After seeing SD Steve's recent thread i had a question on felling leaners. Obviously you cant drop it opposite the lean. If felling direction is 90* (or close to it) to the lean should the cuts be perpendicular to the tree or level? Im thinking level?
The spruce job i did back in August was a slight leaner and i did get it to go the other way. Used steel wedges.
Its amazing how much you can move a tree with wedges. I've stacked as many as three wedges, but am thinking I'm going to stop that practice. Usually three wedge tend to pop out of the back cut (at least for me). If I have to stack three, I should probably be using rope and an ratchet.
You can move a top several feet with wedges and the top tells the story a very high percentage of the time. My favorite tool is a rope come along
I fell a moderate leaner once with great success. My cuts were level. Tree was leaning in the direction the saw power head was as I hammered in wedge.
Just before I joined here I did a very large dead ash against a slight lean and it went perfect. I was proud of myself. Then not to long after I tried a standing dead elm. I don’t recall it having much lean to speak of, but it was top heavy to the side closest to the fence it was by. (Probably 4ft from the fence) I thought for sure I could wedge it away from the fence. NOPE. I had to go tell the landowner about their broken fence. Luckily it wasn’t a problem as it wasn’t much of a fence
I got another elm score lined up that I’ll have to get a couple pictures of and get some advice on. Fits in this thread as well as any.
A moderate lean can be overcome with a bore cut as well, that being said, if there's obstacles anywhere in the danger zone a rope & winch are my go too.
I have learned a lot on this website, and by watching Bucking Billy Ray's falling videos. It's amazing what can be done. I am lot more confident and safer then I was before. But I am still very cautious when falling about any tree. I lost four friends to tree falling accidents over the years. One to a barber chair, and he was cutting in a high wind which may have added to it. He was an old man, but had a lot of experience, and was in great physical shape. Another friend I had worked with for several years was cutting a lone tree down in a field and it fell on him, why I don't know. One man who used to shoe my horses, was just shoeing a horse under a shade tree and a limb fell out of the tree and killed him. I guess there was a widow maker hanging in the tree, unnoticed. And another young man I knew, worked trimming trees out of high line right a ways. I think it was a widow maker that got him, but not sure of the details. We had a bad ice storm a few years ago, and it left a lot of potential widow makers hanging and lodged in trees in the area all around where I live. Not meaning to be morbid, but one fowl up is all it takes. I never hardly cut a tree down without one of those people coming to mind. And I might add, be careful when putting up a deer stand. I have totally been shocked after examining some of the trees that just fell down in the last few years, that looked to my eye to have been sound, but their root system was apparently rotten. A couple recently, in my yard after a mild wind storm.
I'm gonna leave this question to the experts and I am not one. I have successfully felled trees against heavy lean, always with some kind of mechanical assistance. It's not easy and you really need to know what you are doing. Felling 90° to lean is 'easier' but there is some technique involved which takes a lot of factors into account, such as the amount of lean, size of the tree, wind, etc. Even the species is critical. I would not fell a leaning sugar maple with the same cuts I would use on a cherry or an oak. Even red and white oak would be a little different in terms of the thickness of the hinge and the angle of the notch. Every tree is different. Some I use a conventional notch, others an open face, and I've even dropped a few with a Humboldt notch just to get them off the stump and away from obstructions. Even stump height may play into it. There are some really good videos on Youtube but they don't give you the experience you need. I've dropped a couple that I should have left to a tree service, and I was simply lucky that nothing was damaged and I didn't get hurt.
I feel much more comfortable felling a tree against the lean than say at 90 degrees. I'm too afraid I may read the weight of the top wrong, cut too deep with my back cut and have the tree twist in an unpredictable direction. Yep, I won't even attempt them if there are any structures around at all.
Each fall, I am reminded how unpredictable tree work is. Even if they are on the ground. Just yesterday, got whacked in the shin by a limb I did not know was spring-loaded. Left a large knot, hurt like hell.
