I have the opportunity to get several very large diameter old growth White Oak trees which were killed by a tornado that tore off all of their limbs. There are at least 5 or 6 such trees.
The size of these trees present a number of challenges, since I do not have the equipment to handle logs this big and there are no sawmills locally that can handle trees of this diameter.
Does anyone have any knowledge of how such trees would have been handled historically? When the settlers moved in, how did they work the big trees into usable sizes?
One solution is this:
which has been used in the past when loggers had to work trees larger than their equipment.
I am considering this, but would like to know of any other ways
I am also considering alternate ways of getting the trees themselves down, such as blowing apart their roots in a similar manner. Part of the reason for this is they have a lot of hazardous dead limbs, and cutting them down could be very dangerous.
