rope anchors for tree felling

18 years ago

I have heated homes in Colorado, Maine, and now Connecticut with firewood for nearly twenty years. I recently purchased a firewood permit on the land of a local utility company. My permit area encompasses a close stand of mixed hardwoods, mostly beech, red oak, chestnut oak, sugar maple, and black birch. The forester has marked the trees to be cut. The marked trees are mostly 4 to 12 inches in diameter at breast height. The marked trees constitute about 10 to 20 percent of the trees on the wood lot. Because the woodlot is so thickly grown, I need to be pretty accurate when felling trees to avoid hanging trees up. So I've invested in a come-along to anchor some of the trees I'm cutting and help control the direction of their fall. The question now is what kind of rope to use: a relatively high-stretch nylon rope or a low-stretch dacron/poly rope. Any advice will be much appreciated.

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Comments (4)

computeruser
18 years ago
I've used Samson Stable Braid in 1/2" for pretensioning small trees and controlling fall. I've also used it for lowering pieces out of trees.

I think that low-stretch is the answer - you want to control what is going on, and a strong, low-stretch rope will work better than a rope that acts like a rubberband! It should also go without saying that Home Depot-type rope, or other consumer-grade rope, is not the correct tool for the job.
masiman
18 years ago
+1 to computeruser comments.

I just felled one yesterday that was overhanging our community's fence and pool, ~15" dbh, 20 deg lean. I climbed the tree to set the pulling point at ~25'. I ran this line down to another tree about 40' away. I set a block at this tree to redirect the rope so I would not be in the fall line. I hooked all this up to a third tree that I attached my come-along too (Tree pulling kit). I made the cuts and left a fairly thick hinge to ensure the butt-end did not break free during the pull. Most of the work seemed to be in the setup and then in pulling the tree over.

Another rope option is a three strand such as comes with the puller kit above. It is cheaper and will do the trick. The rope does not feel good or take knots the best, but it does work the best with that puller.
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jserena
Original Author
18 years ago
Gentlemen, many thanks for the advice. I'll definitely go with a low-stretch rope.

Pretty fancy tree-felling, masiman.

Best regards,

Jeff
masiman
18 years ago
Thanks jserena. It was actually even a little fancier than the above description. I anchored the rope at the redirect tree, ran it to a block on the to be cut tree, back to a block on the redirect tree and then over to the puller. This setup gave me a 2:1 advantage cranking the tree back. I'm glad we had it setup with the mechanical advantage. It was nice to have that because the cranking still needed some effort to pull it back.

I think the major advantage of the stable braid is that it designed to not twist under load. Non-stable braid rope will spin if you hang a load from it. If you are not going to hang a load from the rope, you can get away with not using stable braid. You can just concern yourself with WLL (working load limit) and stretch. But if you go with the arborist ropes, you won't have to worry about the stretch as the ropes will be designed to have minimal stretch. I am pretty sure that is the only benefit of the stable braid but there may be something else about them that others more knowledgable could chime in on. The reason I mention this about stable braid is that it is expensive. Depending on how much you need, you can get some really good deals in the Wesspur rope clearance bin.