Removing a Tree Limb without Damage

Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com. In this episode, you're going to learn two things. One, you're going to learn how to take a sizable branch off a tree. And number two, you're going to learn how to cut the branch off the tree without damaging the collar right under here to make sure the tree grows back in around where you've cut off the limb without using any tree sealer or any of that kind of thing. So let's get started. The first thing you're going to do to take off a large limb like this or bigger ones is you're going to undercut it. And the reason you're going to do that, you can imagine all the weight that's upstream from this branch here. If we just attempt to cut it the normal way, cutting right through here, when it gets to a certain point, the branch is going to just topple off and it's going to strip and take back a lot of bark here, damaging that. And of course, that's detrimental to the tree. It also opens it up to disease, fungus, pathogens that can get in the tree. So to avoid that, you've got to do two steps. The first thing you're going to do is undercut. So you're just going to come up off of the branch, off of where it enters the tree, a little bit of a distance and just cut. Now cut about one third up into the branch. As you can see, this goes pretty quickly. Printing saw has aggressive teeth and it does very quickly what you need to have done here. The second thing is to come from the top now, just a few inches, or you can go a little bit further up. I'm doing it here because it's easy to reach. And I'm just going to start cutting straight down right here. Now you can imagine what's going to happen as the weight overpowers the resistance. There it goes. Watch what happens right there. Very clean. No strip back whatsoever. So now you've got this stump here that is not so heavy as to damage the tree. All right, now to cut this correctly, there's a couple of things you need to know. You can see this area right here. This is included bark. And this area that's kind of swollen around this branch that goes in is tissue that actually will grow back in and cover this wound once it's cut off. If I take this saw and I cut parallel, right down and enter right out here, I'm going to cut all of that off and it will not heal properly. You'll end up with a big dead spot. So to avoid that, what you're going to do is start about right at the edge of that included bark. It's about this far. I'm not up here. I'm up here. And when I saw through, I'm going to come out about right down in here. There's going to be a taper. It's probably 20 to 30 degree taper. That's going to do a couple of things. It's going to leave this collar intact. Number two, it's going to shed the water away from that does come down here and create a cleaner cut and a faster healing cut. So here we go. I'm going to start right here. Boy, that fast motion cutting is really hard work. All right. So now you can see there's a nice clean cut here. This is left intact. And this area right here will grow in and include this. That's the proper way to do a tree cut on a heavy branch like that. If you like the video, like it. If you have any comments, get back to us and let us know. Until next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay from DirtFarmerJay.com.