Felling a tree starts with a face cut. The “face” is the side of the tree that faces in the direction you want the tree to fall in. The face cut removes a big wedge shaped chunk from the tree. It requires two cuts: the bottom side is flat/level, and the top side is a diagonal cut slanting downward. Note: This post is for educational purposes only; we want people to understand how their tree will betaken down, without endangering their life and/or their property. We do not recommend you try these techniques yourself unless you are qualified. A falling tree is an extremely destructive force. Further, the direction a tree can fall in is unpredictable to the untrained eye.
Felling a tree starts with a face cut. The “face” is the side of the tree that faces in the direction you want the tree to fall in. The face cut removes a big wedge shaped chunk from the tree. It requires two cuts: the bottom side is flat/level, and the top side is a diagonal cut slanting downward. The face cut goes to about halfway through the trunk. The back cut is next. This starts from the side directly opposite the face. A simple, straight cut is made. This cut will be made on plane with the bottom edge of the face cut. Typically, the back cut does not need to cut all the way through. The tree will be weakened enough that its own weight pulls it down, and just breaks off whatever is left of it. The remaining bit that doesn’t get cut through is called a “hinge”. In some cases, the tree will remain standing after the back cut is made. This is okay; it might take a pull with a rope or a small push to start the tree moving, then gravity will finish the job. When direction needs to be controlled If a tree is mostly balanced, the face cut will be enough to control the fall, but trees sometimes favor a specific direction because they’re leaning or limb-heavy on one side. If a tree really wants to go in one direction, and we can’t let it fall that way, a face cut simply isn’t enough. There’s a few options at this point: Wedges: for slightly leaning or limb heavy trees, wedges driven into the backside can nudge the tree in the direction of the face cut. Wedges are the first choice when possible because they are small and require the least amount of extra work. However, if there’s any doubt that they can overcome the inertia of a leaning/limb heavy tree, we use more serious methods. Tree Jack: This is exactly what it sounds like --- a jack that you stick into the tree to make it fall the way you want. Its like a bottle jack, and it really does the same thing as a wedge, but its got more influence on the tree. To insert the tree jack, a large cutout has to be made on the back of the tree. Then the force applied by the jack can force the weight of the tree up and over the face cut. Naturally, the tree jack has limitations as well. For the nastiest leaners and limb heavy trees, we use other methods. Rope: the advantage that a rope has is leverage --- we can tie it off as high up the trunk as we need to. The higher up the trunk the rope is, the more leverage we have over the tree. In the most extreme cases, we can strap on the climbing gear and tie it off nice and high, thus controlling the fall completely. In some cases, where the drop zone is shorter than the height of the tree, we have to take the trunk down piece by piece, working from the top down. There’s even cases where we have to tie off every log and lower it down using a pulley system. Excavator: When we have the excavator on site, this is our go-to method. All we have to do is lean the excavator arm against the tree and we have all the force we need to push the tree in the right direction. |
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February 2022
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