Was a beautiful day on Saturday. Mid-50s, wife, dog and I got out to the lot to drop some red oak that caught the wilt and flamed out last summer. Was planning on only dropping those three, but ended up taking a couple of white oak that were growing bent over. I hate cutting live trees, but they would have never been a nice tree. May as well get them out of the mix so new stuff can come up. Got to practice my humboldt face cuts a little bit. For some reason, they seem much harder to do than a conventional. I can never get my cuts to line up. The back-side of the bottom cut is always low, by a lot. So I'm doing something goofy with my saw. I didn't take any pics of my stumps cuz they was UGLY (but safe) Trees weren't terribly big in diameter. Nice size for splitting. Ended up dropping nine trees in total, only had one get hung up, which I fence-posted down. Got about a cord bucked into rounds and left the rest for another day. Six hours swinging that 572 around was enough... Gassing up again. That 572 is a thirsty saw. Roscoe waiting for me to finish gassing up and to throw his ball.
Looks like a day very well spent! My first Rottweiler's name was Roscoe. Are you able to get close to the downed trees, or was there some hand hauling required to get the wood to the vehicle?
the lot is 11 acres and has a "road" to where we are cutting about 1/3 of the way in. The rest of the trail is ATV only. In that case, ATV bucket to get the rounds to the splitter, then the ATV trailer to get the splits to the truck. Little bit of fooling around, but it works.
The trick with a Humboldt is to make the top cut first. Then when you make the angled bottom cut you can sight along the kerf of the the top cut to see when your bar and chain reaches your blind far corner. Pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Then you can move on to making the angle cut first if you want once you get a feel for how the saw should be. If I lived closer I’d offer to come over and teach you. Really only necessary if you’re cutting logs for sale for lumber/veneer though.
I'm doing humboldt just as something to learn . I have been making my top cut first, using it to sight the direction of fall. To make the bottom cut, I'm taking the bar (where the dogs are) up to the top cut where the apex should be and then rotating the bar through the tree. I use this same method on a conventional face cut and my apex is usually dead nuts. I must be twisting the bar or not have it level or something, because in my mind if my bar on the near side is lined up with the top cut, I should be able to rotate the bar (if the dogs were the pivot point) through the tree and have the other side line up. It don't... It makes for an ugly stump with lots of cleanup. Practice, practice practice.
Hard to say without seeing what you’re doing. I do it pretty much the way you describe but I’m always dead on.
