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Swinging dutchman cut

Started by Lumberjohn, February 11, 2015, 06:33:27 AM

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Lumberjohn

I have always heard about this technique. Im not exactly sure what it is. If it is what Im thinking it is it doesnt make any sense to me.  Anybody care to explain?

mesquite buckeye

There are several versions of the swing dutchman. Basicly it is a setup that causes the holding wood to partially fail on one side resulting in the tree being pulled to the side with undamaged holding wood. I hope this helps. This is laid out in detail in Douglas Dent's Professional Timber Felling.
Manage 80 acre tree farm in central Missouri and Mesquite timber and about a gozillion saguaros in Arizona.

CCC4

I think I do a version of it and have named it the hill billy sizwheel...mine is minus the additional chunk taken out of the turn corner. I do a sizwheel and add the extra when I really want one to come around more than 90*

Lumberjohn

What exactly are you getting the tree to do when you use one?

so il logger

We call it (swinging) around my part's. We use it to get alot of fencerow tree's to lay at the edge along the brush rather than straight out into the field. By taking away hinge wood on the heavy side it allows the tree to sit and then you use the other side of the hinge to pull the tree around to follow your notch. When things go right you can usually take a tree that leans say toward the north and fall it east or west. It is a widely used technique around here where it is almost always thinning jobs so we use it to avoid hitting other trees. 

Magicman

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CCC4

Yup...swing around a save tree or into lead

CCC4

Magicman, that guy is fricken awesome! Love his videos!

Magicman

Here is a FF thread about the Dutchman:  Dutchman
Knothole Sawmill, LLC     '98 Wood-Mizer LT40SuperHydraulic   WM Million BF Club Member   WM Pro Sawyer Network

It's Weird being the Same Age as Old People

Never allow your "need" to make money to exceed your "desire" to provide quality service.....The Magicman

John Vander

Looks dangerous. Here in Japan some fellows do the scarf and then bore the scarf from the front, creating a double hinge. They perform the back cut and as the tree starts tipping over they cut off one of the hinges to make the tree spin as to avoid hitting other trees. Don't ask me the details about this. i've never seen this myself. Someone explained it to me, but i don't think I'll try it. ;D
Tree and saw accidents nullify years of forestry experience.

thenorthman

So the point of a dutchmen (the on purpose kind anyway) is to get a side leaner to turn a little or a lot towards where you want it to go.

Easiest and most used is simply varying the width of the hold wood, thick on the side you want it to turn too.  It does involve hanging out at the stump a little longer then is strictly wise or safe though. Actually all of the turning and steering methods involve sticking at the stump too long... Unless you want to try the SSD/GOL stuff and then you only get one shot to control direction... any way...

So a true and proper Dutch is basically a bit of the face wood that is left in the way, creating a step, this step will cause the tree to lift on that side and turn away from said step.

Now they can be on purpose like where you don't meet up with your face cuts, which I prefer since its solid wood, or where you sever the off side hold wood after gunning the tree (always aim where you want it or just a little past accounting for the bit of lean).  The severing the off side works fairly well as well.

Then there is the OOPs I done aim teat da rong whey.  These are used more for correcting a miss aim or what not, though they work nearly as good as the more solid forms. Anyway basically you take a chunk of something and cram it into the face on the side you want to turn away from. Rocks Sticks a piece of the face you cut free.

Now there is the fun alternatives to the original dutch, the siswheel, Soft dutch, and kerf dutch.

Siswheel is kinda hard to explain but its basically a crooked block face maximizing the hold wood on the pull side.  Tricks to it are to try and line it up with a root flare and keep the cuts on the hold wood clean. If done correctly you can even pull the roots out of the ground with it...

The soft dutch is nice for really swinging a tree around, basically its just making a bunch of kerf cuts through the original dutch, each one a bit more shallow then the last.

And finally the kerf dutch, which is nice for getting trees to hop a bit, also known as stump jumping, basically its a dutch that extends clear across the stump.  Problem with this one is that it can cause a chair... trick is to not leave a huge one say double the hold wood.

Any way, the trick to making any of these work (except kerf) is to cut the off side hold wood completetely, this allows the tree to pivot around the side with the hold wood.  Whether you do it from the face or the back but doesn't really matter, I prefer from the face as going from the back side you don't always have the time to cut the off side, and doing so has a habit of pinching the bar and then launching the saw with the tree (expensive...)

Also watch the top, as its going to tell  you where the tree is going, and allow you to cut more on one side or the other to correct or hold course depending, not to mention if anything falls out and tries to kill you give ya time to flee. (that bit between when you hear yer hat crumple and unconciousness/death is really quite short).

enjoy
well that didn't work

so il logger

 :D :D :D Lots of things I could say regarding that, I must do the siswheel. Whatever it is called it works for me. Except for when it dont. I will get a pic on this thread for you of what happens when something comes knocking at your door via the hardhat  ;D

so il logger

 

 

Always look up, always. Luckily just had some blood out of my ears and no concussion. Or I dont think, I finished the day and went home. But it sure knocked me senseless for a while. And outta no where. I was swinging one and it brushed another while I was kneeled at the stump finishing the cut. That was 6 years ago.

