joining us is Bryan s Holman certified arborist with a Sherman tree service and brine today I'd like you to demonstrate how to not CH the tree when you're felling it and that's for directing where the tree Falls right yeah we want the tree to go to a certain area we have trees you'll get the Cypress over here that we don't want to hit we have a clear area here we could drop the whole tree in one shot we don't have to top it out what we do is we put a notch in it and it's basically flat cut here in an angle cut here you want it to be about 45 degrees you know let's give or take and then you make a back cut when you make that back cut it should be above the bottom cut bottom of the notch it should be above it if it's below it you lose your you lose control or you didn't you kind of negated the notch all together the other thing is when you're cutting that back cut you have to leave wood in the middle you leave wood for hinge that's what if you cut all the way through till you hit the notch then you've got no control in it and it'll fall on its own the other thing when you're cutting and notching you need to look at the tree the lien is it leaning any way is it pretty straight whereas the weight distributed with the limbs when they when they come out this one had one limb coming off the back that we cut off to take some weight off of it the other thing is the knotch does not you know if it's got a severe lean to the back and you make the notch on the back side or the front side you're not going to overcome gravity okay so you want a relatively straight you want to relatively straight straight tree for notching okay and in addition to that back limb for weight you just removed some lower limbs give you a little heads yeah just to give me so I could walk around and not hit my head on anything okay so let's go through the first step just to reiterate you're going to cut a straight you gotta cut a straight foot cut in here about how far I want to go they what they say about a third of the tree okay so we're gonna go in roughly a third or so sometimes it you know varies we're going to go a third in and we're going to come back back at the top of the 90 to a 45 degree angle I usually do the top one first don't really think it matters much which one you do first as long as they line up you don't want the you don't want your bottom cut to come past where your other one is because you've cut into your hinge wood so you want it to all line up nice and neat all right well I'll step back and let you work you so Brian you're ready to make the next cut which is your back cut and that's the cut that will drop the tree where does is that going to go on here you want that that you going to start in the back you want it to be above your notch you know an inch you don't want it you know you don't want to be below it because then you kind of like I said again eliminated the knotch you want to be even is okay but we'd rather you be above it so you leave some hinge wood and you try to be as even as you can when you're coming across with your bar and and you got to keep an eye on the tree at the same time when you see it starting to go then you take your escape rub okay and you're going to start kind of exact opposite of where you want the tree to fall yes yeah Zach tapas it from the knotch before you start your back cut you want to make sure you're you have an escape route should be a roughly 45 degree angle from the back of the tree you also want to make sure that's clear so that you don't trip over anything when you're trying to you get away because trees probably going to go the right way but for inseam for seeing things happen I want to make sure you have an escape route to get away from Oh this shows a perfect example of the hinge would all these torn fibers that's the wood you want to leave it can vary in width the tree I waited till the tree started to go I noticed it was raising up before I took the saw and walked away but this is a perfect example of leaving the hinge wood if you cut through this wood the possibility the tree could go any direction it wants to go and your scape out really important because when the tree falls it could bounce up that bucket bouncing that it could go different ways I've seen it bounce away I've actually seen it bounce and come backwards so you always want to go away from the stump when it starts to fall before all that happens all right well thank you again for showing us the safe methods and you know just always reiterate if you don't feel comfortable doing it or if it's too big of a tree that we should always call professional yeah if you ever question that's probably a good sign to hire somebody else thank you Brian thank you you