Unresearched question - rope blocks or wire ratchet to secure trunk of tree when cutting

When I were a lad, I cut down a large willow in my mother's garden. It was a multi-stemmed tree, about 20ft high. Rather than letting it fall where it would (it was on a shared boundary and I didn't want it falling into her neighbour's garden, as it would have demolished a shed), I attached a rope as high up as I could get on a ladder, cut the largest trunk about three quarters of the way through, and then heaved on the rope, expecting to break the remaining uncut bit in a reasonably orderly fashion. The trunk didn't immediately break, so I heaved harder, and suddenly it snapped. I fell over backwards, landing in a rather thorny gooseberry bush, and the tree landed on top of me.

Fortunately, no serious damage to me at least, apart from a few scratches and hurt pride, but the gooseberry bush was pretty well demolished. (I'm passingly reminded of Hoffnung's 'barrel of bricks...)

So be cautious about pulling on a rope to encourage and guide the branches or trunk down. It may not go according to plan.

Hoffnung's version:

You anchor a stake into the ground, attach a rope with ratchet puller. Keep ratcheting, the tree will bend, and eventually the stake will pull out of the ground. The real questions are how far it will go and what destructive power it will have when it arrives?

Rather than trying to re-invent the wheel (and possibly doing something very dangerous) I?d strongly recommend looking at some of the very many YouTube videos on safe tree felling, branch lopping etc.

Tim

At the least a car and a rope hitched to it will eliminate about 270 degrees of possible fall angle.

wedge cutting first generally limits fall to a few degrees and then a rope is handy to pull it over just before it goes and avoids being near the cut when she falls - there is always some kickback.

But a car will do quite a lot of damage if you do succeed in turning the whole thing into a catapult. :)

I may, of course, need help in the construction of a drive to get the car close enough to the tree.

The second problem is that the garden is relatively small and steeply sloping upwards with not enough clear space for a car to take a run at pulling the tree without landing in the kitchen with a tree on top.

Apart from that..... :-)

The tree cutting videos are useful but mainly seem to be from the USA where trees are large and spaces are also. A "come along" features in some which is what I would describe as a ratchet cable puller (see OP). However there also seems to be about 100 metres of rope and a big tree to fix the other end to.

Haven't found a reference to using a pulley system to help control falling trees (apart from in one of the reviews)so the "come along" might be the favoured option.

I do have some experience (gained over many decades) in taking trees down and haven't had to resort to major pulling until now, which is why I was asking for advice/suggestions.

The rope is mainly to guard against getting the wedge cut wrong, or the branch/trunk being too top heavy.

If I decide on mature consideration that it is looking too top heavy then I will refer it to the professionals, because I'm not going to learn tree climbing with a chainsaw at my age.

Cheers

Dave R

If you duck then will that count as a miss stake??

Thank you.

I'm here all week.

Come back after you've done that then.