ReggieT

Quote from: so il logger on February 11, 2015, 10:54:20 PM


 

Always look up, always. Luckily just had some blood out of my ears and no concussion. Or I dont think, I finished the day and went home. But it sure knocked me senseless for a while. And outta no where. I was swinging one and it brushed another while I was kneeled at the stump finishing the cut. That was 6 years ago.
YIKES!!!!!!!!!!! :o

Lumberjohn

I watched the video. I didnt see the tree do anything extraordinary/different that regular felling would do. It went the direction of the notch, no rolling, tipping, collapsing or swinging (at least from what I could see). Did it help some?, maybe, Im not convinced just yet.
I was waiting to see the tree tilt some where he cut the slivers and it basically went straight, much like regular felling. I think having a pie shaped hinge favoring the light side would have had the same effect? Hard to say since I wasnt there personally to see.

Pa woodchuck

You didn't see the tree do anything because they didn't show the top of the tree. If he would of just faced and back cut the tree it would of hit the trees in front(not to mention beatin wedges). Instead it actually swings the top of the tree out around the others avoiding a hanger or damaging the save trees.

Lumberjohn

Sure it might swing very little but it comes back around to the squareness of the notch cut eventually, or breaks off. (it would have to be right beside the save tree it is rolling around for that to work)
Seems to me a tree would have to literally leave the stump, then twist for this to have any affect.
My point is; the tree still hits x spot in a straight line no matter what you do. I guess Im old fashioned, a hard  leaning tree has just so much of a degree of angle to fall sideways.

Pa woodchuck

Its hard to explain I guess. The biggest benefit of the dutchman is changing direction without beating wedges all day. I like to use it to swing tops through the canopy. Nothing gets under my skin more than looking up and seeing a bunch of little "pineapples" from broken limbs.

thecfarm

so il logger,a good thing you wasn't looking up when that fell on ya.  :o  It's just about impossible to see all the hazards a tree has for us to look out for.
I think my Father showed me that cut many years ago. It really turned on the stump.
Model 6020-20hp Manual Thomas bandsaw,TC40A 4wd 40 hp New Holland tractor, 450 Norse Winch, Heatmor 400 OWB,YCC 1978-79

Lumberjohn

What you gain by not wedging you would loose by losing control. By that I mean the hinge wood is severed on one side so bad to get it to "roll" I would bet 50% or better would snap off towards the lean while shifting.
I cant wrap my mind around a tree spinning/ rolling/ turning enough to go around a tree any distance away from it. No matter how much it rolls, It has to come to a point where it is falling in a straight line from the stump.

Pa woodchuck

If guys lost control of 50% of the trees I don't think it would be such a popular cut.

beenthere

Lumberjohn
+1

Must be in the terms used to explain the "roll", as I don't wrap my mind around the explanations either.

Changing direction from the natural lean by keeping some holding wood I see.
But very soon after the tree starts to fall in the 'new' direction, that fall path is said and done. 
If it hangs up some in another tree and can "roll" off that tree because of the lack of hinge wood, then I can understand that too. But it doesn't miss hitting that tree in the fall.

Interesting discussion. 

Some visuals of the cross sections as the chainsaw cuts shown in the videos would/may help to visualize what these multiple cuts were doing through the felling procedure. Might help explain when this "rolling" or "turning" took place and how.
south central Wisconsin
It may be that my sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others

Ed_K

 I guess to believe it, you would actually have to be there. Or maybe someone could take a pic of a leader on a tree,that if it drop without a roll would end up on the bottom when on the ground.But if they rolled it the leader would be at some place else 90deg /straight up/ or 270degs.
I would rather see it roll off another tree than get stuck in a crotch and then have to pull it off,and damage or ruin the save tree.
Ed K

BEEMERS

I think its hard to picture whats being described here without having done it and seen it yourself. The inherent problem is picturing the cut and trying to imagine whats happening in that bottom foot of the tree.
I do this all the time..a tree with a slight lean exactly into another tree..heavy holding wood to one side and none or early none on the other will pull the tree quite a ways in one direction..this is a matter of milimeters at the stump but when you ared doing this ..and watching that top at 100 plus feet..those millimeters translate to several feet of direction change...and that's what you have to see to get it.
Ive done it often..tree being cut leaning exactly into another..top swings to the left around the other tree..when it looks like its going to far left into another..cut the holding wood on the side where it was left..tree commits back to the notch after top was swung to left of other tree..when its done tree is laying beside the tree to be left .
swung it around the other trees top.
If you cant watch the top you wont see it..And thank god Ive had someone there..told them exactly what I was going to do..and they saw it!
Unless you leave the holding side to do whatever its going to do..yes you are hanging out at the stump to rip that holding wood when you need it to go..and its a dangerous place to be.
I guess to describe the route the tree takes..picture an arial view of the tree picturing the tree tops path in the fall being elliptical..A "C" shape is too extreme..but maybe a third of that.

Lumberjohn

I watched the guy out west do it in the videos. He was doing it with smaller trees and acting like it was nothing short of miraculous. Hes a good faller, but the tree, in my opinion,  ended up in the same place a regular cut would/could have done.
What I also saw was more of his videos on bigger trees, he had a loader grapple pushing on the one (with wedges) and used wedges alone one others.
A tree rolling a little while your cutting isnt really doing anything to go around other tress, it is falling straight down once it leaves the stump. The tree would have to change direction during mid-flight to have this work....
I guess what Im trying to say is if you have this technique down pat why not leave the wedges at home and use it all the time- hence my point of trees snapping of off the stump half the time?

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