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JAinVA

Old man and the tree

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JAinVA

I have about 6 acres of pine and mixed hardwoods here.We normally use around 4 cords/year as I now heat the shop as well.The trick for me was I hauled home firewood for 25 years and never touched these trees except to clear building space and recover storm damage.I worked cut over land before the pulp mills started accepting hardwood chips as the loggers used to leave the tops.I knew at some point I would have to depend on this place for wood so I am trying to get every cord I can from what is here.

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ebinmaine

Seems you've got a good system there.

:handgestures-thumbupright:

 

We have a good strong 2 cord of beech set aside for next winter.

That probably won't quite be enough but it will have to do.

 

Last Sunday we spent some time choosing about 15 trees to be laid down for the next two seasons usage.

 

We'll be in much better shape next year and the year after.

 

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roadapples

Read somewhere that pound for pound all wood puts out same BTU. Just takes more of the lighter wood to make a pound...

 

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ebinmaine
5 minutes ago, roadapples said:

Read somewhere that pound for pound all wood puts out same BTU. Just takes more of the lighter wood to make a pound...

 

I can see the logic in that

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JAinVA

Jay,

   I have never seen that, but it makes good sense.Thanks for that.One thing I know for sure, is that whether it's burned or left to rot what ever CO2 it gathered is released.That's one for the folks who don't know wood heat is carbon neutral.

Edited by JAinVA
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WVHillbilly520H
35 minutes ago, JAinVA said:

Jay,

   I have never seen that, but it makes good sense.Thanks for that.One thing I know for sure, is that whether it's burned or left to rot what ever CO2 it gathered is released.That's one for the folks who don't know wood heat is carbon neutral.

@ebinmaine try this... http://worldforestindustries.com/forest-biofuel/firewood/firewood-btu-ratings/

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Mows4three

In western Pennsylvania, if you don't have hemlock around, you side your barns with tulip poplar.   As long as it can dry out, it will last for years.  When we replaced the barn siding at our first farm, it was only the second time the barn had been sided.   Built in 1890, we re-sided it in the summer of 1976.

 

We put thousands of board board feet of poplar through the old sawmill where I used to work.  It was almost all taken by the furniture industry in North Carolina.  They used it for the secondary wood that never got seen, like on the frames, under the upholstery of easy chairs and in couches.  We sold our maple to the same buyer who bought for the furniture factories but I'm not sure what they did with it.   Most of the maple we cut were soft maple varieties with a similar density to poplar.   Sugar, or hard maple, when we did encounter any on a logging job, was mostly left for sugar water (syrup) production. 

 

With the exception of walnut, our other hardwoods went to a treatment plant for mine cribbing, wedges and blocking.   We stickered our walnut and once a year a guy from Germany graded it and had trucks come to the mill for it.  

 

We once got a letter from a Japanese company looking to buy paw-paw, Mulberry, Osage orange and holly.   They were picky about the sizes and how the endgrain had to be sealed.  Several of the other mills around us also got the same letter.   After a few weeks we figured out this wood was being used as decorative elements on some high end woods for golfing.   We never sold them any of the wood varieties they wanted and I'm not sure if anybody else did.  

 

The poplar we logged grew big in Westmoreland and Fayette Counties, Pennsylvania.   36" to 40" trees were not uncommon and since they competed for light in groves of 80-90% poplar, they grew very straight and tall.  Sometimes the first branches were 35' or even 40' from the ground.  The downside to this wood was that if it grew on a hillside, a lot of the trees along the top of the ridge would be "wind shook," meaning the core would be broken away from the outer layers of the tree. These were prone to "Barber Chairing."   Barber Chairing is of the scariest things that will ever happen to you in the woods when you're felling timber.   Watch a couple videos on U-Tube about it.  It's a genuine, "Better have things right with the Lord"  moment.  When the trunk starts to split and it chases you down to the ground you can get trapped, crushed, severed in two, or thrown thirty feet by the backside of the tree.  

 

Stay safe and keep looking up, unless you live on a farm.   In which case, watch where you're walking!

 

You guys have a great weekend!

 

Dave

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WVHillbilly520H
2 hours ago, Mows4three said:

 The downside to this wood was that if it grew on a hillside, a lot of the trees along the top of the ridge would be "wind shook," meaning the core would be broken away from the outer layers of the tree. These were prone to "Barber Chairing."   Barber Chairing is of the scariest things that will ever happen to you in the woods when you're felling timber.   Watch a couple videos on U-Tube about it.  It's a genuine, "Better have things right with the Lord"  moment.  When the trunk starts to split and it chases you down to the ground you can get trapped, crushed, severed in two, or thrown thirty feet by the backside of the tree.  

 

Stay safe and keep looking up, unless you live on a farm.   In which case, watch where you're walking!

 

You guys have a great weekend!

 

Dave

Yep, just happened to me right after Christmas last year I was clearing storm damaged and a leaning wild cherry "barber chaired" knocked me to the ground and pinned my foot... Next to the Lord , the things that saved me was the flimsy metal post and sapling that didn't let it come any further and I went backwards fast just not fast enough it jumped that "corner" post before it slapped my noggin...bruised but not broken.

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Mows4three
23 hours ago, WVHillbilly520H said:

Yep, just happened to me right after Christmas last year I was clearing storm damaged and a leaning wild cherry "barber chaired" knocked me to the ground and pinned my foot... Next to the Lord , the things that saved me was the flimsy metal post and sapling that didn't let it come any further and I went backwards fast just not fast enough it jumped that "corner" post before it slapped my noggin...bruised but not broken.

 

WVHillbilly:

 

I recall that series of posts.  You're one lucky guy and you've seen first hand the speed at which these situations can develop.   There's literally no time to react.   You just have to hope you're number isn't being called that day.

