barberchair cuts

[chuck172]

Is strong rope or chain commonly used as safety above the cut for trees that can barber chair?

[Texas Ranger]

Kind of a open questionn.  Not on commercial harvests. Usually barber chairs are caused by faulty cutting procedure.  My opinion, others may/will disagree.

[John Mc]

Agree with Texas Ranger. A chain or rope might help hold things together, but you can avoid the need for it with the proper cutting technique.

[mike_belben]

When i first started culling white oak and hickory on my lot i had a bunch of barberchairs and put some time into studying the phenomenon before wrecking any sawlogs. 

Deeper notches, gutting heartwood, nipping the sapwood on the outside of the hinge, and doing a sideplunge to form a lock on the leaners solved all of it.  No need for devices to get in your way if youre cutting right.

This is a great explanation of the lock.

https://youtu.be/8wsTUafsxqg


And this is a decent example of what it looks like when i get it right.. Around here they call it match sawing.. So all the planes match and you can get every inch possible on the buttlog.



Note the two pads where the hinge is.. How the center is cut out.  The triangle on the log shows what was left for holding wood while i set wedges into the plunge cuts, before cutting the holding wood to trigger the fall.

[Autocar]

Here's my two cents you never try to speed cut a leaning tree. Bore though and get the hinge then start cutting to the rear. Most of the time it will hold till you get thur but there is no barber chairing this way. On real heavy leaning trees that just buy looking at them you know she will barber chair just because of the weight of the top and heavy lean. I will wrap a log chain around the tree close to my cut and put a log boomer on her. Then just repeat put a small notch in then bore in from eather side and start cutting wood to the rear away from the notch. Always cut opposite of the low side if there's a side lean ect.  stay on the high side and stay on your toes things can go south in a blink of a eye.

[DaveP]

     After reading the post about barber chairs I went out and barber chaired an 18 inch ash tree this morning.  Have never had that happed before.  The dead ash was very straight and I cut a humbolt notch in it. When I had room I tapped in a wedge.  As soon as the cut started to open up I stepped back because there was a small log in front of the tree that I thought may cause the falling tree to kick back.  I looked at my notch and realized that I had very little angle on the bottom cut.  When the notch closed the only thing the tree could was barber chair.  Live and learn.

[chuck172]

How would this work as insurance, right above the cut. :https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QGDA8Q/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=INI0YKRE3RGGB&colid=2U7A19KSD8GM5
I don't think it'd hurt.

[Ron Scott]

Barber chairs are very dangerous and not tolerated on a commercial operation especially when harvesting timber of value.  Always learn proper tree falling procedures from an experienced professional.

[wolf nemeth]

   One of the most misguided bits of information you can give a non-professional is to  tell him to ' just do it professionally'. There's a LOT  of room between theory and reality, and most of us who are non-professionals do what we can with what we've got.
There are a lot of factors that go into  cutting a tree 'perfectly'  or not  so perfectly.  Most of the photos I see of  perfectly cut trees are  of  smaller trees on  level ground. That's textbook stuff.
   It gets a bit dicier when you're scrambling around the trunk of a 36" dia  tree growing out of a steep hillside. And you're cutting it with a 20-24 inch bar.   The side cuts may not match up perfectly because of trunk flare, uneven slope,  and other variables. Your plunge cut may or may not leave an extra inch of hinge. The back cut may not be on a perfect plane with the your other cuts.   And yes, a 5/16 chain   (never a rope!) put snugly around the trunk may make the difference between a  potentially lethal barber chair and a clean falling  tree.  But hey, what do I know?