One of our new neighbors asked about us cutting some trees down for them since we cut and heat with wood. We (John, another neighbor) are always up for an adventure. The first tree we cut was a 48" DBH White Oak that was next to one of the garages on the property. It had a slight lean towards some other trees they wanted to keep but it was easy to steer it away from those about 30*. I have to give a shout out to walt for loaning me his Big Shot toss line launcher. Those are awesome and I'll either have to get one or forget to take this one back to Walt... LOL I picked up a 42" bar for my MS362 and I tried it out on a 34" Sugar Maple blow down to make sure my modified oiler was up to the task. Works no problem but I will keep an eye on it to ensure the oil hole stays clear while cutting... That's a lot of bar for this saw, but it seems to handle it OK as long as I take it slow and easy and let the saw keep the revs it likes. I was surprised the new 42" Archer chain didn't stretch at all while cutting 9 cross cuts in the Maple and noodling a 6' log from both ends so it will fit on our hobby sized sawmill. I converted it over to square filed in prep for the big White Oak. https://youtube.com/shorts/YGsQrAZAqm4 Here's some pix and a video of the 48" White Oak I put some notches in both sides so I could cut make the felling cut from one side the whole way through instead of getting fancy... We had the bull rope on it to the loader for safety, but the face cut / hinge did all the work. We kept the wedges coming in behind the bar but the felling cut opened up and went on it's own once the hinge got to about 6". This is the largest tree I have ever taken down. I was happy with the hinge and it dropped right where planned. https://youtube.com/shorts/a2-LuqSvUTI https://youtube.com/shorts/MrQbVRz2EQY The second tree we cut for them was a 30" Cherry tree that was at the end of their new pavilion and was leaning toward the peak of the roof. We had the loader on the bull rope and used a Sizwill notch to swing it about 70* to the right of the lean and miss the roof. Again, Walt's big shot was invaluable in getting the bull rope set high in the tree. All went as planned and we cleaned up and took 16 10' EZ dump trailer loads over to my place to process into boards or firewood. I didn't get any pix of the loads, but here's a couple pix of the piles we put in a shady spot to process. Just on the other side of the tree line to the left is a sunny area we'll put some pallets down and stack for drying.
It wouldn't let me load any more pix of the piles on the original post. getting some errors on some of my pix.
Wow, that cherry would probably make some very nice lumber. Nice work on the falls. WO was a biggin for sure!!
Holy cow thats a biggun. Nice job getting it down safely. I ran a 28" bar on my 361 back in 2020 when my 460 was down and thought i was pushing the limits. Glad it worked out.
We counted 180 rings on that WO give or take a few and right near 100 on the Cherry. The WO is just too big for us to handle on the sawmill and there was a big hollow in it about 10' up the main trunk. We may get some boards from some of the limb wood of the WO but it was pretty knotty and knarley. The Cherry log should give up some lumber for sure although probably not long stuff. It had a crook in it about 10' up that log, We don't need long stuff out of pretty wood like that though. Even 6' chunks are worth saving.
At least one of us is too cheap for all that...I'll leave up to you to decide if that's an admission, or an accusation!
Kinda like when my ex threatened divorce. I asked if that was a threat or a promise! Well youre on the frugal side and im a miser unless its a Stihl chainsaw then all bets are off.
I'm right there with you guys on the "frugal"!!! If I was cutting trees like this regularly, I would get a larger saw, but since this is probably a one off (or at least VERY rare) I'm OK with using the 362. I wouldn't have even thought about it without modifying the oiler. I had done that a couple years ago when I got the 32" bar for it that I rarely use. I thought about taking a little more of the ramp off the oiler but after checking it with the 42" bar on it, I was OK with the oil coming off the end of the bar. It was oiling the 42" bar better than it had oiled the 25" bar before I modified it. Skip tooth chain, muffler mod, and square filed cutters seemed to let it perform just fine in the cut. I'm never in a race when falling trees, although you don't want to be too pokey and risk a barber chair either. I had a Hickory barber chair once cuz I was cutting too slow allowing the stress to split the tree. If I would have just stayed steady in the back cut it would have been fine. That was a learning experience from several years ago...
Nice work! I just got done processing alot of big white oak and....never again or not for a long time.
