The weather cooled off nicely, so it was a good week to work outside again.

I resolved this weekend I would get the tree clearing project finished, and I got most of that accomplished by last night.  Unfortunately when I got up today it was wet and raining so I didn’t quite get done but enough to be satisfied.

On Wednesday I took the tractor canopy off the tractor to be painted and finished, then mowed the lawn.

I disassembled the canopy then welded the gussets I decided to add onto the canopy frame.  After it had cooled I started painting it.  Painting my fabricated projects is tedious and not amongst my favorites.

On Thursday I started burning brush and spent the afternoon using the tractor bucket pushing/skidding the various piles of smaller wood located around the site into one of two fires.  I also cut down some more smaller trees on the hill to the west with the chainsaw.

In between working on that project I painted the east side of the garage where the paint was peeling so badly from last fall’s painting project.

Instead of getting out the paint sprayer and having to mask the windows and soffits and then clean the sprayer when I was done I opted to use an old fashioned paint brush instead.  However it was obvious that I was going to have to do two coats to cover with the brush as I couldn’t lay on the paint as thickly as I could with the sprayer.

Since the burn piles were still smoldering the next day with plenty of hot coals I was able to easily get them started again by putting more wood on them.  I finished moving and burning the rest of the brush/smaller wood around the site.

Late afternoon I noticed the tractor was overheating a bit, and realized that all the “cotton” from the cottonwood trees was getting sucked into the tractor grill, so I had to take a break to clean it off.  The cotton is all over the site as when the cut branches dried out the pods split open releasing it.

Then I put the brush mower onto the tractor and mowed down a lot of the brush and smaller saplings on the hill to the west of the building site.

The brush mower can handle cutting about two inch sized trees but anything larger bogs it down.  So I mowed around some of the larger trees planning on cutting them down with the chainsaw.

But for some reason the chainsaw I used on Thursday refused to start on Friday.  Instead of taking a look at it I did what I could without.

I finished painting and reassembled the tractor canopy last night as well, and started rewiring the lights that are mounted on it.

I also took a look at the chainsaw and discovered that one of the fuel lines running to the primer bulb had come off and now didn’t seem to be long enough to stay connected.  I’m not sure how that could have happened…

I fixed it by removing the primer bulb from its mounting location and temporarily hanging it outside of the casing.  It only had to last long enough to cut down the few trees left in the area.

But it’s raining today, so it looks like I won’t be cutting down the few trees I wanted to remove.  The fire was hot enough to be able to burn even the green/wet trees I had just cut down, but all the rain has probably done in the fires now and I don’t have any dry wood left to get them burning again.  That means I’ll have to pile up anything I cut down now to let dry before burning again.

The larger part of the clearing project is done now though, and we can now get a good look at the building site.  Kim and I had been planning to walk around and mark the building location on the site today too, but as it’s wet and muddy I don’t know if we’ll get a chance to do that.

Filed under: Home, Home Projects on July 4th, 2009 | No Comments »

Alright, so I’m a wuss.

The high temperatures started out in the nineties at the beginning of the week, dropping into the mid to upper 80’s by the end of this week which was too hot for me to work.  The fact that I didn’t have a sunshade/canopy on my tractor sealed the deal.

I still have a lot of wood to move and tractor work to do with the tree clearing project.

Instead I decided it was a good weekend to stay out of the heat of the sun and rebuild my tractor canopy.

I have to admit I have reservations about putting a homemade canopy back over my head considering what happened with the last one, but I guess the last one went nine years before it fell off, so theoretically I should have nine years before the new one does the same.

I took a look at the old canopy and thought about rebuilding it to save time, but then decided it was best to just start from scratch.  The old canopy had obviously seen better days and clearly had some issues, so rebuilding it would be just a Bandaid fix.

That, and the possibility of it falling on me again after I did repairs on it was untenable…

However I didn’t really relish spending all the time to build a new one either, but I knew I could improve upon my previous design.  The last few weeks I’ve been looking at commercial models and sketching up design ideas.

Speaking of commercial designs, as I blogged about last week I had selected a commercial model sunshade/canopy and was going through the online order process trying to determine the shipping cost when I realized they weren’t going to give me a quote on the shipping.  So I aborted the order (or so I thought).

Wednesday morning Kim took a phone call from the canopy manufacturer inquiring about the order.  Fortunately I had explained to her what had happened so she was able to tell the caller that I had been looking for a shipping quote.

After some evasiveness and bickering about shipping he finally gave her a quote of $125 on shipping!!  I’m sure this quote actually included a handling/surcharge/shipping/whatever fee as well for the dealer I would have to order the canopy through.  Regardless my instincts about the extra fees were confirmed, and made it easier for me to decide to build another canopy myself.

It’s just kind of notable to know that they log and save incomplete orders as well at this site.  I wonder how many of the online stores do this.  Regardless it’s bizarre that they called about the order I aborted; I can only assume they’re that hard up for business.

The new homemade canopy was to have a metal frame (yep, more damage can be done with metal, I know).  I had bought the metal last week so it was just sitting there waiting.

I love building stuff from scratch, but it takes a lot more time than building from pre-tested/verified plans, as all the measurements and fitting has to be done on the fly, as well as addressing the myriad of issues that inevitably arise.  I sketch up plans with rough dimensions and details but the project usually ends up turning out different (at least in some minor ways) from what I envisioned.

I decided to make the top of the canopy from metal pole barn siding, just like the previous one.  It had worked well and was cheap and easily bought locally and replaced.  Since it would be attached with pole barn screws (screws with rubber washers to seal the screws/holes) the canopy frame needed to have some wood to drive the screws into.  The rest of the canopy frame was made out of steel.

My TIG welder and welding skills (or lack thereof) got a workout on the project.  My biggest problem is that I don’t weld enough to get the practice or proficiency to be any good and thereby my welds are a bit inconsistent.  Occasionally I get a good weld and think I’ve got it down; then I butcher the next weld.

I like to believe in general although my welds may not be pretty they are strong enough.  The only weld I’ve had a problem with is the cylinder eye weld on my mini-backhoe, but that’s a monster under a lot of stress so I can live with that one breaking now and again.

