Tool Tuesday - Wedges
It’s Tuesday, and time for another look at the tools Red Mountain Rigging uses to get the job done!
Today we’re taking a closer look at wedges, the most underrated piece of equipment for all things tree cutting! Wedges are inexpensive pieces of hardened composite plastics and have a myriad of uses in tree felling and cutting. They are without a doubt pound-for-pound the single most important piece of gear to have around!
If you’ve watched our crews bring down a tree, you’ve likely seen them use wedges. These pieces of plastic help lift and coax a tree to fall precisely where we want it to, and can come in really handy during bucking operations to both prevent a saw from getting stuck in a log or free a stuck bar.
‘Bucking wedges’ are smooth on both sides, allowing them to be easily inserted into a cut. When bucking up logs, an understanding of compression and tension is important. Areas of the log experiencing compression will close in as you cut through with your chainsaw. This can lead to a pinched bar and a stuck saw. By inserting the bucking wedge behind the chainsaw bar, you can prevent the cut from closing in on your saw.
If you HAVE gotten your bar stuck, a bucking wedge slid into the remaining gap and hammered home with an axe or hammer can open the cut just enough to retrieve your saw. Our crews carry the Pocket Wedge by Notch whenever they’re bucking large logs, and use it quite frequently.
When it comes to felling a tree, the wedges used have a slightly different design. Felling wedges typically have a textured side consisting of several triangular features called ‘dogs’ that allow the wedge to ‘bite’ in to the stump as it’s driven home. This prevents the wedge from popping out of the cut unexpectedly. It’s important to ensure this textured side is faced down into the stump as it’s placed.
These wedges are typically placed into the back cut when falling a tree. A back cut is the final cut made in the process of bringing down a tree designed to cripple the tree’s structure and start its trip to ground, controlled by the hinge wood. Wedges help ‘lift’ a tree up and guide it on its intended path when it has a back lean, and can be used as an indicator that your tree is moving the way you want it to.
Once your saw has created enough room on the back cut to place a wedge tip, insert a felling wedge just ever so slightly into the cut. If the back of the wedge begins to rise into the air, it means the tree is coming back and sitting more onto the wedge and subsequently your bar. At this point, you can drive the wedge in with an axe or hammer to help lift and encourage the tree to go the appropriate direction. If the wedge falls clear of the tree, it means the cut is growing wider and the tree is falling the appropriate way.
We can also stack wedges to gain extra lift in heavily back-leaning trees. The goal here is to get the tree’s weight transferred over centre and towards its intended direction of travel. This ensures the tree falls where we want it. The concept of ‘lift’ is really more like ‘lean’. By lifting the the tree up at the back cut through the use of a wedge, we are causing the top of the tree to lean towards the direction of intended travel. Once we get the gravitational mass over its centre point, gravity will take over and down comes the tree. Of course, a lot of that goes out the window when we’ve got rotten trees... that’s where the ‘rigging’ comes in!
We’ve got a variety of felling wedges pictured here, from Oregon, Notch, Timber Tuff and more. We also carry a small wedge (the orange wedge attached to a carabiner and also made by Notch) with us when climbing to ensure we can help pieces of tree along when we’re aloft. Wedges are an inexpensive tool that is an absolute must in the tool box!
Written by Sean Sterna - The Rocky Mountain Arborist & Used with Permission