Salt Cedar/Athel Tree (Tamarix Aphylla) demo fun.

[davidwyby]

*ongoing weekend project so subscribe or check back or whatever if ya want.

Monster tree on the end. Going back with a lift, etc. for this one. Demo from top down. It's several feet wide at the bottom. Hopefully it will bring some $ at the mill with the mesquite and bottlebrush.


Roots inside itself..


Ready to pull away from road and lines.

Butt, butt, butt...roots inside again. Gave me a hard time cutting the wedge. Fibrous and bound up the chain once and threw it once. I left too much hinge, but I didn't want it to go anywhere until I wanted it to. Novice at falling. In the past, we dug the roots out and pulled over. Always seems like the limbs on these trees are weak, and the trunks are stronger. Took more to pull it down than I expected. I back cut until it started to open, earlier than I expected, and I figured she was ready to go. Still had to give a hard pull with the deuce.

@afleetcommand

 

[davidwyby]

Theses things "grow" in a filthy tangled mess, lots of habitat. Bobcat ate a dove.



Side ways *eyeroll* view of the 30" we took down.


Danger! Africanized honeybees. People have been hospitalized and killed by them nasty suckers. I walked the place first and then ran the deuce and the nice loud 6100 a minute with my eyes open to make sure they weren't gonna come jump me in the middle of falling.

From under the big one on the end.

Lay o' the land. Red is trash piled/erosion control into the river bottom already, but there are some nice big logs in there I hope I can extract. I'll find a pic on the telephone. Green remains to be removed. A big excavator with a thumb would be nice. Probably gonna be deuce 'n chains dragging 'em off to the river. Gonna try some for firewood too.

 

[davidwyby]

Here is one of the big ones I want to get. This is looking in from the edge of the bank of the river. Would have to be extracted from above it. Reach lift maybe.

 

[davidwyby]

Ended up only having a lift on site. I didn’t want to just cut it while standing next to it on a platform, so cabled up. The 395 42” chest high was a workout. Got lucky and got a nice wedge out. Little bigger than it should have been probably. Cut a little too much on the back cut, so not much for the truck to do, but all went well. Didn’t break the log.

Went SE like I expected instead of due S, but it cleared the “road” at the edge of the field. Cleaned it up with the 6100 and bucked one section with the 395 as it got dark.

Family came out to take vids, that was cool.

@PA Dan

 

[RI Chevy]

Nice job David! Love the sound of that military truck. Serious grunt.

 

[davidwyby]

Butt log to the first bend where I cut it is 10’ and about 24”x36”.

Not sure where I’ll buck the next one to. Probably right below where that last large limb was.

 

[davidwyby]

Tried to pull that big log out from under, it laughed at the deuce. Mex border at mt signal in the background.



Blue angels spend the winter here and train/practice here, they were out today. I was working along the New river (formed when the Colorado escaped it’s irrigation canal in the early 1900s) which runs across the end of the runway

 

[davidwyby]

First pullover

Teh stoomp. Dolmar was killin it today, love that little thing. 2166 was feeling lazy again. Bucked a little with the 395, 28”, 8pin, did pretty well but will probably port it or get it ported eventually.


pretty much how the day went but still fun.

 

[davidwyby]

Little guy from the end of the day. Had a funky bend/lean (all this trash does) but I got it to go where I wanted without the truck.
The Big Leaner before, from the top/holding wood side.

Big leaner after.


Front Leaner (first pull vid)

 

[davidwyby]

Started to rain in the middle of pulling down The Three, can’t have rusty saws. Deuce cab gets small quick.

 

[davidwyby]

I tried to pull all three at once first and was rejected.

Front Leaner:

Big Leaner : this trunk was growing 45Deg sideways and propped up on another small tree where it turns upwards. I think the three being together in a “stool” is why I couldn’t get all together. Started raining thunder lighting as I was climbing trees to hook up. It’s always an adventure!

 

[RI Chevy]

Nice! Truck is awesome

 

[davidwyby]

Went and looked at another mess of them today. Hopefully the wood turns out to be worth something. There are 3 good size ones in there. I should have shot a video. Hard to capture the tangled messiness with pics.

 

[davidwyby]

Took the big ones to the mill today. Gonna wait on a price for them till after he mills and dries them but prolly gonna be $500. Got $500 for the two 36” X 48” mesquite chunks.

Ole ford 429 was struggling on the grades, 1st gear sometimes.


Trying to show how messy and tangled these things are. 10-15’ high. They would probably be OK if they had proper care instead of breaking and being broken all over the place. The upper logs seems to be around 10” growing up out of larger more massive stumps and logs buried in the mess. Every thing is covered in several inches of needles and dirt, like snow. Gonna start ripping the down stuff out of the way with the deuce tomorrow so I can get closer to the ones Leaning over the road and pull them back.

 

[davidwyby]

Bigger saws had problems. Turns out you can fell about 28” with 14”, haha.



@Normzilla

 

[davidwyby]

Just a few more large ones to pull over. Clearing them out to the power line opening. The ones to the south by the house are going to stay.

eventually will have to close the road and give those over hangers a hardcore haircut.

Ugliest stumps in the world, haha. Hook the winch up, pull tight, cut, then pull over. Leaving lots of hold wood and pulling them opposite of lean.

 

[RI Chevy]

Maybe try bore cutting the center out?

 

[davidwyby]

I don’t have any experience bore cutting...yet. If I had something that wasn’t a trick to try it on...

this is that stump. Camera is too far away and lighting is bad, it’s a lot bigger than it looks. It’s probably 50’ total. Cut off about 10’ up on top of the big 40” stump where they were broken off years ago. Leaving stumps to be ripped out and then maybe mill them.
It had a compound lean west towards the road and north parallel to it. I notched the east side and when I went to back cut, she started to pinch on the north side where I was standing. Don’t dare leave any less holding wood. In hindsight, I should have cleared out more of the knocked over horizontals out from the east side so I could pull directly opposite the compound lean (SE).
This weekend I’m going to clean out more and have the man lift trailer out there to make it easier and safer to get up there and hook on high.

Hook on height is a balance between getting enough leverage and being too high and unloading the truck and losing traction when I go to pull.

I should take some video with some narration to explain better what’s going on.

 

[davidwyby]

Forgot link

 

[davidwyby]

it’s cool how the governor maintains RPM.