As always great work Scott! I get nervous just looking at the pics lol.. You could make lots of money around here doing that sort of work!
It is easier if done week after week. Lay off and those climbers alone can tear you up! In addition, the muscles needed for this type of work have to be built up so there is a reason Scotty is doing like he does and he does a great job. For sure he takes jobs that I turned away when I did that.
I still get blisters on the inside of my shins, I was in that tree yesterday a total of 2 hours......and I'm sore from it today. Did 9 trees this week since Thursday.....and this is my "for fun" job!!! We dropped a big, hollow pin oak at the same location today. It was a bit hairy....came below my notch with my back cut on the one side but we already had the top out of the tree and it was leaning directly where we wanted it to fall so it was a relatively routine drop. Wouldn't have wanted to do that with the top in it, it was hollow around 35 feet up. The tree was roughly 65' tall..... Notch was a bit deep but I did that on purpose....wanted to see exactly what kind of hinge wood I was going to have... Trunk with a precarious lean..... Not much hinge wood but it got the job done. Opened up like a canoe when it hit the ground. ..... Bucked up........ Hauled two full trailer loads of oak, and one REALLY full trailer load of pine from that place .........here's half of the one load of oak........ Needless to say, I'm pooped. We're gonna haul my pine logs out tomorrow and do a final clean-up. The homeowners were ecstatic that nothing was damaged and the trees came down safely and properly ... Several jobs slated for this coming week......here we go!!
Any tool or gizmo that could tell you before hand whether you were climbing a tree that had a hollow section, and might break off with you up above? Guessing you can tell a lot by the sound/feel of it as you climb?
Oh nuts! I can just about feel those blisters. Yes, climbers are not user friendly at all. Never liked them but sometimes they are necessary. Of course I won't use them now. In fact, I'm planning on renting a lift to do some trimming we need done this fall. That would have been nasty dropping that oak without topping it first! Bet it sounded great when it hit the ground and split open. We have a neighbor who has a tree like that (a red oak) and it is right beside the house; about 8-10' away. It is rotten quite a ways up because yesterday I saw another tree growing out of this tree and it is not an oak!!!!! It is about 12' up. I really hope he gets that thing down soon. That is why I was there to see if he would be interested in sharing the cost of the lift.
Oh trust me I surveyed it quite a bit before even getting in the tree. And I inspected it for cracking/splitting/bleeding at the questionable spots like that dogleg you mentioned as I ascended it. It was pretty sound. I also wear two lanyards when up in the tree, especially when making cuts. And I always have a lifeline.....
An axe is something that a lot of people carry in the tree, for clipping small branches or marking a back cut , also they use the backside of the axe for driving felling wedges and.....you guessed it......knocking on the tree to check if it's hollow. It's pretty easy to tell in most of them....
High ground here just intermittent showers and a bunch of wind - wiping out any chance of a good fall foliage view. Going to check if that Blackjack oak I hung up last week blew over