I was going to start a threat about this, but I saw your
thread, and...
1) I endorse the emphasis on safety. It doesn't take long to bleed to unconsciousness. Get used to the idea that its better to send a false alarm then for someone to find you dead from a missing toe. If its deeper than an inch, or the puddle is bigger than a pancake or it burbles up like a clogged water-fountain, take a ride in an ambulance, let them decide how bad it is.
2) Sure, you could buy a bulldozer and hire a crew, or you can recruit your family, friends and neighbors and rent equipment, but there are times when by necessity or choice you find yourself working alone. The Book
“Working Alone” by John Carroll is excellent. It covers residential construction. For example: from “Working Alone” use clamps as handles to make holding and carrying plywood or cement board easier, particularly when climbing ladders. You can even use the clamps so that you can run rope through and hoist the plywood to a roof after you’ve climbed up.
3) Some of my solo-homestead additions: Rolling a log is 100x easier than trying to lift it. I can roll a 400 lb log, I try to avoid lifting an 80lb one. So I made
hugel beds and raised beds by cutting large logs into 10 foot sections and rolling them. I’m on a 15% incline, so rocks as backstops allows me to take a break. I get the logs to line up by rolling them onto a small red brick centered under the log, gets em about an inch off the ground, then I can pivot the log and continue to roll into place. Much easier than dragging or lifting.
4) For my log-cabin shed, I could have built 14 x 14 foot square cabin. But 14 foot logs are heavy. Making the cabin an octagon means my sides are now 6.5 ft, at 6 in diameter, even as fresh green Doug Fir thats about 75 lbs before I debark and scribe. I can lift those one side at a time onto a 4’ scaffold, and from the scaffold onto the now 8ft tall wall. Its a work out to be sure. If you always leave one end of the object you are lifting on the ground, you are lifting only part of the weight (Tangent of Theta, where theta is the angle between the ground and the object? maybe). Even if the end your are leaving is higher, like a log leaning against a scaffold, lifting one end and letting the scaffold
bear some of the weight at the other is a big help.
5) Don’t pick something up until you have a plan for how and where to put it down so it stays. That plan is NOT “ I will hold this with one hand, use my other hand to hold a nail, use my other other hand to swing the hammer, and use my other other other hand to hold the level, and use my shoulder to adjust the height.” Start the nail on the ground, tape the level to the board on the ground. Figure out which hand is holding the hammer and where its going to grab it and set it down *before* you have joist or whatnot in hand.
6) I really like come-alongs (hand-winches,
hand-pullers,) your jargon may vary. I Rolled a 300 lb slab of cement that had been a stair landing, uphill 250ish feet on about a dozen little 2 in branches by using a come-along, a tow strap and a series of tree-stumps. Took over an hour, I listened to a comedic song about
Stonehenge over and over while doing it. If I'm felling a tree that is too small for wedges (because no one thinned after the last clear-cut), I use two 3000 lb capacity tow straps and a 2ton come-along to 'encourage' the tree to lean over the hinge cut. I make a "V" with the tree I'm felling at the vertex and two larger
trees as anchors so that the tree falls over the hinge and between the two anchor trees.*** Safety Warning See Below***
7) Forget measuring tapes for anything bigger than 3’ use a 8ft 2x3 or 2x2. Mark off 4’ and 6’ but keep the post 8’ or if you have a lot of the same cut at a special size (like 79”) cut one piece to that and use it. Otherwise you will be always chasing and resetting that lose end of the tape. And outside it will get wet, get dirt in it, stop retracting and get easily lost. Hard to loose a 2x3, and its cheaper than buying a tape. Always keep a thick finishing nail in your pocket: that’s your indestructible never out of ink never has a broken point pen/pencil for marking things. Keep it always in the same pocket, for me, my right, because my cellphone is in my left pocket. Those two are not friends.
*** Safety Warning*** If you are going to work with lines under tension remember Chains, ropes, straps, cables, if they are under-tension, they can be storing a tremendous amount of force, which can, if they snap, accelerate the now-free ends faster than anyone can react. You won't know its happened until its over. I've seen a 5" diameter tree CUT IN HALF by a snapped chain from a tractor pulling a second tractor out of mud. I have heard about people getting cut in half by snapped cables.
So...
1) know the rated capacities of every part that is under tension, from pulleys, to shackles to nuts and bolts.
2) put a shear-bolt, or put the weakest link in your system where you want it to fail, so that if something goes wrong, the failure point is known and the failure doesn't put you in danger. I put my shear bolt right at the stationary end of the come-along, and that is right next to the tree I'm felling. If it snaps, the come-along is pulled away from me toward one anchor tree, and the other end is pulled away from me, around the target tree and toward the other anchor tree.
3) Use a tension guage so you can stay well bellow the rated tension. in a system where 1.5 tons in the lowest rated part, I use about 500lbs of tension. that is plenty on a small tree. This does not replace properly planning your hinge-cut, and it is not a good way to cope with a large tree that is leaning. this is for a tree where there isn't enough diameter to get a wedge in.