Should I turn this tree into firewood?

Should I cut this tree down? It is twisted, diseased, and it might come down on its own.

Is it willow? If it is you can trim it to about 2 meters, give it a last chance and keep it as a ball shaped willow. Can't really keep it like this , it might fall on your shed.

Hugo Morvan wrote:Is it willow? If it is you can trim it to about 2 meters, give it a last chance and keep it as a ball shaped willow. Can't really keep it like this , it might fall on your shed.

It's a pear tree I think. Problem is, which way to fell it. It can't land on the neighbor's fence, my milking barn, or the garage.

One hell of a pear tree then! If i do a job like that i put a ladder high against the trunk and attach a cord as high as i can on a healthy branch have two people pull it in the right direction while i chainsaw. Tricky with twisted trees though. Not something i would recommend doing if it's a first timer with this much damage possible. And hard to tell from one dark picture how to approach this.If profs need to climb in and cut it limb by limb it's going to be costly.

Hugo Morvan wrote:One hell of a pear tree then! If i do a job like that i put a ladder high against the trunk and attach a cord as high as i can on a healthy branch have two people pull it in the right direction while i chainsaw. Tricky with twisted trees though. Not something i would recommend doing if it's a first timer with this much damage possible. And hard to tell from one dark picture how to approach this.If profs need to climb in and cut it limb by limb it's going to be costly.

I only have an axe. On the plus side, axes are slower and you can make adjustments as you go. I have felled trees with an axe before (and one time with a shotgun). This one is just tricky. I'm by no means an expert woodsman.

Does it produce?

I think we need more pictures to better understand the health of the tree and the ease of felling it.

Axes are slow but when you're trying to drop a tree precisely, accurate cuts are also important.  Ladders are good for getting ropes up in a tree but they're extremely unsafe to do cutting from.

Ryan,

Given your description, my vote would be to bring the tree down in a controlled manner rather than it falling down on its own and causing damage.  Damaged and diseased wood that stands nonetheless sounds like a good candidate for the wood pile.

All that being said, from your description (twisted, nearby structures, etc.) perhaps an axe is not the best tool to bring it down.  I would suggest first to remove as many branches as possible before cutting the trunk so as to reduce mechanical load on the trunk.  Keep the tree as balanced as possible while removing branches/limbs.  

Once you have removed as many branches as you can, I would tie a rope/chain as high up as possible on the trunk and then stake that line in the direction you want the tree to fall.  Even better, have two lines and stake them so that the trunk falls between them.  I would use either a very heavy rope or better yet a nylon tow strap attached to a come along and really tighten those lines before cutting the trunk.  At that point you could begin cutting the trunk.

I recently did something like this for a neighbor who had a tree leaning towards power lines.  We did use a line, but after we started our horizontal cut, the tree leaned anyways.  We pounded a wedge into the cut and reversed the fall of the tree away from the lines.  The tree landed exactly where we wanted.

Eric

Another possibility, if the neighbor’s fence and field is the easy way to drop the tree, would be to get permission to uninstall the fence fabric and replace it after felling the tree.