 what's up guys got another couple trees to take down. Gonna take them down today with a couple of main axes. This one was made two years ago down in South Portland made by Brent Cochran. It's about a two and a half pound main wedge Allagash cruiser. Lovely little axe. This one's a snow and nearly made maybe 50 70 years ago somewhere in that range. This is a three pound kind of a wedge. New England pattern. This one's got like a probably a 20 degree bevel on it. This one's actually sharper than it should be factory. This one's like at a 17 so it's almost like a razor blade. It's a little too too much of an angle. We're looking for a little bit more than that to protect the blade. Hopefully they hold up in this hemlock. So we got two hemlocks here that are dead standing. They're pretty dry. They're gonna chop really hard and I'm gonna drop it exactly the way it's leaning right over that way. We'll be able to get the machine to it to buck it up. So let's go to work. Alright the first thing I want to do is put a notch in this tree to give it room when it falls that it could collapse on itself and go the right angle. So I'm gonna come in flat on the bottom fairly flat on the bottom and there's steep anglers off the back about two to three so that way it falls and makes a little bit of a hinge as it's falling and controls the way this tree is gonna fall. Wind's got it pushing this way pretty hard. I want to keep it kind on the straight line that it's leaning towards right now. So it shouldn't be too hard today to get this thing to fall somewhere in that direction right there. So it all starts with the first notch. It's important to try to keep the axe flat which is gonna make this notch the wrong angle. So I always have to kind of pipe myself to make sure I'm going fairly flat in or at least clean up the notch after I'm done with that and then then the steepness of the notch too. You can clear off the bark a little bit if you want ahead of time but it's all gonna go. Got a nice little knot right there. But yeah, let's go ahead into this one with the snow and kneeling. But yeah, so this tree is about three, two and a half to three of my blades across. So what I'm trying to do is go one, two across to get my flat and then take those chunks out by hitting down at my angle. These ones are more or less slicing. These ones are more or less cutting. But there's your entry and your opening cut. Pretty well done. I'll show you that. So you want to go about halfway to a little bit more than halfway across. This tree has got such a lean on it that we're not going to go more than halfway. That's it. It shouldn't take too many chops on the back. Right about here, a little bit higher than that notch on the front. Probably a couple chops will do it. I'm going to clean up this side of the notch so it has room to fall and kind of twist this way. It's pretty ugly. Oh yeah, well a couple pretty good hits. Take a little bit of meat off the back and that baby's going down right into that wood pile. Here we go. Right about there. And you're still trying to take that notch off the back similar to the front. So a couple hits and I think we've got a feeling she's going to start to go. That's a really wide hinge. Another one bites the dust. Got a nice clean hinge straight across. That's what you're looking for about inch and a half, maybe two inch hinge. Wasn't really my cleanest cuts but it got the tree down and got it right where I wanted pretty safely. So you can see where it actually pulled and the fibers, that's your hinge. So that's where the tree is actually bending as it's falling before it breaks away. And that keeps it controlled to where it wants to fall. You know, you control that with your hinge. So my axe cuts were pretty much as far as this, this, this across with the open mouth here. And in the back you could see where my axe cut all the way into here and one downward cut to make this hinge perfectly level all the way across. And when you do that, the tree for the most part is going to go right where the hinge allows it to go. So there you go. There's that three pound snowing nearly. It's a really good old axe right there. Super, super sharp. Really, really steep, really, really low angle on that thing. Might be like 17 degrees on that thing. I'll measure it later and put it on the video. Might even be less than 17. It's almost like a knife how sharp that is, which you got to be careful when you're going to limb or with any knots. I'm going to go ahead and chop this tree up a little bit with it right now. All right, this next one's going to be a bit of a challenge. The one with the axe on it right there. I'd like to get it to land about where I am, but we've got a lot of problem with the branches off of this other big hemlock that's leaning this way for one. It's going to, it's actually pointing in towards the woods over there. I'm going to try to get it to fall on this side, the left side of that stump I just created. If I can do that, I could probably bounce it off of the limbs here on this nice pine or hemlock, I guess, you know, on that nice hemlock and on these other hemlocks, but if it goes in that direction, then it could get hung up and have a problem. It's really, really got a hard lean on it, the wrong direction, and the wind is actually pushing it that way too. So, got my work cut out for me. This one's going to be a challenge for sure. What I'm going to try to do is notch it and maybe get a good push on it before it falls, which is quite a challenge, but as you can see, it wants to go directly away from me and I want it to go somewhere that direction right there. Yeah, it wants to go to the left pretty hard, really hard. Oh man, that's going to be a challenge. What I'm going to do is I'm