winching and rigging (BFR 5 Trees 0)

[BFR]

I pulled down 4 trees in my parents’ yard this past weekend, which gave me an excuse to use the winch a little and practice rigging for different situations. On most of the pulls I used a double line with a doubled 1/2" sling for my attachment to the trees (generally 12' or so off the ground). After pulling down the tree we rigged the sling through the root ball and pulled out the stumps. Twice during the day I had the winch unspooled until there were only 4 or 5 wraps left. I broke a shear pin when I got lazy an attempted to pull out one of the stumps w/ a single line.
1 poplar 70' tall maybe 14" in diameter (at the base)
1 poplar 90' tall maybe 18" in diameter (at the base)
1 red oak 40' & 14"
1 red oak 80' & 18" (was leaning at 45 degrees to begin with)

I only had to use two snatch blocks once (when I had to do a 90 degree pull w/a double line)

I also used the deuce to guide down a white oak in my sister's yard. It was well over 100' tall and was 30" or so in diameter. We cut it and I pulled while my dad made the back cut to make it fall in the desired direction (it was dead/dying & could have hit my parents’ house, my sister's house, and my brother's house)

Also, one of the trees had a flying squirrel nest in it (didn't know until we had it on the ground) one of which was a pure white albino

Here are the totals…

90 miles driven
Approximately 1.5 hours idling
10 gallons of diesel
5 trees down
1 shear pin
1 albino flying squirrel seen

 

[cranetruck]

Good job Joel, it takes careful planning to do it right.
Our poplars only have small buds here.....

 

[CliffW]

looks fun and a cool albino flying squirrel.

 

[Recovry4x4]

I'll be doing a similar feat thie week with slash pines. Looks good Joel

 

[Blood_of_Tyrants]

When I was a boy, my brother and I chased a flying squirrel down and caught it. It became docile surprisingly quickly, within a few hours.