Hills can definitely mess with ya. Nerves can too. Everyone has pinched a bar. Seems like it was a good learning experience.
I have done this exact same thing you did, only it was summertime and with a douglas fir that was a 100 feet tall. Not a good experience and taught me that wedges are just as important as a chainsaw. No blood no foul and you and your saws came away unharmed.
Hey don't feel bad, back when I was a teenager, maybe 20? never been taught and still finding my way, I had two saws stuck in a tree . I don't remember if I had a 3rd saw or used a come along.
I bore cut any and everything I can. It's a good habit to learn, why not when it can save you in situations such as this. My last job you had to bore cut everything so i got used to it and now it's just a habit of mine. You also needed to use a mechanical advantage and bull rope for every tree. Then again these were 100'+/- sugar pine. Go figure.. Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
I wear dickies pants that always have a side pocket: perfect for carrying a small wedge and a chainsaw wrench. Unless it has a good lean to it in the direction I want, I typically wedge for insurance. I make my notch in the direction I want it to go, ALWAYS staring with the diagonal cut, then make my bottom cut up to it. Then I make my back cut, but just enough to get a wedge started. Then I cut through towards my hinge, typically looking around the front of the tree to make sure my saw is consistently going through giving me an even hinge. If the tree starts to descend where I want it, I grab my wedge and stuff it in my side pocket on my retreat If it leans back on the wedge, I withdraw my saw and cut a sapling (hardwood is best, but softwood will work in a pinch) Then using the sapling as a 2 foot club, drive the wedge home. (This saves me from carrying an axe or hammer with me to drive wedges) If all that fails, I will typically back into the tree with my skidder. The arch makes a smaller target, but is higher then my blade and gives me better leverage. I use my skidder a lot to push trees over, but the chance of saw damage goes up by a factor of about 100!! Bad things happen fast using this method.
I have a pouch on the waist strap of my chaps that I carry wedges in, (ok and maybe an occasional beer or two) then I have a hammer holster that holds my axe more towards my back. Makes it easy and convenient
Yeah now that I think about it, as great as Dickies or Carhartts are for holding wedges, they do not exactly stop a chainsaw's bite well now do they? You probably have a far better plan and attire!! I should throw an axe onto the skidder as it would have helped me chop myself out of a stuck saw a time or two, but the sapling club was a trick I learned years ago watching a guy named Soren Ericksen who was well known in teh 1980's as being a good logger. (Too bad I did not pick up on his chap-wearing habits too though) LOL
This is an interesting subject actually, because while loggers like to puff out their chest and say, "yeah I can size up a tree and drop it right where I want it too", the truth for me anyway is, out of the 70-80 trees I cut in a day, 10 of them will surprise me and have to be wedged over. In fact sometimes I just shake my head and marvel at why a tree went in the direction it did...surely it was headed in the other direction??? On a hillside where plumb is even more harder to detect...it is even harder to figure out. The OP definitely has my empathy on this situation. Sometimes trees just plain surprise a person. But here is another truth. They people on here impress me because you actually have to drop your trees better than me. It sounds silly, but its true. If a tree goes sideways from where I want it to. Or it lodges up. Or the butt jams up against another stump...it is not a big deal. Either the log will move, the log will snap in half, or whatever is binding it will get ripped right out of the ground. With smaller equipment, that cannot be done. Therefore it is imperative to fell accurately. I am super accurate felling when I use my farm tractor because it lacks a lot of power to get the trees out, it is more finesse then sheer power. My bulldozer is a big better than my farm tractor as I have more traction, but it still is not as powerful as my skidder My skidder...what does it matter? Something is going to happen when the winch line reels in So don't ever think that I think I am somehow "better" than anyone on here. I actually think I am worse because I have brawn over skill. But at the same time, do not think I have forgotten where I came from. My first load of wood was at age 15 cutting spruce and fir, using a 2 wheel drive, 1958 Ford 900 farm tractor, using the drawbar on the tractor and short logging chains. We did not even have a winch!
Just a heads up on the tree felling lever, I bought one last night for $19.99 on eBay with free shipping
Well, here in Mass, the recognised center would be the town of Rutland. Sent from my SM-T280 using Tapatalk
May have been left for better leverage removing the stump? I leave em high if I plan to remove with backhoe.
One thing no one seems to have mentioned OP, and that is the amount of debris around your feet when you were felling the tree. You ALWAYS have 2 escape routes in order to get away from the tree. From the look in your pics, you could easily trip/fall and have very bad consequences. The importance of putting in an accurate notch that is not over or undercut can't be stressed enough and setting a wedge probably would have stopped this whole incident. The initial felling cut that got the saw stuck looked like it just about cut the hinge off too.
Graham, I've seen many left high for levering out the stumps in Devon. Particularly if the land is to be developed. Much easier to leaver out than grind if you have a digger. Cheers.