going to leave the hinge pretty strong on the right side so it kind of twists towards it and try to get a push on it. I'm still going to take the bird's mouth out right here, pointing this direction, but I'm going to leave the hinge on this side so hopefully it's got a little twist as it breaks free and I'll take most of it around the backside. I'm going to use a little bit smaller axe on this one, got the Branton Cochrane on this one, a couple pounder. I'll try to get a notch going across, leave the hinge on this side and take it on this side, and then try to get a little shove on it over here. It's going to be really hard, especially whereas I'm pretty high up on my, maybe I'll try to cut it a little bit lower too, which isn't as comfortable, but it'll give me a little bit better push from up here when I'm trying to push it down. This stuff was right in the way. I should probably take this guy out first. Be a little bit more room to work when I'm trying to push it that way. It's going to be hard. So a little bit smaller axe, a little bit lighter axe, a little smaller cutting surface, but super sharp and should be pretty accurate with it. So I definitely got to take this front down quite a bit on this side. Got her opened up. As you can see she leans hard the opposite direction. It's going to be a challenge. Open it up on this side, give it a bit of a push. I don't know if I can though, to be honest with you. She's a beach. If she goes that way, she goes that way. Sweet. A little bit of pushing helped, but I'll show you why that tree came around and turned like that. A little push on it, but you could see my hinge is a little bit wider over here on this side than it is here. And I kind of focused on getting through on this side towards the end. This side I wanted to cut it, get to my hinge, leave it, then come around, come all the way through here, which I started to do and then she started to let go. So that was perfect. So my hinge goes from nothing right there to maybe a half inch, full inch, inch and a half out here. And that enabled that tree to, as it let go, it let loose on that side completely. This side held so it actually twisted as it fell, which enabled it to fall over here where I wanted it to fall instead of to the left of the stump or the way it wanted to fall was that direction over there. So that's how you can try to make a tree go your way without wedges and just by controlling your cuts. Now wind's a factor and the weight of the branches is a factor too. That one, luckily this tree's dead, so it didn't have a ton of weight, just the weight of the branches and they were pointing the wrong way, but I was able to give that tree a twist and when it twisted it actually fell and rolled the right way and landed right on the other log. There you have it. Oh, maybe that beast is next. That one still got another year of life and it is not looking great, but there's a bug getting after these hemlocks. All right, let's buck it up into pieces so we can manage it. That's what was holding it. All right, there you have it. She's all bucked up and ready to go. Got those two trees down, two hemlocks. Now hemlock's pretty hard wood and especially when it's dead and dead standing. When it dries out it gets super, super hard. Both axes performed wonderfully. The Brant Cochran's a little bit lighter and it actually, I'd say it did a little bit better today. When it's lighter like that and you don't have a lot of experience, it's a lot easier to be accurate and one accurate swing is better than four or five hard swings that miss your mark. So being accurate is definitely a key. The Snow and Neely we had a little bit of trouble with. Okay, it's a wonderful axe, good weight, good full size bit, but whoever had this one before me definitely sharpened it too sharp. They took the cheeks down a little too much and it's got like a 17 or less degree bevel on it, maybe even a 15, which is way too sharp for cutting woods that might have knots or even splitting or anything like that. You don't need an axe with that much of a bevel. You actually want to go a little bit stronger so it backs up the steel and I'll show you why on this axe right here. I'll show you what happened to it just today. As you could see on the edge, you could see it kind of peamed over. Let me see if I can get this thing to focus. It actually peamed a little bit and dulled right through there and that's because it's too sharp. It either hit a knot or it hit a hard part of the wood. It's just too thin back in the cheeks here so you don't want an axe with that much. I'll show you on the on the brand Cochrane we're looking at more like a 22 maybe a 22 and a half degree bevel and then right at the very tip it sharpens down and in giving it some serious sharpness right there but a nice strong bit. That thing's just as sharp I could shave with that or or just do that and it'll stick in but the Snow and Neely on the other hand was a little bit too sharp a little bit too thin and you could kind of see the leading edge rolled a little bit in a couple spots where it's too thin. Now that thing's a razor blade and sharp but it doesn't do you much good when you're cutting down trees when it's that sharp and that thin. So what we're going to do is I'm actually going to take this edge and I'm going to file it down flat across and then I'm going to come back in and file sharper edges back into it but with a little bit more of a bevel so it's going to shorten up this bit by about maybe a quarter inch. I'm going to come back about a quarter and make that thing a little bit steeper giving it a lot more strength so you could split wood you could you could limb with it you could hit knots and it's not going to roll the edge like it just did there.