My welding on my tree climbing spikes held up fine too (although Justin says I needed more filler rod!).

Unfortunately on this project a bad weld has the potential to drop a metal framed canopy onto my face (or Kim’s), so in this case  I definitely wish I was a better welder, just to be sure.  I’m sure I wouldn’t have thought anything about it before my accident though…

I completed the canopy just as it was getting dark Friday night and installed it on the tractor.  Because it was dark I didn’t get any photos of it (Edit:  I took some the next day and added them).  As it was forecast to storm tonight and tomorrow I put the tractor inside the barn.

On the drive to the barn I was very conscious of the canopy over my head and more than a bit nervous about the possibility of it falling on me.  I even threw on my helmet for the short drive.

I’ll have to “shake-down” the canopy and use it for a few weeks to gain confidence in my craftsmanship (or is it crapsmanship?).  In the meantime I can’t help but be wary of any canopy I built considering.

Eventually the canopy will have to be removed and disassembled in part to be painted.  With the heat and humidity of late that’s a project that may have to wait, although it’s supposed to cool down a bit this week.

I also decided I need to weld on some gussets to the frame where the uprights join the canopy top, as it’s the area of the most stress, just to be sure.  I’ll do that prior to painting.

More photos here.

Kim spent most of the latter part of the week preparing for her booth for the dog grooming shop at the annual Pride Festival which starts tomorrow in Loring Park in Minneapolis.  They’re going to set up a tent and do some basic pet grooming and sell pet supplies while there.

Filed under: Dog Grooming Business, Home Projects, Weather on June 27th, 2009 | No Comments »

The dog days of summer are knocking on the door.  The weather had been exceptionally good up to this week, with highs in the mid to upper 70’s (sometimes reaching the low 80’s) without a lot of humidity.

That meant I was getting a lot of work done outside without too much discomfort.

But the humidity levels went up this week with the highs in the 80’s and the heat index rose accordingly.  Working outside on Thursday turned into a sweat-fest.  Thursday night I ended up turning on the air conditioning in the house for the first time.

On Thursday my first order of business was to make a brim for my climbing helmet that I’ve gotten in the habit of wearing.  Ever since I whacked my face it has seemed like a good idea to wear the helmet as a matter of routine since I have it, just in case.

I’m supposed to keep my scar out of the sun to minimize its appearance, and I tried a mix of sunscreen and my ointment last week but when I got hot it just ran off my forehead into my eyes.  So the obvious solution was to wear a hat with a brim.

I fabricated a baseball cap style brim out of plastic, and attached it to the helmet using the headlamp channels and an aluminum bracket.  It’s attached to the helmet in pretty much the same way as my helmet-cam mount.  (Note also the safety glasses and foam hearing protection ear plugs in the following photo.)

I worked Thursday afternoon skidding logs, and was dripping with sweat only after a short while.  It doesn’t help that I have no tractor canopy either to keep me and the black tractor seat out of the sun.

After a break around dinnertime and to avoid heatstroke I went back out and finished the work for the day, including videotaping some of my log skidding.  Here are some frame captures from the video I shot.

The wood removal project is daunting at times, especially when I look at it in toto.  After many hours of moving wood, there is still a lot of work left.  It helps me psychologically to view the project in smaller sections of the area at a time and then the project doesn’t seem so impossible.

Slowly but surely the site is getting cleared.  Most of the bigger logs are out now, but there is still a lot of medium sized and smaller wood to be cleared including a lot of brush.  I’ve been putting the brush into several piles to be burned and stacking the smaller (six inch diameter) wood into separate piles.  I tried burning a couple of the brush piles this weekend, but they’re apparently either too wet or still too green to easily light.

I was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner, but today I noticed a rash on my forearms.  I was expecting a rash around my lower legs as I’ve worn shorts in the site when working a few times (not generally recommended unless you don’t mind scratches from the brush all over your legs).

There is poison ivy in the site to be sure, but as I haven’t been crawling around the site to be able to get it on my forearms I’m thinking it’s more likely that I got this while moving/carrying some wood from one of the trees I cut down somehow.

The heat has made me miss my sunshade/canopy for my tractor since I removed it after it “attacked” me.  I priced out some different commercial variants, and picked out an aluminum one I liked.

There are many plastic and fiberglass models available that are color-matched to the model of tractor so they’re “pertier”, but as I’ve hit branches and trees with the homemade canopy I figured metal would be more resilient and more easily bent back into shape than trying to repair either broken plastic or fiberglass.

However, I figured shipping might be obscene for the canopy as it’s an over-sized package.  Unfortunately ordering the canopy I chose online wasn’t straight-forward.  After I got through most of the ordering process to try and determine the shipping costs, it advised that I would be billed from a local dealer and didn’t even give me a hint at the shipping expense.  So I aborted the order.

I’m not against making a new canopy myself, and the advantage is that I can make it cheaper than buying one, and exactly the way I want it and thus be able to repair it, modify it, etc.  (Of course then I only have myself to blame if it falls on my head again too…)  The disadvantage is taking the time to actually build it.

So I was willing to buy it elsewhere and pay extra to avoid creating another project, but if it’s going to be a hassle to even order one then it’s one more strike against that option.

Friday I bought some steel to make the canopy frame myself.  We need to order some aluminum for the counter-top for the dog grooming shop, so theoretically I can get some aluminum sheet for the canopy then.  But I’ll probably just end up using the pole barn steel sheets just like I used on the last canopy again as we have some sitting in the barn.

About midday on Friday I looked out the window and saw a woodchuck ambling across the yard.  I grabbed the camera and was able to get some video of him before he climbed onto then disappeared into one of the log piles in the back yard.

I’ve seen a couple of woodchucks near the red shed, where I think they live off and on as there are some holes dug underneath the walls, but this is the first time I saw one so close to the house in the open.  Apparently he likes the logs, even though woodchucks don’t really “chuck wood”.

