That moment a 60-foot oak dropped a branch right through my service truck windshield

I was on a job in Richmond last Tuesday, trimming back a big red oak over a driveway. Got a little too confident with my notch cut and didn't account for a rotten spot in the hinge wood. The branch twisted hard on the way down and punched straight through the windshield of my Ford van, missed my chainsaw bar by maybe 2 inches. Total repair bill came to $1,200 and I spent the rest of the day roping everything down piece by piece instead of dropping it clean. Has anyone else had a close call from hidden decay messing up a hinge?

2 comments

2 Comments

angelacooper6d ago

Are you seriously blaming the tree for YOUR bad cut? You said yourself you got "a little too confident" and didn't check the hinge wood. That's not "hidden decay" messing you up, that's YOU skipping the basic safety step of looking at your wood before you commit to the cut. Every tree has hazards, that's our job to find them before the saw starts. A rotten spot in the hinge is something you catch with a good inspection, not something that just sneaks up on you. I've seen plenty of guys blame "hidden decay" when really they just didn't want to admit they made a lazy notch.

grant.margaret6d ago

@angelacooper you make a fair point about checking the hinge wood, and I agree we should always look close before we cut. But I have to respectfully disagree that hidden decay is never a real problem. I've been cutting for over thirty years and there are times when rot goes deep into the trunk with no visible sign on the outside, especially in older oaks and maples. You can poke and prod all you want, but sometimes that weak spot is way up inside the tree where no inspection can reach it. A good cutter can lower their risks, but no one can see everything that's going on inside a tree just by looking at the bark. I think we owe it to each other to admit that sometimes the tree hides things from us, even when we do everything right.