that was my thought, acreage with trees and animals. Guess she might of had a close call on the bike.
Perhaps, since I just realized the thread is titled "...bRought......" I'm now Totes McGoats confuzzled
I got this bright idea to get this dead oak that a hurricane pushed over and lodge in a tree. I cut the tree loose from the trunk. I figured I could use my come-along to pull the tree down. I hooked a 16 foot logging chain to the base and used another chain around a live tree nearby and yes, I managed to eventually pull the tree down. I knew that I did not want to be anywhere near the base of the tree because it could kick up. It worked. However, I noticed my logging chain was missing; I found it behind where I was knelling working the come-along. When the base of the tree kicked it, it threw that 16 foot logging chain in a parabolic arc that landed behind me. If it had come down on top of my head, I probably would be dead now. I guess I need to be a bit more careful; I really did not expect the chain to go flying off in the air like it did.
chains are usually pretty tame, they loose energy fast, now cabling is the stuff that normally kills.
Yep, know just what you mean. I use a dozer for twitching that does not have a winch. Needless to say it can pull multiple trees, but I have to gather them together. I can gather up 4-5 trees and go out with them, BUT without a winch I only have a few feet to work with. This means sometimes I am dropping trees a foot away from the back of my dozer. To keep them from pulling out of reach I often have to hook them to the twitch before falling. Wow...amazing how much energy a falling tree has!
Yes, that is what I thought after the incident; having a helmet. I don't think my wide brim straw hat I was wearing would have made much of a difference with a huge logging chain crashing down on my head.
Keep in mind this is a heavy logging chain; big heavy links with hooks on each end falling down from the sky. It might be a fun physics problem to calculate the force that would have hit me;
Helmet FTW. And don't go cutting snags out until you get some more PPE and saw time please. As you found out, rigging trees is no joke. I say this to keep you safe.
You'd have to know the velocity and weight and trajectory. If you figure that out, You would have known not to rig it such way
Its not that hard. With a few calculations of the weight of the chain, full kinetic energy, whip-lash factor, reduction for terminal velocity, wind drag...I theoretically conceive that it could have caved your skull in! How is that for physics? (Just joking Kim, please understand that. I am only teasing you. Things happen fast in the woods for sure). One of my worst near misses was when I was a kid. My father got mad at me for beating on a good tree with an axe so he had me beat away on an old dead tree. The problem was, when it came down it sort of accordinged...broke in pieces back and forth as it fell so I had no idea where to run. It was as close to death as I ever got cutting wood (so far).
