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Sunday 3 July 2022

Woodwork Lesson

 




There are quite a few tree-felling disasters on YouTube - the guys in this one didn't even look competent. Entertaining though - full marks for that.

7 comments:

Sam Vega said...

What on earth was he hitting the chainsaw with? It looked like something that has not been used in the UK since mediaeval times. I would have thought that hitting the moving blade would have pinged the tool back at you faster than you could duck, so I guess it could have been a lot worse than a damaged house.

DiscoveredJoys said...

A lot of the YouTube fails, including cutting down trees, can be explained if you accept that people are no good at assessing the inertia and weight of objects larger than they could lift. I think you need experience to extend your mind's model of large object dynamics.

Slippery steps, snapping dogs, breaking rope swings are failures of anticipation...

Luckily there are people filming these events, or we would never believe people were so inept.

microdave said...

@ Sam Vega - As far as I can tell, he was hitting some sort of wedge, not the chainsaw. Presumably in the hope that it would encourage the tree to fall the other way...

Sobers said...

"What on earth was he hitting the chainsaw with? It looked like something that has not been used in the UK since mediaeval times."

He wasn't hitting the chainsaw, he was hitting a wedge driven into the back of the cut, to try and force the tree to fall in the direction they wanted.The chainsaw was much further into the tree. Insofar as they were using a wedge they were in fact ahead of 90% of amateur tree fellers. They just got all their cut angles wrong. By the look of it they didn't cut a wedge out of intended fell direction either. It wasn't that big a tree either, the bit that hit the house was just brushwood, didn't look like it did much damage, maybe broke the guttering.

A K Haart said...

Sam - without looking closely I assumed he was bashing a wedge of some kind, but from a distance it did look as if he was hitting the saw.

DJ - they seem to underestimate the weight and size of the canopy too and don't bother trimming it down as a professional would. As you say, it's a good job there are people filming these events for us.

microdave - that's what I assume, although it's not easy to envisage what they were up to.

Sobers - I'm sure it broke some guttering and maybe took off a few roof tiles. Could have broken a window too.

DAD said...

The time that it took to cut the tree, I suggest the the chain needed sharpening. The professionals around here give their chains a 'Tiggle' every hour or so. They are cutting Sweet Chestnut, which is classed as a semi-hardwood.

A K Haart said...

DAD - it seemed slow to me too, certainly when compared to the way professionals cut down a couple of our trees.