Craig Woodward
January 25, 1995PART II
Wood's Lore
There may be more mystique than there should be about timber falling.
The basic thing when you're cutting down a tree is you look for the 'lay' of the tree. You want to see which way it wants to fall. It's all a matter of gravity.
You look up and ask yourself which way is the tree leaning and which side are the limbs on. That is to say, which is the heavy side of the tree. Normally, a tree will fall in a 180 degree radius without a whole lot of difficulty if you put the proper 'face' in the tree. We call it a 'face.' It's the proper undercut leaving enough wood attached to direct the tree. If this is done, the tree normally will fall in a 180 degree radius.
There are timber fallers who are specialists when it comes to falling a tree. They can make the tree fall almost anywhere. The thing we look toward doing is saving the wood. We don't want to break the tree over a stump or over a rock outcropping or fall it hanging into another tree. We want to put it into a bed where it will be easily skidded without further damage to the resource remaining standing. The skid trail provides a natural funnel for the trees out of the woods so the logs won't be, as we say, 'side-winded' out of the woods where they will tear down reproduction and skin up other trees.
We have a crew of timber fallers who does the falling and limbing and who bucks the logs into preferred lengths. 'Bucking' is cutting the log into proper lengths for the sawmill. The preferred length for pine is 32' with a little trim left on. Out of this 32' log the sawmill can get two 16' pieces of lumber. That's the preferred length.
Usually, two timber fallers work together. They work some distance ahead of the skid crew, because if a tree falls across a Cat, someone will get hurt. Or if a Cat pushes a tree over, it might strike a timber faller working nearby. They've got to keep their distance. The two timber fallers will drive to work in the morning and they will park their vehicle a safe distance from where they will be falling, because they want to be sure they will have a ride home. In case the wind comes up a tree might go over backwards. We've seen that happen.
If the wind is gusting over 10 miles an hour, they wouldn't cut trees, because you can't predict which way a tree will fall. If the wind is steadily blowing in one direction, they can live with that, not safely, but they can live with it. But if there are any type of gusts or let-up in the wind, or if the wind changes direction, it's just too dangerous to fall trees.
A lot of times fallers will drive all the way to the woods before they know whether they will work that day. It may be windy in town and not windy in the woods. Or it may be windy in the woods and not windy in town. But they have to drive out there before they know whether they will work that day.
Two fallers work best together. Not only for safety but for convenience sake. Sometimes when they're bucking a large tree the saw will get pinched in the buck. This happens when a tree settles while being cut and pinches the bar on the saw. The other faller is there to cut out.
In a more heavily logged stand the areas are laid out, or ribboned out, in strips. Fallers stay out of each others strips and make sure their trees don't fall into the other man's strip. This is for safety reasons. In a salvage logging operation the fallers wouldn't be on strips. Usually one man would be the more experienced, more seasoned, timber faller. He would go on ahead and cut a couple of trees leaving enough space for the second faller, who is probably the bucker, to do his part of the job.
The bucker would measure the trees, buck them to length, and delimb them while the first faller goes on out of harms way and continues to fall. He tries to keep at least two tree lengths distance between them. The reason for two tree lengths is because if one tree falls in the wrong direction and strikes another tree, in a second there would be a deadly domino effect. So they want to stay at least that distance.
The skidder operator comes in then with a Cat or a rubber-tired skidder and skids the logs to a landing for loading on trucks to be hauled into the sawmill. In the old days, skidding was done by attaching one end of a cable to a log. The other end of the cable was hooked to a crawler tractor which pulled the log to a landing.
In modern logging we often use track driven machines with hydraulic booms and hydraulic saw motors. The saw blades rotate about 1000RPM a minute. This machine just hits the trees and collects them as it goes by, until it gets five or six trees, then it lays them herringbone to the skid trail.
The equipment that a faller has to pack are his chain saw and usually a spare chain saw. He has a 50 or 75 foot coil steel, spring-wound tape with what is called a 'stinger' on the end of the tape. Sometimes this is no more than a sharpened horse-shoe nail bent over. It is punched into one end of the tree for measuring out 33 feet. Fir logs are cut to a different length and need more trim left on, so this tape is an important part of his equipment.
A timber faller will need a single-bitted axe with which to drive wedges. He will pack two or three plastic wedges and maybe one aluminum wedge. In the old days, oak wedges were used. Wedges are used to slip in behind the chain saw cut to keep the tree from settling back. This is necessary if a timber faller wants the tree to fall a little different than the tree wants to fall.
For safety, a faller will have suspenders holding up loose pants, because he's carrying a file, and he's got a bar wrench with which to tighten the chain on the bar, and he's got that tape hanging off of his pants. The cuffs of his pants have been cut off. What we call 'stag' pants. The reason for the stag pants is if he hangs up while running his chain saw full throttle and happens to hook his pant leg on a stick or limb, the pant will rip away before he has a chance to trip and fall on his saw.
On those suspenders he has a leather pad that fits over his shoulder, so when he packs his saw it rests on this leather pad instead of having the sharp chain against his neck. A hard hat is a must.
The falling of the old growth is a science that is rapidly being lost. There are middle-aged men and even some younger men who are masters of the technique. But there just aren't that many of them doing it the old way. And there's not much old growth timber being logged any longer, either.
Falling timber is a dangerous occupation. Planning ahead and being cautious on the job are important. I've worked in the woods from the time I was 15 until I was 22. I worked full time after college until I was 30 years old and I've never been injured. But I have packed several people out of the woods that were hurt. Safety has got a lot to do with it.