Planning the Wedge & Escape Routes On-Paper for Tree Felling

Video Transcript

" Hi! I am Drew Finn here for Expert village.com. We are going to discuss how to cut down a tree safely today. This video is brought to you by Black Dog Video. You can visit it on blackdogvideo.biz. On your escape route if you are looking straight down the tree and you are standing say here cutting, you are planning on having it fall say this direction. You have got to look up the tree and make darn sure it is not going some other direction in particular towards you. Now obviously if the tree starts falling and there is now way in heck, you could push on that tree and stop it. It is common in whatever direction it wants to go. So, that’s why we like to loop on it with a rope and you can pull it, but that is the theory of the notching. So, on this case, if we are going to fall this way, the notch would have been in this side of the tree right here and then we do the felling cut through here. If we are using a felling wedge, let’s take a bigger tree. If you have a bigger tree over here, we have it notched here and we are cutting through. Say it is a large tree and we get a chain saw laid right here and we are heading through. On this side we put a felling wedge in and that could be pounded in with a hammer and we cut through most of the way. You can stop cutting and then tap in the wedge. If you have got it in, so it is fairly close the wedge and make it start to fall, you may have to go back in and cut a little further with your chain saw, but the wedge could be in there, it is a plastic wedge, so if you accidentally touch it with the chain saw, it is not going to damage your chain saw or if it flies off, it is not as likely to hurt you. So you cut through and the tree falls this way."