at my 5yr old who was born confident that he knows everything, just like his dad. 

[John Mc]

Yeah, I find myself talking to myself more and more often these days.

The big thing for me these days is paying attention to how tired/hungry/thirsty I am. All of those can affect how safely you work, being aleart and at the top of your game is important any time you are working with a chainsaw, but it's absolutely critical when doing storm damage clean up.

[mike_belben]

Your lincoln log is pretty clever.  I bet you could put the tree back up in a different spot with that technique

[John Mc]

Your lincoln log is pretty clever.  I bet you could put the tree back up in a different spot with that technique

I did not come up with that on my own. That was shown to me in a storm damage cleanup workshop. I don't seem to need it much, but it is handy if you don't want the logs to start moving until you have a machine hooked up.

[olcowhand]

If it's any consolation, Mike- I'm trying to listen like a 5 year old who wants to be able to keep doing it.
Bottom line to most of these posts is that there is a lot of what we refer to in my "Day Job" as "Stored Energy"; Only in this case, not always predictable or even visible.
I'm learning as you're posting..... Thanks.

[mike_belben]

Well,  im not the master of it by any means.  Probably just have more free time to post an explanation than the other folks. 

[John Mc]

Well,  im not the master of it by any means.  Probably just have more free time to post an explanation than the other folks.

I'm not sure anyone is ever done learning on something like storm damage clean up.

[Banjo picker]

If you have kids around, make sure they are not playing around that root ball when it stands up.  That nice fresh dirt would look like a good place to play.  Banjo

[barbender]

Unfortunately, there's been instances of kids getting killed by a root ball like that.

[Skeans1]

Everything about blow down is dangerous makes me glad for the tethering equipment it sure is a good usage of the technology. 

[John Mc]

If you have kids around, make sure they are not playing around that root ball when it stands up.  That nice fresh dirt would look like a good place to play.  Banjo

Four or five years ago, I went for a walk in the woods behind our local elementary school a week or so after a storm went through tipping a few trees over. I found the kids had used a bunch of old limbs to make lean-tos and hideouts under the upturned rootballs or under trees that had hung up in other trees. Some of these settings were obviously unstable. It turns out it was the kids staying for after-school day-care program who were building the forts. (I should have guessed, our school administrators in their "bubble wrap" mentality had banned kids from even picking up sticks, let alone building anything with them.) I had a little chat with the head of the program. He claimed they had looked and determined the areas were "safe". I took him out in the woods, stopped at one of the hung trees, bounced it a few times (one handed), and the 8" DBH tree can crashing down, demolishing the fort that was under it. He pulled the kids out of the woods until I cleared the hazards a few days later.

I guess the demonstration stuck with him, because about 6 weeks after the wind storm last fall, he and the school facilities director asked if I knew anyone who would come in and clear the damage, and how much it was likely to cost. (Since my kids were no longer in elementary school, I was not aware how much of a problem they had. Turns out the kids had been banned from the forest for all 6 weeks, and the kids - as well as some of their teachers - were quite upset about it.) That resulted storm clean-up effort that produced the 12 foot tall Hemlock stump described in an earlier post.

[olcowhand]

I've got an 8 year old daughter who loves to help, but she knows she's not allowed in the woods while we're felling.
Actually, I don't allow anyone around me when I'm felling. I thought this is the way it should be. Maybe you commercial guys have different protocol, but I only invite help after the tree is down. 

[Skeans1]

I've got an 8 year old daughter who loves to help, but she knows she's not allowed in the woods while we're felling.
Actually, I don't allow anyone around me when I'm felling. I thought this is the way it should be. Maybe you commercial guys have different protocol, but I only invite help after the tree is down.

Sometimes we have a back faller otherwise it's two tree lengths in the clear cuts and if I'm hand cut thinning really tall stuff 150+ ft I really prefer 3 tree lengths.

[Ron Scott]

That's a good policy to follow. We often have a problem with the landowner who want to get right up close to the cutter or harvester to watch what's happening to their trees. We educate them quick to "stay away" even though they own the property. ;)

[barbender]

Oh gosh, I could write a book on some of these landowners or just gawkers that get too close to the machines! I used too always be on the lookout for little kids, these days I'm more concerned when I see old men in the area!😊 At least I know when kids will be in school, the old fellas will be underfoot at all hours🙃 I came VERY close to backing over an elderly landowner last week. He came out to have a look and drove up directly behind my fully loaded forwarder while I was unloading in his Suburban. I started backing up to my bolt pile, I had a random thought, remembering the processor operator had mentioned that the landowner kept coming out and parking where he was felling timber. So I turned the machine to the side a bit so I could see behind myself, well there was the Suburban sitting there, about 8' behind me. I hadn't personally met the fellow yet, as it turns out he has fused vertebrae in his neck so he can't raise his head or look to the side. So for him to back up his vehicle takes very slow, deliberate action. In short, he drove right up behind me into a spot he couldn't back out of.  Thank God he gave me the premonition there was something behind me. After my major screw up earlier this year backing into one of our trucks, the last thing I needed was to crush a landowners vehicle (and potentially the landowner, too!)- even though this one wouldn't have been my fault. Starting to think about one of those back up cameras. Anyhow, I'm not one to chew a person out, it's just not my nature, and especially when it is an older person that you are working for (I was raised to be respectful of my elders👍) but I had to kind of hit the override button and let the fella have it a bit. I just told him that he can not come up behind me in any circumstance, and if he wanted to watch he would have to stay out of the landing area. I didn't yell at him, I was just very, very firm. In all my working career, the only thing I have lost my cool with people about is when they repeatedly put themselves in dangerous situations around the machines. I just don't want to run someone over!

[Skeans1]

Have you guys ever thought about putting cutting gates up? Doing certain company ground we are required to put up a mesh gate where they have to call out before entering the work area.

[barbender]

That's a good idea, we need to do something. Our main problem is on the private lots we do.

[DelawhereJoe]

Any and all info you guys can share and explain about removing hung up and blown down/over trees would be a great resource for those who will be effected by Hurricane Florence in the coming week as its looking to run right into North Carolina with 130-140 mph winds.

[nativewolf]

Ughh; man I hope this stays out to sea.  We have had the wettest summer ever, ground is soaked.  Rained three inches this weekend, I'm going to have a huge mess on our hands if this comes through.  In fact, i might have to do tree work instead of harvesting.

[John Mc]

Any and all info you guys can share and explain about removing hung up and blown down/over trees would be a great resource for those who will be effected by Hurricane Florence in the coming week as its looking to run right into North Carolina with 130-140 mph winds.

I sympathies go out to those of you in the path. We have to deal with hurricanes here in VT extremely rarely (and then it's usually only the remnants of one). On the other hand, losing power in a wind/ice storm in the winter (especially when below zero) is no fun either.

Be careful doing storm damage cleanup. That can be an extremely dangerous undertaking. Tips given over the internet can help, especially if you already have a strong base of experience to build on and know your limitations and that of your equipment. However, there is no substitute for some hands-on learning with someone experienced at storm damage cleanup.