Game of Logging report

This morning I woke early and drove a couple of hours north, out of my familiar city to a township hall in Venango County, PA, to attend a Level 1 "Game of Logging" training session. My little Subaru station wagon and a caravan of very large pickup trucks drove down a mud and gravel powerline service road to an area of privately owned forest where the training was held. I wish I could offer some pictures, but it was raining steadily when we got started, and I left my phone/camera in the car.

Besides the instructor and his wife, there were a dozen other guys in attendance: 11 professional loggers and one Amish man. Apparently the loggers' insurance companies require periodic refresher training, and GoL satisfies that requirement.

Game of Logging, for those that aren't familiar, is an organization that teaches safe logging skills and practices by introducing a competitive element. Chainsaw exercises, safety practices and brief verbal quizzes are scored throughout the day, and prizes are given out at the end of the day to the highest-scoring participants. For the most part the prizes aren't extremely valuable -- GoL T-shirts, felling wedges, chains, etc. A perfect score for the whole day wins you the instructor's 70+ cc Dolmar, but nobody quite pulled that off today. One guy, a 70-some year-old former logger who now drives a logging truck instead of cutting came very close to taking that saw home with him.

At this level the facts on which they quiz you are pretty basic. Participants need to name five particular safety features on a chain saw (chain brake, chain catcher, throttle interlock, spark arrestor and the "overall condition of the saw"), five specific parts of a chain's cutter (raker, point, top plate, side plate and the angle of the cutting edge), and "reactive forces" associated with different parts of the bar edge (pushing along the top edge, pulling along the bottom, kickback at the top corner and attack at the bottom corner).

Points are deducted for safety violations, e.g. cutting without eye/face protection, running the saw above idle without hearing protection, starting the saw or taking more than 2 steps with a running saw without the brake engaged, etc.

The felling method advocated by GoL is your basic 70+ degree open face notch with a minimum hinge width of at least 80% of DBH and a maximum hinge thickness of 10% of DBH, then plunge cutting the back cut level with the corner of the notch, pounding in a wedge if necessary, and finally cutting the strap to let the tree fall. Plunging the back cut gives a logger the time to get the hinge set up just right BEFORE the tree starts falling over, so that when the strap at the back is cut the logger is free to calmly walk away along the planned escape route instead of continuing to cut as the tree falls in an effort to steer it or prevent fiber pull. Accordingly, the Level 1 training exercises have every participant bore-cut through a stump, and then cut down a small to medium-sized tree. The plunge-cutting exercise is graded on accuracy (start on one mark, come out on the other side on another mark, and stop cutting before the bar tip contacts a hazard that's a fraction of an inch past the far side of the stump). For the felling exercise, a target flag is staked into the ground about 40 feet from the trunk, and the cutter's goal is to hit the flag with the tree. Points are awarded for doing various things well and deducted for doing things poorly or dangerously.

In sum I'd say that GoL is designed to teach the sort of felling done by loggers, i.e. cutting trees off near ground level such that they land where you want them to, and not the incremental dismembering done by arborists and tree services. It doesn't teach any arcane knowledge that you can't find in various places online, but being tested in a competitive situation really helps one separate what you think you know from what you're actually in the habit of doing. I was glad that the competition was low-stakes, because I had no chance at all against the other guys that were there today. I badly screwed up my first attempt at the bore cutting exercise, and despite being given a relatively easy tree to fell I missed the target stake by almost four feet. In contrast, several of the pros scored direct hits on the target with the trees they felled despite difficulties like weak spots and heavy leans in the wrong direction. It was a humbling and memorable day in the woods for me.

 

Nice detailed post.

 

Thanks. This is one of the things that I have been interested in doing.

 

That's cool and even if you did screw up you probably know why now
Sounds like fun

 

One thing I thought was especially interesting was a point on which GoL disagrees with OSHA-compliant felling methods. OSHA wants the back cut to be above the bottom of the notch so that if the hinge breaks early it leaves a step that prevents the butt of the tree from coming back at the logger as the tree falls. According to the GoL way of thinking, the problem is that the grain direction in and near the root flare is often sweeping in at a significant angle off of vertical, and this can be a serious problem when cutting a tree off very close to the ground as you'd be inclined to do with a valuable lumber or veneer log. If the grain orientation is at 45 degrees and you leave what looks like a 1"-thick hinge with the back cut 1" above the corner of the notch, you may actually have no hinge wood at all and thus no control over how the tree falls.

I also feel I ought to stipulate that the more advanced GoL training eventually incorporates a lot more than the basics I picked up yesterday. The instructor said anecdotally that GoL founder Soren Eriksson advocated having a diverse playbook (he liked football analogies) and once listed 37 different ways to cut down a tree. I would be doing a disservice to suggest that it all boils down to a single method.

 

Sounds like a very valuable experience. I wish I would have had someone to learn from when I first started cutting as a teen back in the early "70s". It was all just trial and error for me ..................... lots of errors to start with, luckily none lead to any accidents.

 

I was instructed 1987-90 personally by Soren Erikson and completed all levels of GOL. I was an accomplished faller before but that course prolly still saved my life.

 

Cool read Jon. Are you a logger yourself?

 

Nope, not even close. I'm a woodworker, but my expertise is with shop tools and lumber that's already kiln-dried.

 

Not sure what kind of time you have, but have you ever considered milling your own lumber for use in your shop?
Or maybe buying green rough sawn and finishing the process to furniture grade yourself??
just throwing that out there