Clearing a building site of underbrush, trees and rocks is mostly a matter of picking the right tool for each part of the job and using the tool simply and safely.
Cut bushes down to ground level with a pair of pruning shears and dig the roots out of the soil with a shovel. Clear tall grass and vines from the site with a scythe or hand sickle (Caution: always hold your free arm well away from the blade of a sickle). Using a drill fitted with a masonry bit, a set of steel wedges and a sledge hammer, you can easily split large rocks down to small ones that can be moved. And you can cut most saplings with one or two strokes of an ax straight through the trunk.
Felling large, mature trees is a relatively complex operation, involving three or more distinct cuts. Loggers used to make these cuts with hand axes and two-man crosscut saws, but the modern gasoline- powered chain saw, used with care, has replaced ax and saw, and put the job within anyone’s capacity.
Where you make the cuts to fell a large tree depends on the direction in which it's leaning. If the lean is not obvious—or if the tree may get hung up in surrounding trees—use ropes to help pull it in the desired direction. Because a chain saw is noisy and because its operation demands your full attention, have helper stand behind you as you cut, to warn you by tapping you with a stick when the top of the tree begins to move.
Felling a slightly leaning tree calls for three cuts: two to make a notch in the face of the tree (the side closer to the ground) and a final “felling cut” on the opposite side. The cuts leave a narrow intact strip inside the trunk—loggers call this section a hinge—which holds the trunk together until the tree hits the ground, giving you time to move to safety. You can fell a slightly leaning tree away from the natural lean by changing the shape of the hinge and the position of the notch and then driving wedges into the felling cut.
Extra care must be taken when felling a tree that leans more than 20-deg. because the wood opposite the direction of lean is almost always brittle and may split and fly up at you as you make the felling cut. Loggers call the result a “barber chair” because the remaining cut and broken half trunk resembles a seat with a slanting back. To prevent a barber chair, hook a chain around the tree and make special side cuts.
When you have felled a tree, cut off any spring poles—branches or nearby saplings bent under the tree when it landed—so they will not snap back at you when you cut the tree into sections. Then trim the exposed limbs and remove the tree with the hauling device called a comealong.
The Safe Way to Fell a Tree
1. Anchoring the tree. To ensure that a tree falls in the right direction, anchor the trunk to trees located at a distance at least twice the height of the tree. Tie two 1-inch ropes to the tree as high on the trunk as you can safely reach, then tie the other ends of the ropes around the bases of the anchoring trees.
If there are no trees u can use as anchors, you can make what loggers call a holdfast. Drive two wooden pickets—5’ long and at least 3” thick—3’ into the ground, leaning away from the tree you will fell. Nail a 2-by- 4 between the top of the picket nearer the tree and the bottom of the other picket. Tie the anchoring rope low on the first picket.
A Deep Cut in Easy Stages
To fell a large tree—up to twice as thick as the length of the chain-saw blade—you must make two or more felling cuts. Make the notch cut as in Step 2 at left. Then start the first felling cut, holding your body stationary and swinging the saw. To make the succeeding felling cuts, place the edge of the saw at the end of the preceding cut and walk the blade around the tree. Leave a 2-inch hinge between the felling cuts and the notch cut just as you would for a smaller tree.
2. Making the notch cuts. On the face of the tree—the side on the direction of the lean—make a horizontal cut a third of the way into the trunk, and a second cut from above it to meet the first at a 45° angle. If the saw binds, free it with wooden or plastic wedges driven into the cut with a mallet. Knock out the wedge-shaped section you have cut in the tree.
3 Making the felling cut. On the opposite side of the trunk, make a horizontal cut 2” above the horizontal notch cut, stopping the blade 2 to 3” from the back of the notch. If the tree does not begin to fall, start it by driving wedges into the felling cut.
Have a helper ready to tap you with a stick when the tree begins to fall so you can turn off the chain saw and retreat to safety along an escape route. The best route is along a line 135° back from the direction of the tree’s lean.
Special Problems in the Lean of a Tree
Felling a deeply leaning tree. Bind the tree with a heavy chain about 3’ above the ground, then make a shallow cut on each side of the tree a foot below the chain to prevent the tree from splitting along a line between the brittle wood at the back and the dense wood at the face. Make notch cuts halfway into the trunk at the same level as the side cuts, then make the felling cut as you would for a tree that has only a moderate lean.
Felling away from the lean. Make the notch cuts on the side where you want the tree to fall and angle the felling cut so the thick part of the hinge is opposite the natural direction of lean.
Drive wooden or plastic wedges into the felling cut near the thin side of the hinge. The wedges will force the tree upward on that side, shifting its center of gravity away from the lean. If the wedges do not cause the tree to fall, deepen the felling cut.
Removing Logs, Stumps and Boulders
You can maneuver logs and large stones around your building site and remove tree stumps easily without the use of heavy machinery. The simplest tool for moving logs, first used by 19th Century loggers, is the peavey, a wooden shaft fitted with a metal point and hinged hook that dig into the log you are rolling along the ground. Though not widely available, peaveys are still sold by some tool-specialty stores. More readily avail able—it is sold at most large hardware stores—is the comealong, a hand tool with a ratchet mechanism and a lever that's moved back and forth to reel in a cable or chain. Buy a heavy-duty model capable of pulling at least a ton—enough to handle the heaviest tree or section of tree you are likely to have to move.
After you have moved the trees off your site, cut the stumps to within a foot of the ground. If you plan to build on the site immediately, have a professional blast the stumps or grind them down with a gasoline-powered stump grinder. A slower but simpler way to remove a stump is to burn it away with chemicals sold for the purpose by most hardware stores and garden centers. After five or six weeks, when the chemicals have saturated the stump, you can burn it off to the roots. Check with local fire authorities before you burn the stump: during periods of dry weather, such burning may not be permitted.
To move a large rock, break it down to movable size—less than 300 pounds—by drilling into it with a carbide-tipped masonry bit and driving steel wedges into the holes until the rock splits. Then twist malleable iron wire around the rock so you can hook a comealong to it.
Dragging a log with a comealong. Attach one log chain to the log, 2’ from the end, and a second chain to a nearby tree. Hook the movable cable of the comealong to the chain around the log and hook the stationary end to the chain on the tree; draw the log toward the tree by moving the handle of the comealong back and forth. A release frees the handle.
Attacking a stump with chemicals. Drill 1-inch vertical holes 10” into the stump, no more than 6” apart; 4” from the top of the stump, drill diagonally into the vertical holes. Fill the holes three fourths full with flammable chemicals and add water to the top. When the water and chemicals have been absorbed, refill the holes with chemicals and nail a sheet of plastic over the stump. Dig a firebreak 18” deep around the stump, with its inner edge about 4’ from the stump.
After five to six weeks, remove the plastic and fill the holes with kerosene. Place pieces of char coal on the stump, soak the charcoal with kerosene and light it—the stump will smoulder up to 24 hours before it's reduced to ashes. Caution: if you must leave the site, extinguish the fire.