Safely Removing an Embedded Tree

How do you take a large one-hundred foot tree down without doing any damage?  Not easy! The pictures show it best. First, let me explain. There were three large and valuable trees very close together and it became apparent that they were robbing water and nutrients from each other. They showed signs of distress and slowed development. I use this kind of wood in my furniture building and poplar is very expensive to buy. I wanted to salvage my tree removal. This tree is just a little over one-hundred feet tall and twenty-six inches across, just below the cut line. It should produce more than six-hundred feet of good, clean furniture wood which when finished and in A grade condition it will sell for over six dollars a board foot. That makes saving the wood a very important feature of this project.

The trees are very close together and if a cut is made wrong, the fallen tree will crash into one of the others. The other disadvantages were the water on the western side, fruit trees on the eastern side, a driveway also on that same eastern side and of course as you can see, another huge tree north and one south. This might be a problem for the amateur. Many people would call in an expert, but in this case, I am the expert having done this over a thousand times. I also write a lot of books with an emphasis on nature and I have studied situations like this.

I could have felled this tree back into the water, but if you notice, there are actually two trees back that way with branches sticking into the area of the fall. Then also, felling a tree into water makes a huge problem in getting it out. I must fell this tree to the right side and along side and immediately in front of a similar tree. Taking out either the tree just to the right or the one to the left would not have served my purpose because then the remaining trees would still be too close. I also had to fell this tree without breaking any branches off of the tree to the right which is easier to see in this next picture.

In this picture you can better see the two small trees just back of the two remaining trees. You will also note the angle of the saw cut which is what directs the direction of fall. The view you are looking at here is the setting for several of my books.

I will remove the stump later, I will also have the felled tree cut up into one inch thick boards for making furniture  and hopefully, the two remaining trees will thrive better than before. I should add, it might be too late for them. Once trees begin to decline, it takes a miracle to revive them when they are this old. I have two drying sheds where I stack and air-dry my own furniture wood. It takes twelve to fifteen board feet of this wood to make a three-hundred dollar coffee table. Now wouldn’t you want to save the wood too? Here is a link to see a coffee table I am making out of oak which is also cut on my property and slightly more expensive.

http://gomestic.com/do-it-yourself/make-your-own-coffee-table/

I hope you enjoyed seeing how it is done, but I don’t recommend that you try it, I was very lucky. There is a lot of water to the right of this tree group, this is the narrow part of a larger body of water and that too was a consideration in directing the fall. I would say, I fell it on a dime, wouldn’t you?

Here is a link to another way to get wood from wind damaged trees and some of the furniture I have made from that kind of process.

http://gomestic.com/home-improvement/what-do-you-do-when-a-storm-blows-your-trees-down/

Dr Robert E McGinnis

Author of many fine books.