I attacked the dead trunk by cutting a small wedge to start and then a deeper and taller wedge around the smaller one. By that point there was more of the trunk diameter cut out than was still intact, but trees—even recently dead ones—are strong and the whole thing was remaining intact as I expected. So then I started slicing in from the un-wedged side, but that's when I encountered a minor glitch. I got most of the way through when I felt and heard a "kachunk" as the full weight of the trunk settled down on the blade of the chain saw trapping it there. But the tree wasn't budging. Hmm, what to do...
I called my neighbor to ask if he could come over and give an opinion. I figured at that point the safest thing would be to take a sturdy pole of some sort and try to push the trunk by reaching up as high as possible for better leverage, but I wanted a second opinion. So my neighbor was going to come over to survey the situation, but in the meantime I turned back towards the tree as a very slight breeze kicked up and I could hear the start of some wood cracking. With that, the tree fell exactly where I expected and wanted it. So problem solved and I called my neighbor to say, "Never mind." (Good thing I cut it down yesterday as the wind today, though stronger, was from the wrong direction.)
At that point it was getting dark, so I just left things as they were. I finished the job today by trimming all the branches, chopping up the trunk and carting the whole shebang back to the woods where we dump brush all the time (with permission).
Surprisingly the tree really doesn't look too horrible now that the dead part has been cut away. My hope is that the good half will eventually grow to fill in the gap left by removing the dead half. Either that or the rest of the tree will eventually die too, but for now at least maybe it has a fighting chance.
Below are a few thumbnail pics. Click'em to view the larger images...
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