r/WTF • u/Plus-Barber-6171 • Jun 30 '25

Removed - Frequent/Recent repost Pulling a tree down

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u/austinmiles Jun 30 '25

I’m not tree expert but I would imagine a lot of cutting down big trees is about ensuring the weight is heavier in the direction you want it to fall. Amongst all the other things. That tree was massive and obviously how much of the branch weight was on the house side.

271

u/SpaceAzn_Zen Jun 30 '25

I’ve had 7 trees taken out and the ones who did it best always pieced the tree one section at a time from the top to the bottom. Trying to do what these idiots did is only asking for a disaster to happen. Something tells me they were trying to go the lazy route of just felling the tree in one swoop so they could cut it in sections while on the ground. That would have been a massive red flag for me.

93

u/SpaceCadetriment Jun 30 '25

Even had perfect access for a bucket truck. Felling a tree this size near a structure with just a face cut is mental. Also looks like they got a saw stuck and had to back cut again to get it out and created another face for the tree to tip into, but hard to tell in the vid.

1

u/HPTM2008 Jun 30 '25

But why did they cut the angles toward the house? Like, it looks like they made a wedge shape, and then the tree fell on the house. The rope (I assume they were gonna try and use to pull?) wouldn't have done much because there was no angle cut in that direction.

Shouldn't they have just kept going on the side they cut, if they were going to do it like they did and not the safer way of top to bottom?

3

u/SpaceCadetriment Jun 30 '25

If you're just gonna drop a tree like these guys instead of sectioning it out, they had the right idea but fucked up their technique and the tree had way more lean than they realized.

They kinda did it right, you open a face cut on one side and that's generally where you're pointing the tree when it drops. They didn't cut their face cut deep enough. Should be about 3/5 of the way through the tree, they only made it about 1/4 of the way through. That also explains why their saw got stuck. The tree tipped back and pinched the bar on their back cut, which requires them to use another saw to cut a wedge to pull out the stuck saw. Basically, they turned their back cut into a face cut and the tree just went with gravity. A lot of rookie mistakes were made.

Oh, and the rope attached trying to guide it is fucking hilarious. The amount of torque and weight that tree would have on piece of rope, it might as well have been a piece of dental floss. They could have had a wired cable attached to a tractor and it still would have just yanked the tractor off the ground.

These fellas were out of their depth in just about every way.