Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/15/tree-trimming-mishap-causes-ma.html
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6 Likes
This is why you hire professionals and not “some dude with a big truck and a chainsaw” who will do it cheap.
My dad works for a professional crew and I hire a certified arborist for our trees. Proper technique is to bring the top down in sections, so if the drop goes wrong you don’t do what this guy did.
Now, the cursing, that’s some top level stuff there. Pitch, vibrato, and word selection are all on point.
56 Likes
The thing is, if it fell any other way, it would still have caused damage. This fella clearly had no clue what he was doing.
43 Likes
Exactly. If it hadn’t hit the house, it would have hit the light poles, or just landed in the street. He was doomed from the start.
21 Likes
Yes, that’s it in a nutshell.
It looks like the woodsman/vocalist used the standard three-cut technique, aiming the tree over the cameraman’s right shoulder (that is, to fall toward the observer and land to his right.) As the video starts, the tree is already leaning toward the house; it may have been leaning that way to begin with. Making a tree fall away from its lean is, depending on the angles, somewhere between “best left to experts” and impossible.
He’s not a smart feller.
35 Likes
I’m guessing he was trying to get it to fall parallel to the street, so across the front yard. But like a moon shot, if you’re off by a couple degrees you’re screwed.
Anyway, he was correct, god damned it.
9 Likes
who among us hasn’t done this exact thing at least once in their lifetime? let us not judge too harshly, friends.
10 Likes
I’m seeing this as more of a metaphor for 2020.
16 Likes
saw what you did there. couldn’t leaf it alone. bad geome-tree there. and yet he kept on barkin.
12 Likes
Incidentally, watching this over and over, and Nilsson’s Everybody’s Talking is playing in the background here. makes it even more fun.
4 Likes
What are the odds that the train engineer from the train/bridge video is also a part-time lumber jack?
10 Likes
That’s gonna buff right out.
16 Likes
This kind of thing should be the only use for TikTok. Do this at the Honey House. Multiple times.
2 Likes
It’s a shame the video cut off. It’s clear to me that he wasn’t finished rating the experience yet.
19 Likes
This is why hiring an amateur tree surgeon is only marginally less foolhardy than hiring an amateur heart surgeon.
6 Likes
I’m willing to bet he put about as much thought and contemplation into his choice of liability insurance as he did this tree.
6 Likes
Didn’t stop him from demanding full payment though:
“He said, ‘I did like 95 percent of the job.’ He wanted us to pay the full balance of the fee.”
That’s kind of like saying you should get full credit as a pilot because you flew an airplane 95 percent of the way to its destination.
20 Likes
I cut down a large tree with a chain saw once. It was probably the most intimidating thing I have done before. But I read about it, measured twice, cut once, and it fell right where I wanted it too. Though It would not have hit a house if I messed up.
5 Likes
all my neighbors have big trees, and our houses are close together. i live with a fear of this sort of thing.
4 Likes
Overconfident homeowners should not DIY fell trees. My father did the same thing decades ago, with a shorter but thicker tree. Made all sorts of crazy lumberjack-style cuts in it with a chainsaw but it wasn’t going down. We knew it was going horribly wrong, but pride is powerful. Ended up falling the wrong way, crashing onto the porch and phone/electric wires. Really lucky it didn’t hurt anyone.
5 Likes