Friday night I took another stab at editing together some of my tree climbing video, but it’s a huge project.  After working on it for a while I ended up with an idea of how I want to edit together both the helmet-cam video and the tripod video, but I’ll have to start all over now to get it right.  I also wanted to make a separate time-lapse video of the entire project.  Maybe someday…

Filed under: Dog Grooming Business, Home, Home Projects, Weather on June 20th, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Another week has gone by.

This one was made longer by the repeated explanations of what happened to my face.

Strangely two days after the canopy-smashing my left eyelid and inner part of my left eye near the bridge of my nose got very red and it looked like the start of a black eye.  I was surprised it took so long to appear as I would have thought it would have shown up the day after the injury.

It progressed into a bit of a shiner but then went away as quickly as it appeared.

There were a few that didn’t notice the cut at all right away, but it was only a question of time for those I spent any amount of time with before they noticed.  It’s hard to miss…  And it’s hard not to notice peoples’ eyes gravitating to the spot between my eyes.

Strangers were polite enough not to ask, but it was clear many noticed.

Quite a few of my friends were somewhat amused by the incident and/or its outcome, as apparently they revel in others’ pain.  I’ve said it before:  I need better friends…

I’ve still been beating myself up about not stopping and spending the five or ten minutes to correct the problem with the tractor canopy (before it fell striking me) as that was just plain stupid.  I pride myself in making good judgment calls about my safety but I blew this one.  If I’d had no indication the canopy was going to fall or otherwise had a problem I would have just chalked it all up to a random, unforeseeable accident.  But that wasn’t the case at all.  I wish I could make that decision all over again…

The sutures came out Wednesday afternoon after being in just five days.  I have a little bit of a “railroad track” scar, but not bad, and I’m keeping antibiotic ointment on it to help the scar heal better.

The nurse also suggested using Vitamin E on the cut and I went and bought some after leaving the doctor’s office and once home mixed it with the antibiotic ointment and applied it.  But then I found some information online that seemed to indicate that using Vitamin E might not make any difference.  And although Vitamin E might soften scar tissue, apparently it can also cause the scar to widen as it softens.  It can also cause skin irritation.

So I decided to not use Vitamin E at all (at least not in the near term anyway).

There are some scar ointments out there too, but it sounds like the most important ways to reduce scarring are to keep the scar moisturized, massage it, and keep it out of the Sun.

Kim called the plastic surgeon too, and they advised all the above and said they would wait at least a year before doing anything else to minimize the scar.  So at least for the short term I’ve got a dueling scar.

After the suture removal I picked up some sheets of 3/4 inch particleboard for a counter-top for the dog grooming shop.  Kim’s been working on custom painted tiles for the front of the checkout desk and the countertop will sit on top of that wall.

As it’s an odd shape we made a counter template out of 1/4 inch Masonite and I’ll cut the particleboard to match.

Once that’s done the plan is to have someone cover the top with brushed aluminum and the edges with aluminum diamond plate to match the front dog gate/door that has diamond plate on it already.

But the tree removal project is still a priority as there is still a lot of wood there and the site needs to be clear enough to be graded and dug out for the foundation.  As we’re general contracting out that project it’s a priority to get the site clear so that whenever the other workers choose to show up they can get at it.

Unfortunately it rained much of last weekend, and was just starting to clear by mid-week.  But that meant the site was too wet and muddy to get the tractor into until it dried out a bit.  The tree removal/building site is a lower area of our property so it dries out later than higher ground.

So I spent Thursday digging out the Catalpa stump behind the house with the mini backhoe and then chainsawing the stump below ground level before burying it again and throwing grass seed over the area.  Eventually the stump will begin rotting out and I’ll have to add more fill and/or dig it out again.

Unfortunately after I was done with the mini backhoe and was moving it I broke the obviously crappy weld on the eye of the hydraulic cylinder I replaced a few years ago.  I’ve welded this eye on several times and each time I (think I) do a better job so eventually I’ll get it right.  But that was another project added back to the list.

I also took a look at the tractor canopy and started disassembling it a bit.  I’ve decided to rebuild the canopy from scratch, as there are some things about the one that smashed my face that can be improved upon (excluding the fact that it falls on me I mean!).

The plan is to weld up a steel frame this time and probably make it bigger.  The advantage of steel is that it won’t break but only bend.  I’ll base the new design on commercial versions with a similar mounting system.  But that project is also a low priority right now.

On Friday it was back to lumberjack work.  I spent several hours sawing and skidding logs out of the site.  There are still some smaller trees standing that I felled too.

The brush and smaller branches I put into piles to be burned.  All the larger sections need to be moved.  It’s a huge project that’s daunting when I stand back and look at it, but attacked in sections it’s coming along.

As the building needs to be set some distance from the road, the priority is to clear the area where the building will be sited first, but the entire area needs to be cleared eventually so they can dig out the stumps and grade the area.

I want to be able to get in with the brush mower and level the entire area so that we can get a good look and feel for the entire building site and so that the guys doing the digging and grading can as well.

In the “it’s a small world” theme, while running errands on Wednesday I pulled up to a stop light and while waiting noticed a woman in the car in front of me hanging her hand out the window with nicely manicured fingernails.  Notably there was also a cigarette perched between her fingers.  It was just something that caught my bored eye at the time.

As the light changed to green we pulled away I noticed the woman’s license plate frame said “J H Barkau and Sons” which was familiar for some reason.  It took me a moment to think that J.H. Barkau and Sons was a used car dealership not far from where I grew up in Freeport, Illinois.

I remember going to Barkau and Sons with my dad when he was looking at a used car.  At that time it was a small dealership in Cedarville.  They’ve done well apparently as it looks like they’ve expanded and added a Freeport location and sell new cars as well.  I’m thinking my parents bought a used Datsun hatchback from them when they were a smaller operation, but I can’t be sure of that (Dad?).

Sure enough as we got to the next red stop light and I got close enough, I noticed the words “Cedarville” and “Freeport” painted on the trunk as well.  I tried to get a photo with my cell phone camera but by the time I got it ready the light had changed and we had pulled away.

