Woke up, had coffee, did my “situational awareness” routine (scanning online resources), then decided to get to work on the woodlot thinning project. About 8 hours later, Jacuzzi time, then early to bed. LONG day.
Rigged the boom implement to ‘choke’ a bunch of smaller limbs and saplings to see how well it would ‘skid’ them. Worked great.
Then, choked and skidded a much larger load to test the boom lifting capacity. Not even close to maximum lifting capacity.
Felled and skidded the first few roughly 10 inch diameter trees. Limbed them, then lifted them with log tongs mounted to the end of the boom. Again, easy work.
Maneuvering the long logs out of the woods, around the barn, through pasture gates, and into the terminal area for processing into firewood was really quite easy, as the tongs articulate in two axes to allow the log to be directionally steered.
I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened. A big ass tree starts to fall, then gets hung up in a set of relatively small branches above, which arrests the fall. Frustrating, to say the least. Dangerous too. I end up having to choke the bottom of the log and pull it out with the boom with a LONG length of chain, because you never know which direction the tree will actually fall.
Piling up the logs out in the big pasture next to the burn pit, to be further processed into firewood and/or wood chips.
Tried my hand at doing a few “plunge cuts.” First you cut the front notch, then you run the chainsaw bar straight into and through the tree. Once through, you clean up the “hinge” and then work backwards to leave just a small “back strap” opposite the direction of intended fall. In this case, I guess my hinge wasn’t far enough back, and the tree sat back and pinned the saw blade. Used a rope and Trucker’s Hitch knot to pull the tree off the saw bar so I could pull it out.
I’m still a novice tree feller, learning as I go. I’m getting better at falling trees according to plan (e.g. direction of fall), but still about half the time the tree falls off target. In this case, two consecutive cuts fell the exact opposite direction of intention, and went right through the pasture fence top rails. I think I was getting both physically and mentally tired, so I pretty much put the saw away after these two SNAFUs, before someone got hurt.
