How do I drop these without breaking them?

[legdelimber]

IF you could catch a time when there had been a lot of rain for many days.
Soft ground of course. But the wet wood seems to be less brittle when you need to mess with it.
The wet wood being less brittle, was something I learned while doing architectural salvage.

A trash pile from any nearby dumpsters might be put to use for cushion too.
Any plastic buckets or barrels?
Mattresses and old tires always seem to lurking somewhere.
Check some nearby ditches.

Like has been mentioned...What's the wood worth to you?
IF possible, Sweep it with the metal detector, before, you do any other work or felling.
Whack 'em in several places with a hammer or long pipe something, to listen for solid wood sound or soft or splitting.
Think of a woodpecker sounding on a tree and how loose sections/splits cracks will sound.
The logs may already be no good for your needs.

 

[Wonkydonkey]

Car tires are the way, use a long stick to push a running bowline up the tree to around 12-15 ‘ or more.
Do a nice wide face cut. Then the back cut. Then when your happy pull them over with the vehicle . You can see the wood as you cut and determine how sound it is and decide how thick you want the hinge.

but if you like pounding wedges do it that way, but as there’s no weight up top to help you you would need a thinner hinge,

 

[Nutball]

Pull over with a thick triple hinge and a near ground level face cut?

I like the tire idea.

 

[Wonkydonkey]

I see Reg did a vid for you this morning to inspire you.

although he didn’t use any tires. I particularly liked the leaning tree at about the 6 min mark.

edit, what is the other name for the cut at the front of the tree to give the hinge a longer holding time on the tension side. Reg called it a longer hinge, but I know there is another name for it.
Cheers

 

[davidwyby]

Looked at the other side of these the other day...peeled, dry, cracked. Gonna slam em.

 

[davidwyby]

Sat was fun. Dropped these sticks and firewooded in no hurry, so got to cut and tune saws and chain. the 2159 was running and cutting awesome, though the 20” was a little short for this wood. The 6100 I cut with oak weekend or two again and it was hauling the mail. This weekend I couldn’t get the chain to cut as good as the 2159. Both oregon full chis full comp sharpened with the husky roller…only thing I can figure is I switched from the oregon bar to the Tsumura…maybe something is funky with it, will inspect and test.


I experimented with felling long bar vs. short…long much easier for this rookie. Face cut with the 3120 42”, I missed my cut junction the first time, ended up a bit deeper than I wanted. Then on the back cut, I should have left more hinge and pounded wedges more as tree was dead and starting to rot. Ported 3120 .404 cuts purty fast and got away from me, ha! But it was the short stick, not a tree so not a biggie on the scrawny hinge.
On the big one (35’) I got brave (and I was tired) so I decided to fell with the Dolmar 6100 24”. Nailed the face cut first shot, nice.

…but my back cut was trash. Uneven and not enough hinge again. All’s well that ends well I guess. Live and learn.

 

[Wonkydonkey]

you used wedges

it’s amazing how thin a hinge you need when it’s just a stick

btw nice job