Watch: Right Way to Cut a Tree — and Terrible Chainsaw Mistake?

This is interesting. I watched these videos in reverse order, for reasons which will soon become obvious.

The Swedish Homestead folks posted a video last fall, demonstrating how to cut down a tree and make it fall right where you want it to land. I hadn’t watched it before, but I’ll post it below. There’s not much surprising or different from what I’ve always done, except that after notching it, he plunged his saw bar into the tree trunk. (I’ve always simply cut from the back of the tree towards the notch.)

One advantage of his method is that you can safely cut a tree that’s of larger diameter than your chainsaw bar. Another is that you can control the thickness of the hinge portion of the tree trunk. When the tree begins to fall during your cut, you are sometimes left with a hinge that’s too thick and actually fails to act like a hinge, instead binding the tree as the notch closes during its fall.

I’ll definitely be keeping this method in mind the next time I have to take down a tree, which happens more often than I’d prefer.

Anyhow, a number of folks apparently ranted and raved about the video above, saying the saw operator made improper contact with the tree using his saw bar. So he decided to make a rebuttal video, describing what the problem was alleged to be, and demonstrating that what he did was not so bad after all.

To me, this shows the difference between an experienced arborist and a crowd of internet know-nothing know-it-alls. Check out the precise hinge on the stump in this video. That doesn’t happen by accident.

These guys really do know their stuff.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.