I thought I had written up this adventure but I can't find it. I guess I just thought about it.
My wife and I went to our cabin Thursday, March 26, to gather more firewood for next season.
I selected a tree to cut down and cleared the brush from around it. I made my wedge cut on the side I wanted it to fall and started the cut on the other side. The tree started to fall in the general direction I wanted and then stopped! It got caught in the top branches of a nearby tree, the tree I should have cut first.
From the bottom I didn't have enough leverage to nudge it. It seemed that almost anything I might try would be dangerous; I had no idea which way the tree would fall. I used a pole pruning saw to get a rope around the tree about 16 feet up and then tied the rope to another tree some distance away.
We could pull on the rope and make both trees sway a lot, but the cut tree wouldn't dislodge. I tried winding the rope bight with a stick. Nada! I thought of using a come-along, but I was sure it was in the truck, which was in the shop. A come-along is a small hand winch.
I did manage to pry the tree off its stump with a five-foot bar. I did see that the problem was that my back cut was not parallel to the wedge cut. So the tree twisted as it started to fall and was a few too many degrees off my intended fall direction.
We left the tree leaning there and I hoped to try again once I had the truck and the come-along. Stay tuned for the next episode of "The Adventures of Superwoodsman".
