Tree Machine ... Jim Clark, inventor and ahead of his time

TreeCo

Impressive!

That time lapse is cool.

Eric Frei

Jim

I fixed it up for you. Sort of.

We now have a 21 second 2mb WMV streaming file.

www.palmtreeservices.com.au/video/tmcranejob.wmv

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JayD

Good primary work,TM, good secondary Ekka, just go's to show if you work as a team everyone who's worth their salt makes things better!

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Level 4 Arborist/ FPIFGM 3204A: Fall trees manually (intermediate)

Arboriculture, A life long study for some, a passing phase for others

Sean Freeman

That vid is very good instruction on the sequence of a basic t/d, something that climbers can take quite a while to work out, and in the process annoy the hell of the rest of the crew and the boss..yes I'm talking from personal experience I like to think I'm better now, my medicine tells me so

TrevMcRev

That clip dont run for me

I can never see TM's clips!

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Eric Frei

Have you tried my link?

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TrevMcRev

Yeah i did, was timing out before but worked this time.

Systematically done. Good job. Would like the opportunity to use cranes more ( at all!) Only few times for fallen stuff resting precariously on houses or to lift final sections of trunk for milling.

Not that many trees we'd be able to access without huge amounts of reach. Hard to get the extra costs on top from the customer and im not confident in accurately assessing the speed of the job with one to price it keen enough not to sell myself short with the crane bill.

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TrevMcRev

Just reinstalled quicktime on my laptop and it WORKS straight from TM's link too

Something fishy on my pc though, no matter what i try it dont like quicktime.

Now if i could do crane removals as quick as it looks on TM's clip i'm buying a crane tommorow

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Sean Freeman

You make a good point Trev, we've done quite a few removals using cranes and the recent transplants. It would depend greatly on the pricing in your area, but we've found both the bigger crane companies very well priced, much less than people would think 80T crane $160 hr 130T crane $210 hr. We used a crane couple days ago to do a removal from on top a small cliff (sorry only one photo)

took out the whole tree (2T) in one lowered to area below to process, very efficient time and money..no room up top, small gdn bed small formal lawn fenced, could have speedlined the lot (which would have been fun) but tree had bouganvillae growing right through it! Bad enough climbing up to attach the chains!
Once you've done a few and spent the time talking to good operators about the limitations of crane work, radius and weight, total weight, counter weights set up time, travel time etc.. you soon get a feel for when the crane option is viable and when it's really no benefit at all, beyond the fun for the climber!

Eric Frei

I get them as often as I can, well, I quote for them but many times dont get the job as customers take the guys who'd rather bust themselves and save the customer money.

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a_lopa

Nice vid!

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JohN Dee

Great vid Tree Machine.

Boa, my personal tip with the bouganvillea douse the vine with petrol, flick a match and run!!! I hate the bloody (<- Literally) things.

I'm still to use a crane with a removal - any tips should I ever get a crane job?

With the Quicktime issue Trev it's more then likely due to the fact that it was made & programmed on a Mac >.<, so expect a few hickups loading it onto Windows

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Sean Freeman

Make sure on your 1st crane job its not the crane operators 1st tree job! Have enough slings (if you are using them) to keep the job flowing along.
Really think through the order of your work esp where the last picks are going to be from.
Always have an escape route from the point of cutting, always think through all of the possible "what ifs" before you commit to putting the saw into the wood. Have a clear path of communication with the operator at all times (esp important at the beginning when there may well be lots of foliage between you and them) the better operators have 2ways with them and IME are only too happy to let you hold onto a hand set. (On bigger, heavier jobs get a dogman as well this saves heaps of time and stress but does cost more)

Tree Machine

That was my 5th crane job in 13 years, so I don't have a lot of experience either. The crane operator and I did a job a couple years ago so we were confident in each other. He remembered me as the guy who said, "...well, if you don't lift me up into the top of the tree, there will be no tip for you at the end of the day", and walked over and hooked up to the ball.

It's not against ANSI standards to do that.

The 'company' that hired me on this one was an apprentice of mine of five or six years back. He underbid the job, asked the client for a thousand up front and went and bought a new 390XP with a 3 foot bar. THEN he calls me in to assess.

I told him he was poised to lose his butt unless we could flash the job in one day, and that it was not possible with conventional methods. If it were standing alone in a field, yes, but over a garage, a deck and fence, no. A crane was the best choice, that is IF they could get the crane squeeked in between the garage and the primaries behind it. I told him to have a crane rep come out and assess, rather than just have the crane show up and say 'no way'. He did, they could, we set the day.

Josh hired a guy with a Vermeer BC1000 12" capacity chipper, as well as his normal groundie, so there were three on the ground with the right gear. Customer wanted the firewood. Another guy wanted the logs. It was raining up until the time the crane arrived, then cleared. All the planets aligned and we sent the crane home two hours ahead of schedule, zero damage, zero injuries. Just how we like it.

Boa has some solid wisdom, every last word. Extra slings are good. That way, while the monkeys are dancing with the current pick, you can be rigging the next. I assumed the crane guy would have some fat, endless slings, but he only had steel chokers so we just went with the one. That slowed us down a bit. I had a couple smaller eye-eye lifting slings on me, so I was able to do a couple pics where we had 1 or 2 smaller nuisance limbs bouque'd onto the big pick. Also, I brought 2-way walkie-talkies this time. That helped a bunch as the operator couldn't see the ground zone on the far side of the garage, nor the residential drop on the far side of the drop zone. It was VERY nice to be in his ear in those critical moments. This was my first time using two-way com with a crane and although most of our communication was eye-to-eye and hand signals, places like the forementioned, and the last two sections of the trunk where I was behind the garage, and he couldn't see me OR the ball, it was nice to not have to involve a third guy to transmit signals.

