Close call this weekend... love cutting down trees!

[blackthorn]

Several years ago I needed to fall about ten mature pines at my lake property to make way for the new cabin. My son and I used a rope-and-pulley system in concert with my truck to pull the trees over. Doing it this way, nobody was any where near the tree being felled, and it gets the whole tree, including the roots out. Over the years I have used this method on some fairly large girth trees, the secret being to get the rope (with the top snatch-block) as far up the trunk as possible. Placement of the snatch-blocks will also give you good control of where the tree will land.

[Markopolo]

Wow.. talk about a replay... I had the exact same thing happen... actually deposited a real nice splinter near my eye.. thank God I was wearing safety glasses....

[fatelk]

That spring back can sure be a huge pain. I was clearing some brush many years ago, and there was a lot of vine maple in the area. Vine maple is as much a weed as a tree. It grows in clumps with multiple trunks/branches sprouting out quite long, draping out over each other. The wood is hard and tough, and rarely more than two or three inches thick. These long branches or vines can tangle and drape over each other with a tremendous amount of tension.

Long story short, I cut into one and it let go with all that tension. It felt like a baseball bat across the bridge of my nose. A crack of something breaking, blood everywhere, no fun. For years I’d just tell people that I broke my nose in a bar fight, only funny because I don’t go to bars and I don’t get into fights.