An old foreman's rant about my notch cuts finally clicked for me

Been climbing for about 8 years now, mostly in the PNW around Eugene. I always did the standard open face notch and thought I was fine. Then last spring we had this massive red oak, and my foreman, Dave, just lost it watching me make the notch. He yelled something like 'you cutting that with your eyes closed?' He made me redo it with a Humboldt and everything just... felt better on the hinge. I fought it for a decade because I learned the open face first. Has anyone else switched notch styles late in their career and seen a real difference in control, or was I just doing the open face wrong the whole time?

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willow_garcia23d ago

Did you ever take a step back and look at how the Humboldt changes your body position on the saw? Once I switched I realized the open face was making me lean in weird and fight the kickback zone, but the Humboldt lets me keep my head up and actually see the hinge through the whole cut. It never clicked for me until Dave forced it, but now I feel like I was just copying bad habits for years instead of learning the why behind the cut.