Tree Cutting Safety, Part 1: Bucking and Cutting

Now we have the tree on the ground the real work against. Before we do though, we need to make sure we have a clear plan, a picture ahead and what we are going to do next. An easy five step plan to look at again is to make sure we look around for any hazard or obstacles, things over head it might been created during the tree fall it can come down and get us in our work area. The second is to look for any twist or roll. You want to make sure we pick the best side to work from so the tree does not actually roll toward us. Third up and down pressures, we look to see if pressure or bind this taking place on the top or bottom so we know where to start our cuts. Fourth, looking for any back pressures or possibilities such as a lemon in the crown up against another tree there might be pushing back toward us. And five understanding some basic individuals? cuts that we can make to be able slow down reactions and give ourselves more reaction time and to be more effective in the process.

After the information plans several cuts can be made for different scenarios as we come up the trunk of the tree. We can utilize distance notch and an under cut.

We can utilize as in this case here a bypass cut which off set type of a cut where we know that the bind is on top and another. I just cut down through the top. I am going end up with the pinch so I cut just half way into the top, under cut with an offset just slightly back down the trunk until both two bypass so that unable to fiber to be cut with that offset still in place. And then we can also use hinges to lower larger limbs or limbs under pressure. As you can see this particular limb here has a lot of pressure that has being built as the tree fell it come up against this other larger tree. So we have back pressure on this limb. As we come down to here I want to sober and release that pressure so I am going to slide the bar, it was vertical down here and another open up a 90 degrees face line and then back up and cut up and leave about 3.87 inches and you see the pressure just come out of that.