A Couple Questions - Dead Oak

[lxskllr]

A fly in the ointment on my ash trailer deck plans. The trailer was longer than I remembered, and the tree I was gonna use doesn't have enough clear wood. There's a lot of standing dead oak on the farm. I'm not terribly good at IDing trees, so they could be some kind of red or white oaks. Some of the better examples still have the bark attached, but I haven't walked up to them yet for a close examination. Questions...


These are bigger than anything I've felled in the past(30"+). Preferred felling direction is up hill, but they can go anywhere without damaging anything of consequence. Are there any safety implications of taking down standing dead oak? The obvious goes without saying regarding rot and whatnot, but are they stable and controllable when they've been dead an uncertain amount of time? Climbing to remove top weight is also doable if it would make a difference.


Since I can't positively ID these trees, if they turn out to be red oak, would that make a good trailer deck? Reading here, it seems like white oak is the choice material, but whatever I use doesn't have to be the best. Just suitable for the job. It's not for sale. Just my boss' old rotted out trailer.

[doc henderson]

the most obvious thing I can say is the wood fibers that will make up your hinge may be  brittle and not as flexible.  So it may break and loose control of direction.  may not damage buildings, but may injure the feller doing the felling or worse.  White oak is known to be rot resistant, but since it will not contact soil and water on a consistent basis, other woods are ok.  In fact, trailers that haul steel tracked machines like bull dozers, some believe do better with a softer wood like cottonwood, so the fibers crush instead of splitting.  felling whole gives you overhead widow makers, and climbing a dead tree as well makes me think twice.  I know this is not your first rodeo and sorry if I am stating things quite obvious to you.  Take care.

[lxskllr]

It's not my first rodeo, but I'm not far from the start. What I lack in experience, I think I make up for with an abundance of caution. I have a fairly good grasp of physics, and I believe I have a fairly good grasp of what I can tackle, but Dunning/Kruger is a thing, and if you're in the middle of it, you won't know  :^D


This forum is my primary resource for learning, especially particulars like handling trees in the field. I'm self/internet/book taught, but that only takes you so far. Cut, cut, cut, tree goes down. That's what's in the book anyway. Particulars like tree characteristics are best learned in the field from someone with experience, but I don't have anyone like that, so I try gather what I can from the ether by the people that know  :^)

[BargeMonkey]

 We saw ALOT of trailer decking out of RO without issue, biggest problem we have is warp on the longer stuff. If your boards are tight and trap dirt / moisture white oak doesnt last that much longer. We deck our lowboy every 2-3yrs because of all the track iron. 

[lxskllr]

One more question for something I likely won't deal with... Some of the dead trees are complete disasters, and I wouldn't touch them with a 100' pole. Well, maybe 100' That would put me out the fire zone, but a 50' pole is definitely out of the question. How would one go about getting something like that down? Try to rope it high, and pull with a machine; maybe with a redirect? Do it a couple times if necessary to get the whole thing down?

[doc henderson]

i think it is a tuff call by internet.  Are they rotten dead or solid dead.  Are the upper limbs 4 inches or 20 inches.  We have all stuck our necks out a bit, but you have to use caution.  you can get by on good luck and quick reflexes most of the time, but you cannot count on it.  i have pushed standing dead elm tree (flooded area) over with a skid steer, picked up the whole tree and carried it to the trailer to cut up for fire wood.  any pics?



 



 

[lxskllr]

No, they're rotten. Bark sloughed off, wood pecker holes. I personally wouldn't touch them with a saw. They probably don't need to be touched anyway, but they are on a traveled part of the farm. Not frequently traveled, but bad luck could bring the right circumstances together to have a smashed car or head. At least one could go the wrong way over the fence and hit a horse.


I was just musing over what it would take to get them down. Best I could come up with without explosives is pulling with a skid loader. A skid loader would have more than enough to break at least a portion of them, but I think it might take a couple tries. Snap it off, retie, then pull again.

edit:
No pics at this point. Boss just took me for a drive around the farm to show stuff that had potential for trailer decking. Some of those trees are in appalling condition. A little odd for oak of their age imo. He said it had been logged before he got the place, and wondered if that somehow caused the decline.

[Wudman]

The biggest concern with hand felling standing dead timber is the potential for falling limbs.  It can be dangerous to drive wedges in these trees.  Stuff falling from above is a concern.  I wouldn't be to concerned with the holding wood in a tree suitable for felling.  If you can notch, back cut, and then coax it over with a machine (or pull), that may be the best solution.

Wudman

[btulloh]

No forest would be complete without some good, standing pecker poles.  No doubt the woodpeckers would agree.

[Old Greenhorn]

The size of the tree matters little, except in your head. However, I still maintain that if you are not confident in your plan to drop these, you should walk away and come up with another plan. You have one life, keep it.
 If these trees have as much banded rot as you say, you may wind up with very little when you milled them down. Your biggest threat in trees like this, having never seen them, is what is overhead. If they have branches overhanging where you are cutting this is your biggest exposure. As soon as you shock the tree with a wedge hit, you have a threat headed your way. If you don't need wedges and can just drop them and the branches won't hit anything that can break them (trees on the edge of a field for instance), you should be OK. You need to analyze everything before you start the saw and KNOW what will happen.
 Just be careful and think it through.
 Oh, and I am with Barge, RO for decking should be great. Just get it nailed down quickly after milling.