Decided to cut the oak I cleared the area for. I'm very glad to have it down. At 22" it's all I wanted, and it was leaning hard. Frozen oak didn't help the cutting but… it's down. Looking at the drop area, the tree is on the left. I wanted it to the left of that stump closer to where I'd been packing the snow for walking. How'd I do? (not bad, but it only happens when I'm no where near buildings or cars… ) The first 3- 80" sections are so heavy, I can't just skid them. I did get 2 smaller ones up but dug in with the 3rd. Have to use the nose sled. Only problem I discovered was using the nose sled without the skis in the back, the log will roll over sometimes. Might have to slow back down and lift each up on the skis too. At least the tree is safely down. I don't like leaners at all. 3rd haul headed for China. Gotta use the sled this afternoon. 6 feet of snow next to the deck, with the lead dog. I made that box for firewood gear… really Another good morning in the woods. (Edit: Tried the nose sled alone this afternoon… it rolled and I kept going on it's side, cause it was "going"… tuff sled… it should have ripped it up. Had enough… )
She landed with a mighty groan… awesome. I tried to slide a log using only the front sled this afternoon… didn't work, log rolled. Took some of the fun out. I'll prolly weld up a log arch this summer that I can use with skis or wheels. Takes way too long to rig each log to slide out on snow. When we bought this place last year, I discovered seven 5' lengths of 2"x2" steel tube under the old bilco stairs (under about 20 years of bark, dirt, spiders, etc) Some pieces of rebar too. Saved it all. Now, you know I gudda use it…
Good cut. Wish that leaning oak on my front lawn was gone. It grew leaning because of some huge pines. The pine was wooded out years before I had my house built. The oak has become huge over the past 37 years. The part I don't like is that the soil it is growing in is only a few feet deep then it is all ledge. I've seen big winds take there type of trees down and have just a big root ball turned over. The tree isn't leaning toward the house, but if it goes it will rip the lines right out of the house. I've no idea what it cost to have a tree removed, but I am thinking it has to be plenty considering the power lines.
I believe the power company is on the hook for the electrical service drop to your house. I wonder if they ever get the tree service crews to take care of a hazard over an elec service to a home… if you know anybody who works for CMP… couldn't hurt. Bet I know where they could leave the tree all bucked up… close too…
Looking good Stinny Betcha a buck theres a nice old coat laying in the bottom of that wood box for the Giz
Good job Stinny. That one was not leaning bad so not a big problem cutting. As for the skidding, not sure if I've posted this for you or not but for about $10 we now have a very useful dray. It works whether in snow or not. It pulls on bare ground very easily and if it every goes bad, another $10 bill will have us another one just like it. Of course you can build them in various sizes but the main thing is to have the skids go in the same track as the wheels of the atv or tractor. Maybe I shouldn't post this but we used to have a ball (in our younger days) when we were skidding with a tractor and a bigger dray. Naturally that one had chains on the sides and we used a binder rather than the ratchet strap we now use. But we would stand on the rear of the runners and hold onto the chains. The buy on the tractor would give us one great ride. We figured that would be a winner in a place like Cedar Point or something similar. For sure we had a ball with it. But then we also used to sit on a saucer and tie it onto a snowmobile. You could give someone a fantastic fun ride, especially if you could get it airborn!
Thanks for your thoughts. Yup, dragging heavy stuff sure goes easier with something under it that slides, doesn't it? I've got some old 2"x2" steel that I could make a decent log arch rigged for skis and wheels. There's also a guy up in Canada who makes a flat skid set-up out of puck board. Tough stuff. I like it because it would be low enough to easily roll logs on, and lighter than a steel arch on skis. For now, I'll just pulley lift this oak onto the skis and the nose sled, and get it to my yard. Nothing like all the fun things we did as kids is there? It's a wonder we all survived…
