I found this tree blown over a couple of years ago. I have been planning my attack ever since then. I made up my mind that this would be the year I harvest it. I knew that it would be an extreme amount of work to get it out, but I knew it would be worth it. I just couldn't leave this tree to rot in the woods, it was too good for that. Two weeks ago, I spent half a day just cutting a trail down the hill to the tree. My brother-in-law has a quad and he owes me a good days work, so I talked him into helping. He is a lot more experienced cutting trees than I am. This is the first time he has seen it. It was a little bigger than he expected
We didn't waste any time getting started. He fired up Ole Smokey and started cutting. I grabbed my little homelite and started on the opposite side.
It took quite a lot of cutting, but we finally got it free from the base. It was at that point that my brother-in-law decided to go break out his brand new saw. Ole Smokey sounded like it was running under water and wasn't cutting too good. The tree has some natural splits to it. The center of it is actually dead. At the last cut, it has about a 3" hollow circle right in the center. That is fine with me. It will make it easier to split. Instead of having 24" of tree to split, I will only have 12" to the center.
I thought it would have decent rings since it is at the bottom of a steep hill and right next to a creek bed. I wasn't dissapointed
I was able to mark out 3 80" sections before the first major limb.
We got my saw stuck trying to get it apart on the uphill side. We had it cut almost all the way through, it was just wedged together. I climbed up and got a good grip on the snapped off tree next to it and started jumping. That worked! I was left safely dangling from the broken tree. I wish we had a picture of that. For a short round guy, I'm pretty nimble.
After that, we had it down where we could work on it a little easier. A few cuts later and we had it whipped.
My Dad came out to check on us just as we were done with the hard work. He was able to get a picture of both of us with the logs.
It was starting to get dark down in the valley so we decided to call it a day. I tried to seal the ends as good as I could with some polyurethane.
We loaded everything up and headed back up the hill.
Back up at the landing zone. No wood yet, but it won't be long.
