Making A Homemade Felling Wedge

Our favorite tree care freebie is making a homemade felling wedge.

We started wedge-making by coincidence. We were cutting pulpwood in a massive stand of fir where the neighboring trees created repeated hang-ups. We needed more lift to force the trees we were cutting onto the ground but was out of wedges. We attempted to cut a wedge out of a stump from a fir tree, but the wood just compressed as we pounded it home.

Wanting a better solution, one of the tree contractors went to the bed of our truck and found a broken, old ax handle. He trimmed the handle around eight inches up from the doe’s foot and formed it with a hatchet and knife to get a sleek, double-tapered wedge. The handle-wedge worked fine giving plenty of lift to lure the tree downward. Though somewhat less sturdy than aluminum or plastic wedges, the wooden ones work well and can be left in the woods once their usefulness is over.

If you find yourself in the forest short on wedges and there’s no ax handles around, think about slashing a wedge out of a little hardwood pole or limb.

You should look for oak, elm, or maple around four inches in diameter. With your chainsaw, start by cutting two smooth sides and then create two diagonal cuts for the center wedge. This will produce three wedges that will be plenty to get your tree to the ground.

Good Sources for Homemade Felling Wedges
Another good source of wedge material that you don’t have to buy is old oak pallet skids. You make these sorts of wedges in the wintertime. We keep a couple in our toolboxes. Cut an assortment of thicknesses and lengths to fulfill various felling conditions.

Wedges can aid in controlling the direction of trees falling even if they are leaning the incorrect way.
Many people think you use a wedge when felling trees. Not only do we use wedges for that, but we use them as well on trees with a lop-sided crown, when felling against the wind, or when it is hard to see which way the tree wants to fall. 

In those cases, wedges offer more control over the direction and timing of the fall.  If you find that felling trees with homemade wedges to be beyond what you fell like you are capable of, contact Buffalo Tree, we can provide tree cutting professionals to handle any tree you need brought down.
 

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