Wind Powered Wedging

I get to cut down some interesting trees in my line of work. This ash tree was three stems grown together with included bark, and one of the stems had been broken off in a storm. When faced with a tree like this you can either handle each stem separately, or tie them together and drop them as one. The latter method is quicker and easier if you are able to do it, and in this case I was able to wrap the stems with a couple of chains and binders.

Note the sawdust flying away in the wind. This tree was weighted heavily against the direction it needed to fall, so after setting up the hinge I cut out half of the back, pounded in a wedge, and cut out the other half of the back. Before I could pick up my hammer I saw that the tree was lifting off of the wedge with every wind gust, so all I had to do was push the wedge in, wait for the next gust, and push in a bit more. Easiest wedging ever. The hardest part of this job was removing the chains after the tree was on the ground; that required quite a bit of sawing and disassembly work of the tree.