She turned right at the next light and I went straight, so I didn’t get a photo and never even got a look at the driver.

It was just striking to me that so far from Freeport I happened to pull up behind someone who had bought a car from a dealership I knew back home.  What are the odds of that?

Filed under: Dog Grooming Business, Home, Home Projects on June 14th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

My weekend working on home projects went relatively well until later Friday evening.  Then things took a dramatic turn for the worse…

I managed to fell the last of the trees on Thursday.  I climbed the “Monster” tree on both Wednesday and then again on Thursday intending on doing some cutting.  My plan was to take the big tree down in several ten foot sections from in the tree, finally felling the remainder from the ground.

This plan would prevent the tree from destroying the other trees nearby that we weren’t sure we wanted felled, and also ensure that any large section of tree didn’t end up in the road.

However, I couldn’t find a spot in the tree that I was comfortable with on either day.  The trouble was that the tree was moving/swaying with just me in it, and I was afraid that if I cut off a sizeable section (like ten feet) of the tree, that the standing section would move quite a bit, with me on it.  Also, I didn’t fancy the thought of a ten foot section of 16-18 inch diameter tree hitting me on the way down.

I tried a few different attempts at positioning myself to cut but never made it into my comfort zone.

So after the second climb up the “Monster” on Thursday I resigned myself to cutting the tree down from the ground.  I figured my experience with wedges and ropes would help me put the tree where I wanted it, and taking out one of the other trees was infinitely preferable to taking myself out.  It was simple math and I was too close to finishing the entire project to opt to do something stupid that I would later regret.

I used one of the temporary lines used for pulling up climbing ropes to pull up my heavy pulling rope and tied it to the tractor some distance away.  I made extra sure that the tractor was far enough away so that the tree wouldn’t fall on it when it fell.  The way I determined the proper distance was to park the tractor at a point that I was sure was far enough away, then move it another 20 feet further.

Then it was down to sawing.  The “Monster” tree was large enough at its base that I didn’t think I could saw it down too low, so I started cutting as high as I deemed safe to minimize the diameter that I would need to saw through.

I made the notch cut carefully based on where I wanted the tree to fall.  Then it was on to the backcut.

It seemed like it took forever to saw through the tree.  At one point it looked like the tree was going to fall and the saw kerf opened up a bit at the backside and I retreated to the safety zone, but then it stopped moving.  I went back and cut some more and it still didn’t budge.

At that point it was clear I needed to help things along, so I hopped on the tractor and drove it forward just a bit.  That was all it took, and the “Monster” fell.

And then there were none…

Amazingly the tree landed pretty much right where I wanted it to again; in between two trees!

The next task was to cut the “Monster” into manageable pieces to be moved.  This too was no small task, and once I had done that I skidded a few logs using my logging tongs and tractor attachment.  But then I got to the sections from closer to the bottom of the tree and discovered that they were too heavy to move.

Since I didn’t want to saw any more that day, I skidded and moved some other logs instead until evening.

On Wednesday night while we were gaming Matt mentioned that he wanted to rent a plane and go flying.  He’s flown me over our house several times over the years so that I could take aerial photos of our property, so I told him I was interested in doing that again.

He sent me an email later Thursday telling me he wanted to go flying Friday.  I didn’t respond, as I wasn’t sure it would work for me, and I assumed he would get back to me Friday to finalize plans and I could decide then if I could go.

But it didn’t matter as Matt sent another email early Friday advising me that someone else had rented the plane he wanted to fly.

I also discovered Friday morning that I needed to go to the dog grooming shop to update the software.  It has a date time-bomb in the program so that if it’s stolen it won’t function past a certain date.  Unfortunately I had forgotten that the last date coded was June 1st.  But as luck would have it, no one shut down the program after that day, and as long as it’s running the time-bomb won’t go off.

But eventually someone would, so it was a priority to update the program.

After that was done Kim and I went to lunch.

I planned on spending the rest of the afternoon and evening moving logs and wood around the worksite.  I had to saw the remnants of the “Monster” tree into smaller sections before skidding them first.  Once that was done it was on to dragging them out of the site.

Things were going fairly well except that my homemade tractor canopy kept sagging forward.  It’s mounted on the tractor “roll bar”.

You can see how it sits on the roll bar in the following photo.

I built the canopy in 2000 and it’s served me well since then.  I added front and rear lights to it to be able to work after dark and in the short days of winter.

I modified it a bit last year to move the lights inside the canopy frame as they kept getting pushed out of alignment by tree branches I brushed into with the canopy as I mowed.  I added a metal crosspiece inside the frame to attach the lights to.  It also got new metal on the top.

I wasn’t sure why the canopy kept sagging forward, and at one point thought about stopping and looking into the problem, but decided to continue working instead.

That was a big mistake, as not five minutes later instead of simply sagging the canopy fell forward striking me in the forehead rather hard.

I was wearing my climbing helmet and my safety sunglasses and I was unlucky enough to have the canopy hit me in the gap right above the sunglasses and below the helmet.  It hurt, but at first I thought I had just been bruised, and after cursing a bit and pushing the canopy back up was ready to head into the house for some ice when I realized I was bleeding.

When I got into the house the look on Kim’s face scared me.  I wasn’t bleeding that badly, but it seemed apparent that it didn’t look good.

One look in the mirror showed an inch long cut on my forehead, just above the bridge of my nose.  It wasn’t deep or bleeding that much, but it was wide and nasty looking nonetheless.

A trip to the doctor was obviously necessary.  Kim drove me up to our clinic in Apple Valley where we first filled out the requisite forms before waiting to see the doctor.

By then it was 6:30 PM or so, and we were a bit scared that we’d get the “B” squad doctors.  But as luck would have it, two surgeons were there at that time.

The doctor told us that I would definitely have a scar from the cut.  We talked some about options, but stitches were pretty much a requirement.

He gave me seven stitches for the cut, and took his time and did a pretty nice job really.

Except that now I look a bit  like I was put together in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab.  (To see the gruesome photos click here).

And I get to tell this story over and over to my colleagues at work who are going to ask me what happened to my face…

I’m not looking forward to it.

