Widowmaker Leaning Trees

The wind uprooted a double-trunked ash and hung it up in a standing walnut. The ash are around 40-50 feet tall with lots of dead limbs. The walnut is still alive. The obvious way is to cut the walnut, but also the most dangerous. I don't have a big enough tractor to pull them down and there are too many trees to maneuver anyway. Any ideas on how to get them down? Cutting at the base will just let them slide down and pinch the saw. Still don't know if that would bring them down.

Larry in Michigan

get ahold of a local PROFESSIONAL timber cutter,pay him 4 a couple of hrs of work.
if its too dangerous , he'll tell ya, otherwise pay aattention to his tecnick,,, if he does not have a hardhat/chapps/ axe w/ plastic wedges: ask him to leave, he's not the cutter you need.

Larry, if you don't feel comfortable messing with a leaning tree, then don't. Hiring a tree guy is cheap compared to a trip to the hospital.

Short of cutting it, pulling the leaning tree over with a tractor or truck is about your only option. I always use a snatch block when I pull a tree over. Chain the snatch block to a tree in the direction you want the tree to fall, then run your line through the block. This will allow you to pull in a direction that's safe from the tree's fall and not obstructed by other tree. You'll need at least 200 feet of half-inch nylon line. You also need to know how to tie a bowline, otherwise you'll never get the knots out.

The other option is to leave it be. It'll fall over eventually. If it's not a hazard to anything or anyone, I might just leave it alone.

Take the other two postings advice and hire a professional. Even they can mess up since the news reported when taking down a tree it fell on the owners home and that wasn't far from here.

Several years ago my neighbor decided to cut some overhanging limbs off his neighbors tree. He was using an electric chain saw and never did anything like in his life. He was standing on an extension ladder with his wife steadying the ladder just below him. When the limb broke it must have swung around and hit his ladder and when he fell he hit his neighbors top rail on the chain link fence. The chain saw just missed his wife when he dropped it. I was having lunch when his wife called me and I ran over there and told her to call 911. When he was on the ground he wanted to get up and go in the house and I told him not to move. I scratched the bottom of his feet and asked him if he felt that and he said he did. I told him you're very lucky. They flew him
to a shock trauma center in Baltimore. He called me later that day from the hospital and told me to get that limb down and pull it to the back of his property. It would 've needed a big tractor to pull that limb and the butt end was still up the tree. I pulled on several of the branches and it finally dropped to the ground. I had to use a chain to cut it up. He tore his shoulder from the socket, but made a full recovery. Hal

WHAT IS IT ABOUT THESE ASH TREES STRESSED BY THE RECENT ICE.Do they Shatter their grain on the inside from the ICE STREES and Split precariously when cut ?. in this county I know of 3 Tragic accidents !.. we have Laid to final rest 2 wonderful men men killed by a splitting ash as they were cutting them down.. A double Forked ash Tree has Got a good friend of mine suffering with a terrible head injury as I write .. ALL THESE GUYS KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING ,not prone to take risks ,.. At any rate be careful , which no doubt you are trying to be , ... But To be Honest ,, NO one can give you sound advice without seeing the situation . blessings , jim

widowmakers are good for 1 thing, killing you, if you are not a proffesional logger hire one for this , call your local power company, they may not be able to help you if their lines arn't in danger, but they will know who can, these things have to be handled very carefully even then, the danger is extream, cutting the tree that the widowmaker is leaning in will sometimes make that tree do a 'barberchair' if it does and your in the wrong place it will be the last thing you see, in this case pro is the only way to go

To not get the blade stuck you must keep cutting a whole series of vee notches never not having a way out for saw[read my Husky book].Now for the story.Friend has Korean neighbor;sees neighbor getting tree guy estimates,sees neighbor with new chain saw,sees neighbor with casts on both legs.

Depending upon where these trees are located, your homeowners insurance may pay to have them removed.

Check with your insurnace agent. If you have an "all risk" policy, trees are generally considered property just like anything else.

course you would be responsible for any deductibles.

Good luck,, Gene

Larry,

It would be of best interest and safe for all involved to hire professionals that do this for a living. They go into areas after disaster has struck and have the experience hopefully to get the job done with minimal damage occuring.

Ash is a very good fire wood due to that is splits so easily. Elm is just the opposite.

Good luck and be careful. We had a resident in town that was well known and after a storm he used his tractor to pull down some broken branches that were stuck in his one tree, the one branch fell on him and pinned him on the tractor, he didn't survive. So be Careful!!

Think about this: they're called widowmakers for a reason... and it wasn't amatures that named them widow makers either. Many a pro was killed by them.

My first choice would be leaving them alone. If they're out in the woods somewhere they're not likely to hurt anyone or anything else.
On the other hand, if these are in around your yard or land where people are around and they NEED to be taken down, there are a couple options. One is a porter. What our professional choppers used to do was have the porter grab the trunk of the tree with the grapple and lift while he finished cutting it off the stump, then the porter could swing the tree down safely. I've observed that by a guy who cut wood for nearly every day of his life for 50 years. As the old newf would say, 'tere t'aint no damn tre werth dyin fer!'.
The other option is a decent sized (ie. 160 or 200 class) excavator with a thumb. Grab the tree and haul it out, root bulb and all, then cut the stump off.
You're looking at dollars to do this safely. Anything else is a big risk that you might get away with... or might not.

Rod

I will come do it for a fee. I aint scared.

If were me, and you want that Walnut to live or have that Ash off it's back, I'd make a path, get in there with a tractor, or better a small crawler, ratchet strap a ladder to climb the Ash, put a choker up high for leverage and double check to make sure the tractor or crawler is far enough away, and pull it back over. I would be worried about where the choker is, and if trunk where it's hooked would break off, not familiar with what a dead ash, (I assume it's dead) will do. Being uprooted, it will come back the other way, but you will need traction and a strong line, I've been using heavy chain and wire rope chokers with a clevis. I've been doing 60'-0" 12"-16" dia. black cherry leaners in an old hedgerow all week, taking my time and figuring each one out, got them all out with just slight limb damage to the other healthy trees and minimal risk to myself. I was real leary of doing this job, have felled enough trees to know where to walk away, but after some thought, using the downward slope for traction, one I pulled back up plumb and over roots and all, others I had to carefully cut and apply tension to, having seen a recent episode of Axe Men, where they were cutting blown down Alder, no doubt about the barber chair, must have been the camera angle or something, still hard to believe they cut these and did not get hurt or killed, nasty business sometimes.

There is no arguing with what the others said, tasks like these have high risk, and are a bit intimidating, having the right plan and equipment makes all the difference, by any means if you can't get in there with something and can only cut, might be best left alone, but me thinks it would come over if you had enough tractor, traction and stout line to pull it with.

1/2 inch line:

a real arborist bull rope with 6,000 lb working strenth

or home depot consumer rope with 450 lb working strenth

makes a big difference

How solidly is the fallen tree attached to the ground? I've pulled down dozens of fallen trees by hooking a chain to the base of the fallen tree and pulling it away with a tractor.

Fergi i can only understand you have a lodged tree. AS OTHERS HAVE SAID GET A PRO OR AN EXPERIANCED LOGGER / TIMBERFELLER. I worked in logging/aborist all my life.

Thanks for all the great advice. The tree is in an old farm lane beside the driveway. Even if it comes down, it won't hit the drive. I'm sure at some point we'll get more wind. That might just solve the problem.

I may not have a lot of farm experience, but I wasn't born last night either. To paraphrase, better to have people think your a fool than to do something stupid and remove all doubt.

Larry in Michigan