The obvious answer.... trying to save money. I rented one, just before I joined up with you people, not really sure if it was worth it or not. The place that rents that type of stuff ( including the lift that was used for this job) is a little over an hour away. So that is a minimum of 5 hours to go get it, bring it back to use, return it, and then return home. There were no dump fees involved with this project. The local tree service quoted him $4000. Not sure if that was just the hackberry or the entire job, but I would guess it was the whole project. Because all the rest had to come out to gain access to the massive hackberry
I revisited this job today. I wanted to get the cedar so I can get it split and stacked to refill my shoulder season wood rack. I grabbed up the little pile of smaller stuff that was left, nothing over 8” diameter, & ran it home. Split and stacked it. Put a fresh 28” chain on the 372 and went back after the big cedar. When we was working it this may I could see it had apparently swallowed a woven wire fence years ago. I thought I looked it over pretty good today and even peeled off some bark looking to see how much I could safely get without hitting wire. Didn’t look close enough. And that chain was cutting really nice I’m done with the cedar!! There’s a couple other big chunks left but had lots of branches coming off them, they’d be a nightmare to split, not worth my effort. If I get it unloaded tomorrow, I may go back and start on the hackberry. When the time comes I’m not sure how we are gonna manage the big hackberry stem that is still standing because I can see the tell tale signs of wire marks in the bark about 4ft up from the ground. I’m guessing the stump cut will be in the 4ft diameter range. On the brighter side, today I tried a trick that I learned here, ATV ramps for loading big rounds, worked like a dream!
I feel for you on the metal hit. Its amazing how well camoflauged it is when rusty. Sounds like the rest is not worth the effort...or risk!
Metal can really put a damper on the day. I hit it bad last week , it was buried deep in a log and completely out of sight. Chain is way beyond a file to repair and now sitting the bench waiting for the grinder to bring it back to life.
I got the cedar all split. Most of it was made into “shingles” for the addition on my Holz houzen. I wish I had a bunch more to do the main body of the HH. If it wasn’t for the wire in the one log I would have enough. Anyway, I went and grabbed this load this afternoon.Only bucked two rounds (24 inches), noodled one so I could load it. The other is still on location. Everything else in the pickup was bucked in May when we took it down. Probably be doing some splitting by lantern light this week.
The owner got the utility company to take down the power line so Wednesday we both had time to get the last of the hackberry trunk down. First he put me up in the skid steer bucket and I knocked off the arm sticking out to the left (at the orange line) it was 6’ long. Then a notch and the back cut. As I began driving some wedges Darren could see the left side of the trunk wiggle some. So he pushed it off with the skid steer. Had I not taken the arm off first it probably would have come over as I was making the back cut. After that I made the back cut a little deeper towards the hinge and wedged it over. It took quite a little banging on the wedges as my face cut or notch could have been deeper but there was a funky flare where the notch needed to be. Could’ve probably just pushed it over with the skid steer but we didn’t. He asked what he owed me and I said I didn’t need anything for my efforts, just let me have the wood. ( it didn’t take an hour from the time I pulled up until the saws were back in the truck) My plan is to buck it 6 ft lengths or thereabouts and then use my skid steer and grapple to put it on my trailer to get it home. 4 yr old grandson was not around when we did it. He just went back with me to get some pictures and measurements. The trunk is right at 30ft long
That is a strange looking hackberry imo. Hackberry trees are everywhere around here; and yes, they can get big.
