Taking down a 5' yellow cedar with a boys axe.

Liam Ryan

Liam Ryan

Joined
Sep 26, 2005
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Better watch the whole thing. ;)
5 minutes in if you can't wait.
[youtube]V-SwpDKkHko&feature=related[/youtube]

I call an ox head of some kind.
 
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Great video. I love the makeshift spring boards. The only minor critique I can make is that when climbing back in he didn't even set the chain break.

Sadly we don't have many of those big old growth trees left. Mostly it's just second growth stuff like what is seen in the background of this video.
 
Your thread title tricked me!!! :D That was cool. Sad to see a tree like that go down, but you never know the circumstances. I also liked the springboards. Pretty cool.
 
From the comments the circumstances were roughly 10 000 dollars. :D

Someone asked on another video what axe he used and he said he just grabs anything with a decently grained handle.
 
I loved the springboards, also the power of the wedge, but his cut (while better than anything I could have done, I hasten to add) was less than impressive for a professional. His back cut was apparently too high, evident by all that hair sticking up from the stump after it first went down. Notice how it was all cleaned off by the end?
 
Blue Sky said:
I loved the springboards, also the power of the wedge, but his cut (while better than anything I could have done, I hasten to add) was less than impressive for a professional. His back cut was apparently too high, evident by all that hair sticking up from the stump after it first went down. Notice how it was all cleaned off by the end?
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I only have a little felling experience, but IMO if you are cutting a tree that big you are sure as hell going to leave a sizable hinge. A big hinge will often pull fibers like that. Like I said, that's just my experience which is very limited.
 
You need to leave about 10% of the diameter for a safe hinge. Hard to tell exactly how much hinge he left - the video never really shows it well.
 
The back cut looked to be too high above the notch, not necessarily that the hinge was too narrow. That is the reason for the hair, at least from all I have learned to date. There may have been a good reason why he cut it that way for all I know (there was a secondary stump back there) but I do find it telling that it was all cleaned off later.
 
Blue Sky said:
I loved the springboards, also the power of the wedge, but his cut (while better than anything I could have done, I hasten to add) was less than impressive for a professional. His back cut was apparently too high, evident by all that hair sticking up from the stump after it first went down. Notice how it was all cleaned off by the end?
Click to expand...

i think they used to call it "Parsons Hair" or when there was a substantial bit left it was referred to as a "Parsons Chair"
 
I have never cut big ceadr of pine, but sure have cut a lot of logs in Missouri, hard woods. I have cut some logs 4 or 5 foot across the butt. I think it was not to good of a job by what I saw.. to me he lost 4 or 6 feet of log, (the biggest part) and then pulled the guts out of it because it was not cut through. Then he turns and walks off and takes his eyes off the tree. Weird thing can happen and you can get squished. Chain breaks can be a p i t a, can when he comes up to the tree and climbs on the saw isn't running.

Just what I think, Pat
 
He had to cut high because of the second stump in the back, and isn't the hinge supposed to be not cut through? 10% of a 5 foot tree is 6 inches of hinge.
 
Big tree for an Alaskan cedar (AKA Stinking Cedar or Yellow Cedar). Given the high country they grow in, their slow growth rate probably made that a very old tree.
 
Liam Ryan said:
He had to cut high because of the second stump in the back, and isn't the hinge supposed to be not cut through? 10% of a 5 foot tree is 6 inches of hinge.
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I agree. I don't think there are many loggers out there who would have cut that tree much lower. A lot of loggers will cut most of the way through on a smaller tree because you can. On a smaller tree, the lip created by a lower face cut and higher back cut is usually enough to control the fall even if the hold wood snaps right away. Frequently a cutter won't bother with a wedge either. You can't cut so many corners on a tree that is 5 feet across.

In regards to cleaning up the stump... conscientious wood cutters always clean up their stump if there is hair left sticking up, or if it barber chairs or something. At least that's the way I was taught by my grandpa, not that he logged commercially.

I don't think I could have brought myself to cut down that tree for $10,000. How old was that tree? A couple hundred years? $10,000 seems like a pittance. Cutting large old, growth trees makes great money, but it sure doesn't make sense. There are very few reasons that one old growth tree should be cut rather than several new growth trees. Economics is the main reason, but none of the reasons justify it, IMO. Like I said before, who knows, maybe there were other circumstances that I don't know about. Whatever the case, it's a shame that we have so few of the old giants.
 
From my own days in the woods, those big old growth yellow cedars all went to Japan because they loved the clean knot free wood and its color for open frame home construction. I'm guessing that tree was a bit older than 200 years. They grow slow up in the high country and you don't see much Alaska cedar around here below 4000 ft. I have 4 in my front yard dug as foot tall seedlings maybe 20+ years ago. They are now around 20 foot tall and that is on much lower ground.
 
Liam Ryan said:
...and isn't the hinge supposed to be not cut through?
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Correct, you do not want to cut through the hinge. If you do you immediately lose all control over the tree and where it's going to go. I will not cut near anyone who breaks that rule.
 
Blue Sky said:
Correct, you do not want to cut through the hinge. If you do you immediately lose all control over the tree and where it's going to go. I will not cut near anyone who breaks that rule.
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Have you noticed how a lot of loggers get really comfortable and they just start cutting until the tree falls. Often they cut through, but if they spaced the two cuts, some control seems to be retained.

Is there a functional difference between making your face cut with an angle cut on bottom and flat cut on top versus the opposite????
 
Did a bit of forestry research on yellow cedar. It is rated as the slowest growing of the cedars, which I already knew. 40 to 50 years to the inch of diameter. That was a very old tree in the video. Some are aged at close to 2000 years old. While it is a high elevation species here in Washington and Oregon, some do grow down to sea level on the Olympic peninsula and points north to Alaska.
 
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