Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Cutting Trees with Bob

One day, my father-in-law Bob Sommer called me up and asked if I could assist him in cutting down a few nasty poplar trees next to his house.   Bob was a tough-as-nails, rugged individualist who liked to tackle jobs and succeed.  Sometimes they would be messy,  bumpy, and a little scary, but they were always functional in the end.

 In northern Minnesota, poplar trees are sneaky.  They are all over the resort and constantly sneak up on us between the resort cabins and along power lines.   They start out small and everybody forgets about them.  Then three days after your house is built, they get to be 16 to 20 inches in diameter,  About two thirds of the way up, they rot out when nobody is looking.  A big wind comes by and downward plummets the leaf-laden top to destroy anything and everything  below.  If the top doesn’t snap the bottom does so and a 60 to 70 foot behemoth lands on your house.   They grow like Minnesota bamboo and I never felt bad about cutting one done.  You can always count on twenty new ones taking  its place.

Bob said that to expedite the operation for his tree, he would have everything ready and he needed me mainly  to run the hand winch.  Of course, I said “Sure!” and made plans for tomorrow at 1 PM. 


I drove over to the Moose Lake road and Bob had the trappings of the adventure all in place.  Bob had a thick yellow rope way up on the tree about 20 feet.  It was securely tied and running through a massive hand winch secured to a solid tree about 60 feet away.  He had his screen-faced helmet with earmuffs on, his usual worn pig-hide gloves on with the little red bead and his brown leather belt with big buckle.  Also, as part of his usual get up was his .44 magnum, stainless steel Smith & Wesson revolver in its black nylon holster, stuck to his belt.  With red Jonsered chainsaw  smokin’ hot in hand, he was ready to go.

I know the chainsaw was smokin’ hot because Bob had a unique style for warming it up.  Every modern chainsaw comes with a chainbreak which serves both as a knuckle guard and a device that instantaneously stops the chain in the event that the saw jumps upwards when improperly touching a log with it while it is spinning.   Stopping the blade suddenly lets the operator only cut off his ear a little as opposed to sawing it off entirely.  The only time the break is locked is when there is a reaction from an emergency like a kick-back.  Otherwise there is no other reason to lock the blade.   Well, Bob found a reason.

A few years prior to this event,  Bob and I were talking chainsaws and he was having trouble with his.  He blew the head on it once, and it kept getting dull.  It got really hot, etc.  I suggested we start it up and see what it sounds like.  We’ve owned Jonsereds for over  20 years at that time and they were pretty reliable saws.   I couldn’t figure out what could be the problem with Bob’s saw.   I would find out shortly. 


Bob cranked up his saw.  It began to idle and sounded fine.  I was just about to shrug and say, “Sounds OK…” , when Bob suddenly tripped the chain break safety with his knuckles, and put a death grip on the throttle. 

The little engine roared  powerfully and the chain didn’t turn!   After a two "shock" second delay on my part,  I yelled,  “Bob!  Bob! Stop!  Whaddya doin”?!!!!!”, over the roar of that little motor and the blue smoke caused by burning metal.  The clutch must have turned cherry red under the side plate.   He let go of the throttle and looked at me in wonderment, and asked, “What?   I’m warming it up.  That’s what that chainbreak is for.”

“That just for emergencies”, I explained.  “You don’t use that to warm up the motor!”
He said, “No.  I do this all the time.  Warms the motor right up.” 

I politely gave up while feeling sorry for that saw.  So, today, when Bob is ready to go, I’m pretty certain that his saw is truly warmed up.


To me, everything looked pretty good to go on this tree job.  It was the usual “hairy” operation where if anything  goes wrong, we are going to wreck one of two buildings .  But the rope was stout and he had it tightened up.   I gave a test crank on the winch and it looked properly operational. 

The plan was that Bob was going to notch it towards me and I was going to tension it up with the winch which would put a lean on the tree right at me.  Then Bob would make a light back cut and I would continue to apply pressure to slowly begin the lean in the right direction.  Once it begins the fall, I step to the left and get out of the way.   Simple plan.  I’ve done this a zillion times with my dad and brother at the resort,  so nothing new was happening on my end.  We get in position with me on the winch, Bob at the base of the tree.


