Red Elm Tree Felled

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cpowell

Chuck
Senior User
A friend of a neighbor came by today and limbed and felled my stricken elm tree.

I didn't realize how much work it was to safely drop a tree. This elm had a pretty good spread.

Peter limbed selectively to get the weight where he wanted it and remove any limbs that could get caught on a nearby tree and effect the outcome. He very neatly trimmed several limbs from the base up and managed to deposit them right at the base of the tree, missing my neighbor's swing.

I am glad my neighbors were not home. They may have gotten a little excited when a few limbs were removed. :gar-La;

Peter used harness with two sources of fall protection at all times. When he had to move up past a fork he would tie a third rope/cable above the fork before removeing the one below.

A pic of Peter up the tree.

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Zoomed out here so you can see the tree scale.


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After he limbed everything he tied off a long heavy line to the topmost fork and we secured it to my truck.

He rapelled down the tree then looked over the tree a final time before sstarting the cuts on the base, First, he made a cut to make the tree narrower so he could fell it with his 36 inch chainsaw. Here he takes a water after completing the cut.

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He then made the notch cut on the face, followed by the back cut. He used wedges at some point as he made the back cut. I was in my truck keeping tension on the rope.

The tree came down exectly as he planned. Here's a pic of the base cross section. The chainsaw is 36 inches and shown for a scale.

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I would guess the bottom portion shown is around 40 inch diameter, maybe a smidge more.

I thought the grain looked pretty good so I found an old can of latex paint and sopped the end grain. I will contact a local sawyer and see if it is feasible to get the lower section milled. There is a fair amount of wood that might be useful for our hobby.

Once the tree was down we cut it up starting from the top sections down and stopped before we got into the larger trunk/limb sections.

If there is any interest in this wood now would be a good time to let me know. I will need some help handling any wood that could be prepped for WWing use. The wood is large and heavy and I am an old fart. :rotflm:

I am going to cut firewood lengths until the log gets very large then will stop pending an estimate from a sawyer. My schedule will not allow me to remove the wood for a few weeks. If there is interest then let me know what lengths to cut. Again, I will need committed help to prep anything beyond crosscuts.

Peter is very skilled at this, a very smart guy, and was very careful. I would not try climbing/limbing/felling a tree this size this myself. It's a little more excitement than I need.

Chuck
 

CrealBilly

New User
Jeff
Chuck you ain't all that old, cut yourself some slack... Thanks for posting the pics and story line. Smart move hiring a guy who knows what he's doing.

I personally refuse to drop yard trees, trees in the woods are one thing. But yard trees within falling distance of houses and personal property are completely different story. I won't even drop tress in my own yard let alone someone else yard.

Do yourself a favor and scan that elm for tramp metal before you have your sawyer come out and saw it up.
 

Trent Mason

New User
Trent Mason
Chuck,

Thanks so much for posting this. My hat is off to Peter for doing such a great job felling that tree. Looks like some beautiful wood from the pics. I hope you can get it milled and make something beautiful out of it. :icon_thum

Trent
 
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