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Hinge Cutting

Stuckon22

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Look a Man Straight in His Hairy Eyeball!
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Works great on smaller trees but the bigger ones just break off completely. Still opening the canopy.
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I did a perfect hinge cut on a tree that I needed to fall past a house and land in the backyard.
I hooked up a rope and a winch / come-along and put several hundred pounds of pressure on the tree in the direction I wanted it to fall.
Cut a V-notch or 'mouth' cut about, and discarded the wedge of wood. That cut went back about 60% of the way thru the trunk, perfectly perpendicular to the line of expected fall, and the line of the now-tight rope.
Did the back cut horizontally and about 2" taller than the point of the V-notch cut.

But, the wind was blowing toward the house.
Shouldn't matter, right? The tree died last year and had no leaves on it.

Well, it mattered. The tree didn't fall when the hinge was only 1" wide.
I sawed some more and got it down to 1/2" wide, running the full width of the tree trunk-- about 16" diameter at that point.
THEN it fell. And it went 30 degrees LEFT of where I should have went. Missed the house by 8 inches instead of 15 feet. I guess the wind mattered.
 
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