I was thinking I should invent some fantastic story about how it happened but I can’t come up with anything good.

A look at the tractor canopy (which I removed when I got home) showed that the rear part of the wood frame that fits over the roll bar was broken and allowed the canopy to sag then slip off the roll bar (and onto my face).  The split/break wasn’t visible until I got it off the tractor.

I’m going to have to rebuild it, and this time I’ll have to try to make sure the frame doesn’t break again.

The problem of course is that the more sturdy I build it the more weight goes back over my head (and possibly down on it as experience would now have it).  It’s ironic that as the tree removal project wraps up that my only injury was from a canopy that had been installed on my tractor for almost 9 years!…

And I’m blaming Matt a bit too (and the guy who actually rented the airplane), just because we didn’t go flying.  If I had been flying I might not have gotten around to skidding logs at all.

Of course that’s little consolation, because if I’d just stopped to determine why the canopy was sagging, it probably wouldn’t have hit me in the face…

Filed under: Dog Grooming Business, Home Projects on June 6th, 2009 | 8 Comments »

My week off work at the job that pays the bills seemed to flash by.  And sadly my ever-growing list of projects didn’t seem to diminish at all.

I wanted to finish the tree felling/climbing project by the end of the this week and came close but didn’t quite finish.

As of today the “Monster” tree still stands alone (visible in the following photo just to the right of the evergreen trees), albeit without branches and leaves.

On Monday I did a few miscellaneous chores including bringing my mini-backhoe out of the storage shed and pressure washed off the side of the house with the peeling paint from my painting last fall.  Then Kim and I headed to the dog grooming shop to make a template for a counter at the checkout desk.

Tuesday I fixed the Ritchie automatic livestock waterer that had been leaking for weeks (we’ve had nothing but trouble with this waterer) and did more miscellaneous chores and ran some errands that night.

On Wednesday it was tree climbing day again.  The weather guys predicted a chance of drizzle until about 1 PM, so I putzed around doing some other things waiting for afternoon when I believed the weather would improve.

After lunch I went out with the crossbow to set some lines in the trees for pulling climbing ropes.  But instead of the weather improving early afternoon it started raining which continued for over an hour and a half.  I stood in the rain cursing the weather guys for a while assuming it would quit and when it didn’t finally gave up and headed inside.  So much for the reliability of the weather forecasters again…

Since it was raining I decided instead to build a 3 point attachment for my tractor to use the log skidding tongs.

I had been snookered into believing the tongs would work just being attached to logging chains attached to the tractor hitch and be an easier way to grab logs to drag/skid around.  But I had little success with that approach and after doing some online research discovered that the logging tongs really only work in a vertical/lifting aspect, contrary to the way the tongs are advertised.

I had already printed some photos of someone else’s logging attachment for a tractor that I had found online and went to work creating my own variant thereof.

I used some square steel tubing from an old car frame receiver hitch attachment and welded together an arm onto a drawbar for hanging the logging tongs from.  By the time I was done the rain had stopped and I had a chance to test the design and found that the logging tongs worked great on the new attachment!

Unfortunately after skidding a few logs I grabbed a big one and broke the welds that held the hook that the logging tongs hang from off the arm, so it was back to the shop for strengthening and a minor redesign.

Then I went out and cut down the westernmost tree that I had intended to use as a climbing rope anchor for my climb on the adjacent tree.

By the time I had done that it was later in the evening, but I still wanted to climb a tree.  It had remained overcast all day so dusk would be early.

Once I had set up the camera and gotten all the gear together it was after 8 PM.  But I figured I didn’t spend long in the trees anyway, and I wanted to get a line set high in the tree for the next day’s climb if necessary.  So up I went.

Having never repositioned a climbing line in a tree it took some time to figure out how to do it.  But eventually I got the climbing rope positioned in a higher crotch of the tree and as the light was waning decided it was time to climb down.

The following day I got out into the “Monster” tree in early afternoon, and climbed up to the crotch where the rope was set.

At that point I realized that I needed to reposition the climbing rope even higher in the tree.  But I got my throw rope stuck repeatedly and finally got it stuck where I couldn’t free it and thus had to improvise to move the climbing rope higher.

I would have simply used my tree climbing spikes to climb higher in the tree, but I’ve had some trouble with them recently and they tend to creep from just in front of the heel of my boot to off the back of my boot when not in use.  Once they’ve done that they’re virtually impossible to reposition while hanging in a climbing harness.

So on that climb eventually I gave up on them and took the climbing spikes off, dropping them the 30 feet or so to the ground.

If you look closely at the following photo you can see me on the right side of the tallest tree on the left (the “Monster”)  just below where the leaves start in the tree (I have on a white long sleeved T-shirt) and boy, do I look tiny compared to that tree!

I then trimmed branches off the monster sans spikes.  Once that was done I rappelled back down and took a break.

Later that afternoon I climbed the adjacent tree that still had branches and trimmed off both the branches at the prominent “Y” crotch in that tree.   I had wanted to climb higher on the one branch to ensure that the branch stayed out of the road, but in the interest of expedience decided to trim it just above the “Y” instead.

After removing the first branch I checked both ways down the road for cars then cut the other branch.

As expected, the second branch I trimmed landed a few feet into the road, and I quickly exited the tree to remove it.  The only traffic on the road was a road grader that resurfaces the gravel road occasionally.  He had been by numerous times previously and had seen me working (I had waved at him earlier as he went by).  But he saw the branches and swung way wide of them.  I gave him a sheepish/apologetic wave as he went by that time.

It only took me a few minutes to clear the branches out of the road and in that time no cars came by.  So in the course of the project I had landed three branches in the road with no traffic to dodge them.  Talk about lucky!

That culminated the branch trimming segment of the project.  At that point I had three tall tree trunks standing with no leaves or branches to be removed.

But that was enough for the day, and I was tuckered out anyway, so I recovered all the gear and quit for the day.