The pic below is the last 3 meters of trunk. Crane operator said it was just shy of 8,000 pounds.

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Tree Machine

Here's a final shot from the job two years ago. This wasn't a crane-necessary job, but the one across the street was, so I lumped them together. Crane guy couldn't do the first tree because of the primary lines, so we just did this tree because he was there. Took the first tree out conventionally, lost my butt over the course of those couple days. Vowed to always have a crane rep come out first.

Eric Frei

Mate, that's the wrong pic! That's the NZ Kauri that's protected!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Sean Freeman

You're so right the crane rep will generally be able to tell you what size crane what price and if they've any proper tree/crane experience a whole lot of other very useful info on the proposed job. I'd forgotten their role since generally Steve does most of the organising before hand.

Tree Machine

OOPS!.... corrected, sorry. Posted the wrong pic.


OK, posted a video to test and see if everyone could receive it. Got onto crane stuff, but I think I derailed the thread.


What was this thread about?

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Eric Frei

Well, it started out us summoning you to TW. Then you promised to let us in on some of your climbing secrets so the title was changed as you develop some unique stuff.

Then we see a crane video point being time lapse photography and SRT.

And now we are here.

I suppose you can use this as your biography thread.

By the way, last week I used some of your solo climbing rigging ideas and even lowered limbs and retrieved the lowering line whilst in the tree.

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Tree Machine

Cool. Thanks Ekka.

I might add the part about where after you summoned me, I thought it worked rather well and suggested summoning others who would be excellent guests - with the pretense of it being a beneficially, mutualistic symbiotic relationship.

And the video test, I really wanted to make sure everyone can view.



Can we do another time-lapse? and another crane shot? before we get back on whatever track we're supposed to be on (invented Arbo gear, possibly not invented yet) This stuff is rather enjoyable. Crane shot first.

The log in the pic below I donated it to the local hippie dudes / drum artisans who had gotten a few logs from me over time, hoping to eventually get a Woodmizer in and cut up some nice wood. This log we lifted out of the yard and to the other side of the street where the log arch was waiting. I put it on loan to him for the day.

They eventually did get a portable mill in and scored (literally) tons of great wood.

I love this picture.

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Tree Machine

Here is another time-lapse. This video is near and dear to my heart. It is of a couple evergreens I took down more than a year ago, nothing so big at all. I was recovering from a nasty injury and this was my first job back. It was also the first job I ever used a ladder on.

I got to the top of the ladder, anchored the ladder to the tree with the climbing line, and then proceeded SRT, up above the tie-in, a little mid-air swing between trees to do the adjacent ones, and then back to the first set to finish blocking. I really had to hustle as it was mid-Winter, the sun goes down fast and I started really late in the day.

I'm calling this 'ladder_job_down_up' because I learned (as I was figuring out how to slow the frame rate yesterday) that we can forward/reverse the clip and then loop it so it plays over and over.

It makes for interesting time lapse when you can watch the climber put the tree back together after taking it down.

Click here for the time-lapse

Eric Frei

Cool

The sun doesn't get up off the horizon much there at that particular time of year it was shot.

No rigging by the looks req'd?

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Tree Machine

No rigging. Not even slings. It was just a slice 'n dice, chipper right there at the base. I don't like ladders. I think them to be quite dangerous compared to being tied in and just working your way up a rope. Palms, of course, are different.The thread isn't about me, I think it's about what I bring to Arboriculture, especially the stuff I haven't spilled at ???????????? in all these years.


Maybe it would be good to make a list, and you mates can pick what looks interesting and we can mebbe get a thread dedicated to it in the gear and equipment part of the forum.

Some of the stuff is finished gear and I have never seen it on the market.

Some of it is prototype gear I fabricated and am using and have never seen it on the market.

Some of it is concept gear, I have created the prototype and have used is enough that I know what the next working model can or should look like. This stuff I have never seen on the market, nor has it yet seen my bench top.

Some is other manufacturer's gear that with a bit of redesign could work quite well for Treeguys.

Mebbe I should start with the oldest piece of unique gear first and work our way up to the things more recently developed, or maybe we should start with the things not yet invented, invent them together and then work backwards to the ones that are fully developed and highly field-tested.


Then there's a couple pieces of gear that I have found exceedingly worthy that I didn't invent, but are not comonly seen in our treeguy industry and I know where to link to their websites.

When I claim a piece of gear to be worthy, it means it pays for itself over, and over, and over, or it makes some facet of our job much easier and efficient or it has 'coolness factor', or it can multi-task.

How do we want to do this?

Tree Machine

We could start with my personal favorite piece of unique Arbo gear that I use most often and find most useful and that, since it's not on the market, I am the only one using and gaining joy from it.

I just think six pages into this we should maybe get into what it is we're supposed to be getting into.

a_lopa

I like the planned clean ups,tarps the "treemachine"loaded up and hauling the chipper!

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Tree Machine

Was that where I had a sawdust-covered yard and I got all the sawdust in the area in a pile in front of the chipper in 25 seconds, and showed it in real time?

I remember the video you're talking about, Lopa.

a_lopa

And the one with the tarps out under the tree.

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Tree Machine

........OHHHhhhhh, this one? Lots of tarps down for this extremely dangerous clip.

Tree Machine

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!

Silly bugga!

TreeCo

That was great!

You crazy fugger.