Bob cranks up his Jonsered and  begins sawing.  He saws and saws and saw.   I’m getting a little nervous  because at that moment, I was wondering if he’s cut down many trees of this size and it really sounded like his chain was really dull.   The other problem is that I can’t see him at all.   It’s a bright sunny day but Bob is 60 feet away in northeastern Minnesota in July. That means he’s shrouded by light and dark greens of thick, gnarly hazelnut leaves.  He’s somewhere in there but I can only see the cloud of blue smoke rising both from a combination of overly rich gas and probably a badly slipping clutch on the saw.
He goes to idle and yells for me to crank.  So I begin.

“Chi-kik, chi-kuk, chi-kik, chi-kuk, chi-kik, chi-kuk” went the winch and the rope got tighter.  Bob yelled to keep going, and the rope got tighter still.  Then, he yelled to stop and the saw fired up again.  Saw, saw, saw,  stop.  “Go ahead and give ‘er  some more!” he yelled. 

So, I lean on the winch and that sucker is getting really tight.  I was thinking that as some point I would be able to play DaVinci’s “Joyful” as the pitch of that now thinning yellow rope began to climb with the extreme tension.    I’m starting to get a little worried about this because that tree should be trying to crush me like a bug at this point.   But, it’s not.


Back on the throttle of the saw, Bob goes.  Three more seconds and the saw shuts off and the cussing begins.  From deep inside the hazelnut brush, I hear a blurry of cuss words in combinations new even to me.   From the new, rising verbal cloud of blue smoke, I figured Bob cut himself somehow. 

So, not wanting to leave my critically important post as I have control of that tree, I yell to him and ask what happened. 

He replied with tones of anger and humiliation, “It looks like I cut the  #$@%^$*&#!  wrong tree.”
“Come again?”  I didn’t fully grasp what he said.  “What!!!!????”

“I cut the tree right next to the one with the rope on it.  We got a problem!”

Oh, boy, did we ever have a problem.    For the last 10 minutes, I’ve been trying to bring down a 70 foot poplar just with the winch and a plastic rope.  The second  70 foot tree that needed to drop with a secure line on it, now has a notch aiming at me and a back cut which has pinched the saw blade as it began its death lean right at Bob’s house.  The only thing keeping it from completing its fall is Bob’s chainsaw bar, stuck in the cut.  With no directional notch and the tree leaning on the back cut, it can go anywhere in about a 120 degree radius.  If the wind picks up, utter pandemonium with destruction would most likely ensue.  Not only that, we now have a Bob-induced “widow-maker” on our hands and the clock is ticking.

Now, the two of us rapidly start to “tiptoe” quickly around a tree that could fall any number of ways all by itself.   It was like a focused Chinese fire drill.  First, we have to loosen the winch which just got done playing  “Tree Concerto for Piccolo in G#”.   Then, I grabbed the ladder and climbed the tree that was supposed to come down and undo the high-tension  power-knot, with one arm around the tree.  Drop the rope,  get down the ladder and ever-so-gently  stand  it on the new, “tree-of-death”  which was literally standing  by a thread and a chainsaw bar.   I  shimmy up to tie a new knot  but not quite as high.   Back down the ladder I tiptoed and removed it while Bob was on the winch.  Several  fast  chi-kik, chi-kuk’s  and  down came the tree crashing with the winch doing the work.  It was exactly how Plan A was "supposed" to go.
“Well…..er…THAT was exciting!  Ha, Ha!” he said with the chuckle he would employ when things that went awry,  then went OK.   I wiped the July sweat off of my forehead.   Holy crap.  We took down two more trees.  But each time I asked  him to verify the tree by looking up before he cuts the notch.   “If you don’t see the rope, please don’t cut it!”

With all trees on the ground, all buildings still standing, I said “bye” to Bob and went home for that day.

1 comment:

  1. Reminds me of a neighbor who had a problem with a "dog" knocking over his garbage can. He hears can topple late one night and runs out to see rear end of black dog sticking out of can, so he winds up and give it a good kick. Don't recall who was more surprised, or who ran fastest. Neighbor, or the bear.

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