It does show that I’m rapidly getting in physically better shape though, as I was able to accomplish two big climbs in one day when only a few weeks ago I was dying from one short climb!  But now my arms are getting more sore from the climbs; previously it had been my legs which don’t bother me at all now.  I don’t know what that’s about…

Kim and I had a date for that night anyway to go see the new Star Trek movie that she had been waiting to see since it had first been released a few weeks before.  Unfortunately she wanted to see it on the big screen or the IMAX and by the time we got around to going it wasn’t showing on any big screens anywhere.  (It’s the first movie I think we’ve been to in a theater in probably a year!)

On Friday initially I felt too tired and sore to remove trees.  But by afternoon I grew antsy and decided to start sawing again.

I used the temporary lines to pull up a pull rope and winched and wedged the smaller two trees to fell them.  The westernmost tree still had the potential to hit the electrical utility pole, but my recently acquired experience at tree felling let me drop the tree right where I wanted, even though I still lack confidence in my ability to do so.

The second tree didn’t want to fall though even after the wedging and winching, and I was forced to tie a rope to the winch line and planned on using the tractor to pull it down, but found that I could pull it down myself instead as it was already leaning enough to that side.

After that tree fell I was only left with the “Monster” tree standing.  But it was getting late in the day and I was tired, so it still stands.

It has a definite lean towards the road, and it’s tall enough that I’m afraid it would fall into the road if I cut it down as it stands now.  And unlike the branches, it would be a significant log in the road that would also take some time to clear, so I want to ensure that it doesn’t fall into the road when cut.  That may mean I need to climb it again and cut it down in sections.

The alternative is to tie it off and wedge fell it, but it would probably crush the evergreens just to the one side as that’s the only safe direction to force it.  And I think it’s unlikely I would be able to place it between them (at least on purpose).  I’ll have to think about this one…

I’ve got a lot of video so far of the tree climbing from tripod cameras and a helmet cam, but I can’t decide if it’s interesting or exciting enough to edit together or not.  The jury is still out on that project, but I may throw together some time-lapses of the tree felling eventually.

Right now I’m just too tired.  (Thank goodness I get to head back to my other job tomorrow for a break!)

Filed under: Dog Grooming Business, Home Projects on May 30th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Saturday morning I woke to the dogs barking and found it raining outside.  So much for the weather forecast…

But it was supposed to clear so I spent the morning making a helmet-cam mount for my new Black Diamond climbing helmet that I had ordered the week before since it was on sale.

It’s amazing how much smaller and lighter the climbing helmet is compared to the skateboard helmet I had been using.

But I had to redesign and construct a brand new helmet-cam mount.  This time I only made a top downward looking mount and made the mount so that it used the slots/clips in the climbing helmet that were intended to hold a headlamp strap (for spelunkers).

Since a headlight strap is thinner than the acrylic I had used for the other helmet-cam mount I needed a different material.  So I used some leftover aluminum sheet from the channel letter project from last year.

This mount turned out a lot less clunky than the last mount.  It’s also a lot easier to remove and install because I was able to design the mount using the headlight strap slots already on the helmet.

I still added a counter-weight to the back of the helmet but was able to use some cutouts in the helmet to pass bolts through to hold it.

By the time I finished that project it had dried out enough to go climbing again.

Today I used the ascenders to climb.  I had hoped to get high enough in the tree with the rope to be able to swing over to the curved tree high enough to cut it.

But the geometry of the climbing rope configuration prevented that plan from working.  The rope simply wasn’t high enough in the crotch of the adjacent tree.  That meant there wasn’t enough rope between me and the crotch of the tree to make it possible to simply swing over to the other tree.

Had I had another climbing rope in the curved tree I probably could have attached the ascenders to it and pulled myself over to it, but I wasn’t strong enough to do it just using my arms, and I was also afraid if I let go of the rope attached to the curved tree that the short length of safety line would have swung me as a short fast pendulum back into the other tree.

I was able to swing over to the other tree, but only after lowering myself lower on the climbing line so that I had more rope between me and the crotch.  But that meant I was almost at the exact same spot from the day before; not high enough to cut.

After trying again to climb higher with the spikes I finally gave up on this plan.  I was simply not going to be able to get high enough in the tree to guarantee any advantage to cutting it that way.

So I placed the utility line in the curved tree as high as I could and rappeled down.

I was going to have to cut this tree down from the ground.  It was a no-brainer that taking out the electrical utility pole or the fence was preferrable to taking myself out.

Using the utilty line I pulled my heaviest rope up and around the tree trunk, then tied it to a cable winch attached to a nearby tree and tightened the rope.

Then I used wedges and cut the tree down from the ground.

The result only increased my confidence in my wedge cutting ability, as the tree fell right where I wanted it to; not even close to the electrical pole.

I’m also getting better at estimating distances for the tree falls, as the tree did indeed hit the fence on the west property line.  Fortunately it was only the topmost four feet of the tree, but the old barbed wire fence couldn’t take much and it broke the top two strands.

But I was happy with the result.  I could fix the fence; the last tree to be likely to hit the electrical pole was down and I was intact as well.

That meant I was done with tree work for the day, and after cutting the felled tree into sections I went about repairing the fence, which meant a few trips to the barn for the fence stretcher and other tools.

By that time it was getting late in the evening, and I recovered all my climbing gear and tools and called it a day.

Then out of curiousity I went out with a 100′ tape measure and measured the tree I had just cut down.  It measured 85 feet from ground to top, and from the photos/videos when I started the project this was one of the shortest trees.  I’m guessing the tallest ones are over 100′ tall.

Here’s an older photo of the area with the tree I cut down marked:

It’s too bad I have to cut all these trees down as they’re good climbing trees in a convenient location near the house and I’m really enjoying the climbing.  I’m hoping there are some trees in the back suitable for recreational climbing, although they’re some distance from the house.

A glance around the site shows the ever-growing daunting project of moving all the wood as well.

There are four trees left to be felled.  Only two of them need to be climbed, so the climbing part of this project is nearing an end.  I hope to have the climbing portion done by the end of the week.

