 Re: Favorite saws.
Ha, its the bar in the pic thats new....not the saw
The problem with the fell is not apparent on any of the four pics taken prior to the final back cuts, this was a very old and large Tamarindus indica tamarind tree, similar in trunk form to a Taxus baccata yew tree in that it is almost like numerous seperate stems grafted together...you can sort of see that in the picture of Tim cutting the scarf. When trees get over a certain age even without obvious damage being done to them you can get hollows and decay working away within the stem structure....perfectly natural and the tree grows reaction wood around its circumference from the cambium to account for the losses internally...however when you come to fell such a tree you don't know where the hollows are exactly nor do you know where the decay is precisely.
This old boy had been totally butchered on one side the scarf side by builders attempting to remove the tree...attempting and failing.....so now no weight on that side, just behing the stem on the backside of the tree is the property boundary with two other yards, the span of the remaining upper canopy would reach easily into the next yard over on both sides, and the house directly behind so it had to be felled towards the camera in the Tim pic.
We were felling against the weight of the tree, with two very large and heavy scaffolds being held to the single stem by???? Directly above Tim and I as we wedged the tree over (we also had a pull line in the top of the tree)
As Tim made his first back cut in order to produce the required hinge he had to cut deep into the base of one of these scaffolds, and in doing so both of us were faced with the problem of judging just how much timber he could cut through before the tree instead of falling according to the scarf broke into at least two section both falling backwards, killing us and seriously damaging two houses. There are no photos since we were somewhat preoccupied with the cutting.
It is testiment to Tim's skill as a tree faller of dangerous trees that the job went perfectly, but it one of the very few occaisions when I have not been sure just how things will turn out. We used all 8 of our wedges, and a lot of sweat.
One thing that most of you are aware of I think is we all tend to get the more difficult jobs, or called to jobs that others have started and pulled out of, this was one of those.
__________________ Sean  Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.
- Kahlil Gibran
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