My first big wood

I have been looking at this dry oak trunk outside of my window for a while now and finally got around to taking it down. The previous owners of my house must not have been able to get it down for whatever reason. It is covered in poison ivy... I guess that means spring has ended and poison ivy season is here again!

 

Nice behemoth, should be plenty of heat in that for you. I knew right away from those dark brown streaks that there was some serious poison ivy that had a hold on that thing. No wonder the last owners left it alone. I admire your ambition!

 

Lol. Thanks Eric. Let's see how my arms look tomorrow, I may regret my ambition.

I forgot I had already removed the poison ivy before the picture. Yep, it was the brown streaks.

 

Is the bark loose to remove? The PI oils will still be there. Strip the bark, if you can, and be done with it.

 

Lots of wood in that trunk. What was the stump diameter JackHammer ?

 

The bark is pretty loose. I will likely strip it off when i get out the splitter. I have heard that the oils stay, even after the plant is dead.
While I didn't cut this down right away, I did at least chop the ivy a few times at the base and kill it. It was all dried out and pulled off pretty cleanly.

 

38 inches

 

WOW! Any trouble getting it to topple? Ive felled a few big spars and trying to get them over was harder than felling a "normal" tree.

 

Uh, not too bad. I cut a huge wedge and took 4 splitting wedges to the back. It went as expected. I was pretty tired from swinging the hammer though.

 

More or less the same way i fell mine. Dove wedge all the way and tree had a good lean but wouldnt go. Used the small saw to nibble at the hinge and it worked.

 

That thing makes the timberwolf look like a kids toy!

 

I can appreciate a small saw getting tight in there. I was hesitant to really cut at the hinge because of the metal wedges, glad I had them though.

 

If you split down the wedge from the face cut, you'd have wedges to use while felling.

 

Ugh. I’ve got a big cherry with a similar poison ivy vine - about as big as my wrist I want down but don’t want to mess with but I wouldn’t be able to justify letting it rot

 

I cut the big poison ivy vines and give the faces a few squirts of round up. Never burn the posion ivy or poison oak vines either no matter how dead they are. I learned that the hard way once.

 

I had the bright idea to cut poison ivy off of a dead locust as I was bucking. I ended up having to get a shot after my face started to swell up.

 

I’m itchy just looking at that!