It’s a beautiful day today but my legs are sore and I’m going to take a day off from climbing to recover.  It’ll give me a chance to catch up on my blogs.  I’ve got plenty of other projects/chores to do and will work on them instead and maybe try to move some logs too.

Filed under: Home Projects on May 24th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

I spent part of the last few days working on the trees again.

My first priority was felling the tree closest to the electrical utility pole.  This tree was a challenge in several ways:  first, I was guessing that it would hit the utilty pole and/or electrical wires when it fell, or the pasture fence to our west if it was felled in one piece.

Secondly it wasn’t a large diameter tree and didn’t have any significant crotches/branches to put climbing ropes over.  And finally, the main trunk curved towards the utilty pole; rather dramatically so about a third of the way up the tree.

The plan all along was to take off the top third or half of the tree to avoid damage to either of the aforementioned. I was going to use the adjacent tree as an anchor for my safety rope.

I got a late start on Friday and didn’t begin working on the trees until afternoon.

First I spent over an hour placing a line in the adjacent tree with the crossbow/fishing line setup.  Maybe I don’t know how to do it right or there’s some other secret or it’s simply just part of the process, but placing the line into the tree is a very annoying and time-consuming exploit.

I use a four step process.  Using the crossbow and fishing line, I shoot the crossbow bolt over the branches where I want the line.  Then I use the fishing line to pull up a thin braided line, then use it to pull up a thicker braided line.  Then I use that line to pull the climbing rope with.

One of the steps could be eliminated if I had a rope/string that was light enough that the fishing line could pull and strong enough to pull the climbing line as well, but I don’t have any that is suitable.

My first shot with the crossbow put the fishing line right where I wanted it, so I thought it was going to be a quick and easy exploit.

Unfortunately after successfully pulling the first thin line with the fishing line, while pulling the third line the second line broke, so I had to start all over.  Things went downhill from there.

Over an hour later I finally had the climbing rope into the second tree, but I’d wasted a lot of time and energy doing it and was also thoroughly annoyed.

The week before I had re-sharpened the tips on the tree climbing spikes as I didn’t think they were digging into the tree as easily as they should.  So I figured I would try using them.

I started climbing the curving tree with the tree climbing spikes and they worked quite well.  I had previously really only used the spikes for positioning before a cut.

But about a third of the way up the tree when I was met with a dilemna.

At that point the tree was bending so far that I couldn’t figure out how to continue the climb.  Up to that time I had been climbing on the “uphill” or “top” side of the tree trunk, with the trunk curving away from me.

But the tree climbing spikes are used in conjunction with the “flip line” which wraps around the tree and attaches to each side of the climbing harness/saddle.  Upon each step, the climber must sit back putting weight on the flip line before moving the feet/climbing spikes.

When resting it’s a “three point” system, with weight on both feet/spikes and on the flip line.  When climbing, there is always weight on at least two points of the three (the flip line and one of the two spikes).  Once a step upward is completed, while putting weight on both spikes in the tree the climber leans slightly towards the tree to take weight off the flip line, then “flips” the flip line upwards on the tree trunk then then puts weight back on it to prepare for the next step.

That all means that the climber must be leaning back past vertical in order to place weight on the flip line.

But since the tree was curving away that meant the flip line needed to be set progressively longer in order to keep weight on it.  That meant I was getting my torso further and further away from the tree as well.  Eventually it got to a point where I wasn’t comfortable with that method as I would be far enough away from the tree trunk that I wouldn’t be able to grab it to control myself at all (let alone cut it with a chainsaw).

I tried climbing on the side of the curved trunk, but gravity kept wanting to rotate/swing me to the low/underside of the curving trunk.  Then I tried climbing from the underside, but that didn’t/doesn’t work either because I couldn’t get my weight onto the climbing spikes.

So it was clear that I couldn’t get high enough to make that plan work.

At that point I threw a utility rope over the highest branch I could reach from that spot to leave in the tree and started back down.

I had formulated two alternate plans of action.  One was to climb the other tree with the rope, then swing over to the curved tree at a high enough point; anchor in and cut.  I could use the utility rope to help pull myself over.

The other was to put an anchor/pull line on the tree where the utility rope was and use it and wedges to fell the tree from the ground and hopefully keep it away from the electrical pole.

Once I had descended low enough in the tree with the spikes I swung back to the other tree on the safety line and started trimming some lower branches on it.  But in a moment of idiocy I neglected to make an undercut on the lower side of the branch first, and tried to do it after starting the cut on the top and got the chainsaw stuck as the weight of the branch pinched the bar.

I tied off the chainsaw to the tree so that it wouldn’t all to the ground once I got the branch off and rappelled to the ground to get a handsaw to finish the job.

But I first tried to pull off the branch from the ground, and was able to break it the rest of the way off freeing the saw.

I then climbed back up to recover the saw.  First I had to readjust/tighten the chain on the saw before using it again.

Then I trimmed more branches off that tree, partly just for something to do, as that tree was going to be cut down from the ground.  But clearing some branches away would make it easier to climb.

By that time I was pretty tuckered out and it was getting late in the day so it was quitting time.

I took a break and checked the weather forecast which looked good for the next few days, so I left the climbing rope in the tree for a climb the following day.

Filed under: Home Projects on May 24th, 2009 | No Comments »

This weekend was a complete tree climbing write-off.  It was windy yesterday and is again today, and yesterday evening we had storms pass through.  It also got a bit brisk last night as the temperature dropped to 36 degrees; it was a bit chilly in the house with the windows open this morning!

Thursday the family met up with Justin, on leave from the Air Force, and had dinner at the OutBack Steakhouse.  It was nice to see him again!

Justin and some of his friends are going up to the Boundary Waters fishing for a week with his grandpa and a bunch of his friends on his grandpa’s yearly fishing trip.  When they get back Justin heads right back to Arkansas, so we had a pretty small window to get together with him.

Justin came out to the house on Friday for a quick visit with his friend and one of the comments he made was that the trees that I was removing were a lot bigger than he thought.  That seems to be the most common things people say when they actually see the trees; the photos give no sense of scale.

