Theres nothing wrong with using rope or pulling on a tree. If youve only ever used the backcut to guide trees then you must not have ever worked in the woods....tho in your defense Indiana doesnt have any real woods. My grandfather's mill has been cutting wood for over 50 years now and we had a woods crew a good portion of that, specializing in higher end oversized hardwood that often had to be removed from fun areas. Pulling trees was a daily occurence out of necessity and Ive shown pics on here before of it being done properly in a machine equipped to do so. As for the rope method, I know guys who use rope to "limit" the tree's ability to pull back on machines in tricky situations simply bc it breaks at a much lower force than chain or cable (before the machine moves), and hand guiding small trees with a long rope is nothing new either. A tree really cant harm you if you stay outside its reach, so long rope + knowing when to let go = safe.
Admittedly, I grew up working with true woodsmen, not amateurs or "tree service professionals" with little/no formal training in cutting wood.
i dont even see where you disagree with what i said.
there are instances where ropes will be used, but it is not how you fell trees normally. i also already stated that guiding smaller tree with ropes is common, but also kind of unnecessary.
i also never said anything about the rope guys being injured. when you have guys pulling a tree while you are making a back cut, you are risking a barber chair event, which would injure the saw guy, not the rope guy.
another problem, which was my initial point, is that its all too common for "tree guys" to rely on ropes to ensure trees fall the proper direction. true loggers, or professional tree guys dont do this, with some(few) exceptions in certain instances. they do not rely on ropes as a standard, day in and day out. sign of an amateur is roping a tree that does not need roped, or roping all trees and pulling them over. its bad practice, and understood as so.
i worked out of indiana, which has real woods just as any other state. worked for a worldwide company, with formal training, and worked all across the country. like i mentioned earlier, did tree work from miami to texas along the southern coastal states after hurricanes, and many northern states during ice storms and outages. indiana may not have redwoods, but we have enormous hard woods, very large/tall cottonwoods, pines pretty much everything you will find anywhere else. logging in the "woods" is so much different than removing large trees around structures, i dont understand why it was mentioned...
definitely not a "local tree expert"
There would be a tree inside my house for sure. There's definitely a lot of skill to cutting trees that big. I'm just planning the best approach.
) and grind the stumps. I just paid $6000 to have the driveway paved last month.