I've been cutting trees since I was 15. My first saw was a Poland 5400. It weighed a ton but it had all the power you wanted. I had a 24 inch bar & a bow blade to use once I got a tree down. That big old saw would throw chips 15 feet behind you when you were cutting it into firewood. A Stihl with the same power weighs half as much & is much safer. The chain design & chain brake make them a hell of a lot better than the 60s model Poland. I still have it. It's still setting where I put it when I got my Stihl. I sold firewood every year to add to my income. I would clear downed trees in peoples yards haul it home dry it & sell it. From late Sept till I ran out of wood I made $300 to 400 a week. This was 1969 through 1975. There are very few red oaks on my land. I have lots of white oaks but I cut every red oak I could get out easy. I can tell you which way a tree will fall just by looking at it. I had a good teacher. He could drop a tree right where he marked the spot every time. He logged all over the USA.

 

When I cut my first big tree, I knew that wood was a strong, tuff stuff.

The key to making a tree fall where you want it to go is to figure the angle of the cut so that it makes a "FOLD LINE" along a direction perpendicular (at ninety degrees) to where you want it to fall. That works for a straight tree, but often you have a tree that leans in some direction off of true - and those are the ones that scare all pure blue blazes out of me!

What if there is a soft spot in the wood?
What if the wind gusts in the wrong direction just at the worst time?

A hard and fast rule I keep in my mind is that if I can't spit and tell where it will land - I need to leave a tree alone for a while.

You can check a cut with a carpenters square.
Put the short end in the cut - and sight along the long edge, that's where the tree SHOULD (should) go


But if you guess wrong, all merry hell can come to breakfast.

Tree trunks weigh a LOT, a six foot piece ten inches around is bigger than me - better than 300 pounds probably. Add leverage to that and things get downright Frankenstienian. Branches four inches in thickness over a certain length can crush a man or a house - or a truck, in a few instances I know of from personal experience.

You see something like that, and it is when you back up and think:
"I don't have enough experience to do this right"

That's when you go find someone who has not only that experience, but is also bonded and insured to do what has to be done

~ And I have one of those things leaning toward my garage right now.



What I'm going to have to do is just PAY THE MAN...

 

I had an expert fall a tree that hung over my roof . My Dad was born 1920 , He said the tree was huge when he was a kid .That was in the early 90's . I understand getting a pro . I also understand a tension line to fell smaller trees close to the house .