 

Once, when I was in my early twenties, I had my knee hyperextended and my forearm cut open by my saw when I was bucking limbs off of an oak that had another one felled on top of it.  It was totally preventable if I had just taken a better position before the cut and looked a little harder at how the trees were sitting in tension.  

 

When I cut through the branch it sprung back on me, hit my knee, throwing me and my saw backward.   I thought I was tossing my saw clear when I fell but it hit some of the branches in the top of the tree I was cutting and it came back at me with the chain still running.   I put my arm up to shield my face and neck.  The saw landed across the back of my forearm and my sweatshirt gummed up the chain, saving me a really serious laceration.  Bleeding and limping, I had to hike up the mountain to find the skidder operator to get the first aid kit.  After that, I started carrying an ABD (Army Battle Dressing) on me in the woods.  

 

It was a bad day in the woods, but it could have been a lot worse.  

 

Cheers guys and stay safe in the woods!

 

Dave

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bc.gold

Your felling skills need to be upgraded, very fortunate  you did not make a barber chair.

 

2019-07-11-2051-JPG-07d658161f95e9f3d024

 

third.png

 

 

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ebinmaine
2 hours ago, bcgold said:

Your felling skills need to be upgraded

Even the most highly experienced and extremely careful logger loses a tree on occasion.

 

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bc.gold
49 minutes ago, ebinmaine said:

Even the most highly experienced and extremely careful logger loses a tree on occasion.

 

 Trees are classified as renewable resources., old man makes this mistake more often there will be an empty chair at the dinner table.

 

In the image of the fallen tree you can clearly see the tree actually kicked back and it's laying beside the stump where had it been felled correctly would have been forward of the stump.

 

2019.07.11.2052.JPG

 

Edited by bcgold
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bc.gold

You have the undercut, back cut and the hinge all of which are evidenced on the stump top.

 

A feller is able to steer the tree in several ways, by cutting a slopped ramp on the bottom of the undercut and calculating the meat left on the hinge.

 

Look where the back cut came in underneath the undercut, that hunk of meat left on the hinge is what pulled the tree to fall beside the stump and not forward of it.

 

hinge.png

 

 

Edited by bcgold
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JAinVA

You were not there so tell us how bad the face cut was?The tree did not move off the stump because of the BS you say but because of the area it fell in.I am not a professional tree faller but at 67 I will be around long enough!You say that the tree came back past the stump,so its evidence of incorrect technique but the last photo shows the butt even with the stump.The tree did not go where it was not intended.It fell within 5 degrees of where it was intended to go.Comment?The barber chair comment is pure BS.

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bc.gold
9 hours ago, JAinVA said:

You were not there so tell us how bad the face cut was?The tree did not move off the stump because of the BS you say but because of the area it fell in.I am not a professional tree faller but at 67 I will be around long enough!You say that the tree came back past the stump,so its evidence of incorrect technique but the last photo shows the butt even with the stump.The tree did not go where it was not intended.It fell within 5 degrees of where it was intended to go.Comment?The barber chair comment is pure BS.

 

 Your right I was not there and glad of it, your pictures clearly shows that this tree did a twist coming off the stump the face of the tree show the remnants of the undercut laying vertical as the tree now rests on the ground.

 

Had the tree been felled correctly that remaining hinge would have shown to be horizontal not vertical. Your tree was large enough to have pushed that little sapling over like it were a toothpick.

 

Had you sawn even with the undercut the meat left on the hinge would have steered the tree to have fallen to the left clear of the sapling that you managed to decimate.

 

I'm sticking with my BS story.

 

2019.07.11.2052.JPG

Edited by bcgold
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JAinVA

I will be the first to say that the hinge is not correct.I don't know what I'm doing so, you show us how it's done.No Y-tube video,but how you have done it.I would like to see it.Really!Care to share or is this to hard a request?Just for the record, I did apologize to the sapling.

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bc.gold
15 minutes ago, JAinVA said:

I will be the first to say that the hinge is not correct.I don't know what I'm doing so, you show us how it's done.No Y-tube video,but how you have done it.I would like to see it.Really!

 

My father immigrated to Canada 1928 and like most Scandinavians took to the woods for work, he worked as a feller for forty years retiring in 1968 after his first major accident that left him in hospital in an unconscious state for months. His leg was so badly crushed between two logs the bone marrow entered the blood steam making its way to the brain.

 

He was one of the few fellers that insurance companies recognized as qualified to fall dangerous trees situated in highly populated housing areas and along power lines. As a youth had accompanied him on a few of these jobs.

 

On one of these insurance jobs, the chainsaw he used was an old twin cylinder Titan the tree was actually a tall snag on a hillside behind a house, the snag once felled had a stump 5 feet across.

 

Growing up around loggers gives me a bit of knowledge but in practice I'm the guy who felled a large alder across the hood of my truck, since that day park my truck more distant.

 

Also learned from my mistakes how to properly fell a tree but there ain't an insurance company in business that would recognize my qualifications. Besides most dangerous trees these days are removed block by block with aerial trucks.

 

I suspect as I have with age and time you have now gained some felling experience, I'm also in my late 60's and still remember that first brazier I unhooked.

 

 

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JAinVA

Thanks for the reply.I don't have an issue with someone pointing out my mistakes.I will state again that the hinge is not correct.I knew it at the time but it was what it was.The tree came down where I intended and it because of other the trees it fell against it rolled where it is seen.It did not roll off the stump until it hit other trees.

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ebinmaine
4 hours ago, JAinVA said:

Just for the record, I did apologize to the sapling.

That's good.

:D

 

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