On Thursday it was too windy to climb, so I decided to try cutting down some of the trees from the ground that I had been putting off felling because some of them needed to be wedged.  Those trees were leaning towards some evergreens we weren’t planning on removing  just yet and one leaned towards the road a bit.

I’d never used wedges before that way, and I had little confidence that it would work properly my first time out, and these were big trees to experiment on.  That, and my maple-smashing felling from a few weeks ago gave me little reason to think that I could actually drop a big tree where I wanted it.

But I proved myself wrong and was able to drop three trees right where I wanted them using wedges.  I cut down a fourth that was hiding behind one of the others and didn’t need wedges for that.

The only glitch was that the tree that was leaning towards the road a bit wouldn’t fall even though I had the wedges driven all the way in; flush with the tree trunk.  So I decided to go find another wedge to finish the job, and as I was walking to the shop I heard the crack as the tree fell (helped by the breeze I guess).

Fortunately I had been smart enough to stay clear of the tree fall path as I walked away and it fell right where I wanted it too!

Currently there are only five trees left standing, and one of them doesn’t need to be climbed to be removed, but I want to use it put my climbing rope in to remove the tree right next to it.  That adjacent tree is the last at risk to fall on the electrical utility pole so it will have to be removed in sections.

Once that tree is removed I’ll be able to remove the other from the ground.  That will leave only three trees to be removed, one of which has been trimmed from the top already.

I got my logging tongs yesterday, and bought some chain and some hooks to use with it.  It makes sense on the days I can’t climb that I move logs instead and that will help move the project along.

On Thursday I also cut down the tree next to the hot tub in the back yard.  Kim never liked the tree much because she thought it was ugly and it had these big seed pods that fell off onto the lawn leaving a mess.  And every spring I thought the tree was dead because it bloomed so late.  It still didn’t have leaves on it when I cut it down, although all the other trees do.

I decided after I cut it down I needed to know what kind of tree it was.  A quick online search revealed that it was a Northern Catalpa tree.  When I read the Wikipedia entry it says the Catalpa wood has beautiful grain, so I may have to try to make something out of the wood.  I thought of turning some pens on the lathe from it.

Since I was on the tree research kick, I also decided to determine what kind of trees I was cutting down in the front yard on the building site.  Kim and I had always thought they were Aspen trees, but my father-in-law (Carl) thought they were Cottonwoods.  And they had started growing leaves out so I grabbed some leaves to identify them.

Carl was right; they’re definitely Cottonwood trees.  The reason Kim and I thought they were Aspen is because they do have a similar leaf that “quakes” in the wind.

Part of the reason Carl knows his trees he told us during dinner on Thursday is because he used to climb and cut/trim  trees from near electrical utility lines for Northern States Power Company when he was younger.  He cut down plenty of Cottonwoods in his day.

He climbed trees using a rope and sit harness/saddle just as I’m doing.  As a young man he started on the ground crew on the tree trimming work, but was offered an extra 10 cents to climb which in the day was a lot of money he couldn’t refuse.  That and he was young enough to not think twice about it.

Eventually Carl became a lineman for NSP which is what I thought he had always done.  So it was certainly a surprise to hear my own father-in-law used to climb and trim trees for a living!

Filed under: Home, Home Projects, Justin on May 16th, 2009 | No Comments »

The tree felling project continues at home.  The progress is slower than I would prefer, but it’s getting done.

I’m trying my best to continue to work as safely as I can, and that means I don’t work when I’m tired, and my aging/out-of-shape body gets tired more rapidly than I would prefer (but that’s improving too).

That also means that I really only work cutting trees on my weekends, and I’ve had to deal with rainy weather as well the last few weekends.  That, and any possibility of lightning keeps me out of tall trees as well.

The tree climbing/trimming exploit was intended to keep trees out of both the road and off the electrical utility pole.  So far I’ve been successful in keeping the trees off the electrical pole, but not so much in keeping them out of the road…

My fear has been that cars blasting down our gravel road would top the rise in the road just at our driveway and have only about 100 feet to both see and react to a tree branch in the road.  In the scenario I imagined either a loss of control, or damage to the car as they hit/drove over the tree branches and an ensuing lawsuit.  Thus, I wanted to keep the trees out of the road altogether.

Last weekend I cut off two branches/sections of trees close to the road and both of them ended up in the road.  I knew one was definitely going to end up in the road, but the other I thought wouldn’t.

The one I thought would stay clear landed on about one third of the road.  The other landed halfway across the road.  Oops!

Previously I trimmed another large branch off the “monster” that also fell into the road.  So as of last week I’ve put three out of three branches into the road…

All of them were big enough that dragging them out of the road wasn’t possible either; they needed to be cut into sections to be removed from the road.

That meant in all cases I needed to rappel out of the tree as quickly as I could to get the trees cut out of the road before a car drove by.  Fortunately the road is pretty quiet in the afternoon and I was able to clear all three branches off the road well before a car appeared.

I’m getting to a point now where I think I have trimmed most of the problem branches/trees, with one exception.  There is still one tree that leans toward the electrical pole that I will have to remove in sections.

That, and the monster tree still needs to be taken down in sections, although I don’t think any of its branches would fall into the road (yeah, but what do I know?).

I also ordered some log skidding tongs to help drag the logs out of the area.  That should save some time as I had been wrapping chains around the logs to move them.  The tongs just grip the log and are held in place by the weight of the log pulling against the chain.

Moving the logs is going to take a fair amount of time as well, as I think I’m going to have to drag them all the way into the backyard to ensure they’re well out of the way of any of the pending construction.  Eventually I’ll get around to making them into firewood.

I just reshaped/reground the spikes/gaffs on my tree climbing spikes yesterday as they didn’t seem to be digging into the trees as easily as I thought they should.  But not having tried any commercially produced versions I’m not sure how they really should work, so I may be unrealistic in my expectations.

Justin is taking leave and will be in town for a few days later this week before he heads up north fishing for a week with some of his friends and his Grandpa and a bunch of his friends.  We’re hoping to get together with him before he leaves.

Filed under: Home Projects on May 12th, 2009 | No Comments »