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Originally Posted by Sean Freeman  adhering to Shigo's recommendations for locations of cuts. |
Sean as you know Shigo gave themes, not rules or specific recommendations. "Every branch will be different." AS, p. 425, ANTB.
Eric, if you are so sure that your red line is korrect, we'll no doubt be seeing your Letter to the Editor. Get it in soon--they are putting the Jan-Feb issue together right now.
Stats show that letters are the most-read part of the mag, so your keen analysis and your flush cut should get a full review. Here's a letter to our Tree Care Industry magazine, which elicited an admission from the editor and the author, and two subsequent letters that agreed with the other points.
Get the ball rolling, mate! Just be careful that it does not roll over you.
Dear Editor,
When I read in H. Dennis P. Ryan III, Ph.D.?s article on cabling (July 2007 issue)
http://www.tcia.org/PDFs/TCI_Mag_July_07.pdf that ?you shall use a lag instead of an eyebolt in a decayed limb?, I reached for my ANSI Support Standards. I?m no expert on the subject, but common sense told me the opposite was true. Sure enough, ANSI said ?Lag-threaded hardware shall only be installed in sound wood.? This is confirmed in the BMP?s, which the article listed as a reference. Dennis seems to have it backwards, or there was a typo or an editing error. TCIA typically does an excellent job upholding ANSI, so it was surprising to see this slip.
The caption to the first picture, of an ash tree with included bark, states that ??without support it will fail.? It?s important to look at tree risk objectively, without exaggerating our knowledge of what will happen. It was also disappointing to read the author?s opinions that synthetic ropes are ?ugly?, while ?a steel cabling system ?is not visible to most people?.
Steel cables are easy to see, and ugly is in the eye of the beholder. It?s not clear whether the author?s aesthetic bias indicates a deeper prejudice against dynamic cabling. In any case, what place does this degree of subjectivity have in a technical article? I hope that when you print an article on dynamic systems it will have fewer errors, and more objectivity.