Dead Tree (Day #1)

Remember the Dead Tree from June last year? Well today I decided to do something about it. The original plan had been to lop it off at about fifteen feet and leave the woodpeckers something to play with, but having discussed this with friends who actually knew what they were talking about this started to sound a bit of a scary option. There's a significant weight of wood above fifteen feet and cutting it down definitely wouldn't be easy and definitely has death potential.

So with the backup of Youngshanks belaying me, worked the ladder as high up the tree as possible and established a sling and rope to pull in the direction I wanted it to fall. This was about 60 degrees off the natural fall line - The natural fall line was directly towards our house, no way would it get close, but Mrs L had her doubts. 180 degrees off the natural fall line was the neighbour's house which it definitely would reach, but hey it's never going to fall in the complete opposite direction of the natural fall line. Is it?

The plan was to weaken the trunk at fifteen feet by cutting a ring round it then tensioning the rope by pulling it with the car and hopefully with the tree being so dead and rotten it'd just crack at the weak point. Good plan eh?

The first problem was looking at the tree at my ladder highpoint it was just where there had been three branches, a natural thickening of the tree. It'd make more sense to cut through about a foot below where I'd attached the ladder. Mmmm, that's not the brightest plan, but hey, I'll start a bit then move the ladder down before going deeper.

I didn't fancy the idea of wielding the chainsaw at the top of the ladder to do a horizontal cut into the truck, so as the plan was only to weaken the trunk I looked at what other tools I had - angle grinder and saw. That'll work eh? Well yes they did actually. A wee test cut below the ladder seemed okay, then moved the ladder down and got a two to three inch cut all round the tree. Time to tension up.

A large rope V round the garden and we're attached to the tow loop of the car. Slowly tensioning it up, till I was more worried about the car than the tree, I stopped. The tree was showing no signs of weakness where it was meant to. We could shake the tree by jerking on the rope, but no way was it going to split as desired, although during one of these jerkings one of the top branches detached and fell, clattering into the attached ladder. Even that top branch was a fair weight of wood, which certainly reaffirmed my thoughts that there's no way I wish to be up a ladder lopping off the tree - scary monsters.

That's enough for today, let's sleep on it.