I'm a Lumberjack...
...and I'm OK!
There's an impressive tree in our front yard, 80 feet tall and straight as a telephone pole. It's also every bit as alive as a telephone pole, so my dad brought out his chainsaw and we set to work enticing the giant relic to lay down.
Being so well balanced we were pretty confident we could get all 80 feet to fall at an angle that wouldn't hit any other living trees. My dad cut a classic notch in the "front", i.e. the side in the direction we wanted it to fall.
Once notched, we then did the back-cut on the "back" of the tree, starting above the notch and running down into it, figuring it would force the tree forward. We finally got the back-cut to meet the notch so we moved away...
...and nothing. There was a breeze yet the tree wasn't even swaying! Dad worked the chainsaw a bit more and finally the beast began to move. A few seconds later a thunderous CRACK blasted right through our earplugs as all 80 feet of wood hit the ground at once.
Amazingly there was a two-inch wide, half-inch thick piece of uncut wood in the center of the stump that had been holding up the entire tree! I counted the rings - 30 years old, give or take.
After cutting up the trunk and hauling tons of tree into the woods for "burial" we were too worn out to bother finishing off the stump, sitting still 4 feet tall, so my dad left his chainsaw behind for me to use.
A couple days ago I finally de-stumped the front lawn and it took me 1.5 hours in 90-degree weather to do it. First I cut off the top 2 feet which must've weighed 200 lbs. Then the bottom half...
The chainsaw is significantly shorter than the stump is wide thanks to the six "buttresses" jutting out. I had to make a cut around the circumference as deep as possible, then notch-cut away the buttresses so I could push the saw blade in deep enough to cut the center.
This chunk probably weighed 300-400 lbs but maybe it just felt heavy since I rolled the top half into the woods first and was pretty darn toasted by this point. I cut some slices into the top of the remaining stump (it's only an inch high or so) to help it decompose faster, and voila!
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