Weekend activity

As you might know, we heat with wood. A friend in my motorcycle club has a pile already cut that I plan to pick up this Saturday. I think it's seasoned and ready to burn. Last Saturday I carried out a promise I made to a neighbor to clear a downed oak out of his woods. Well, I started to. My freshly-sharpened saw became dull after about six hours of work, so I quit. Here's a picture of the tree. It had been down almost a year, and they had removed the branches some time ago. Click to enlarge. Val took the pictures, by the way.

 Professional cross-cut teams can slice through something like this in seconds. Of course, they get to work on a uniform log in a sawbuck. They have plenty of room to swing their arms, and there are two of them. And they're showing off. Me, I'm an old guy on a sweltering day working on a tree whose preferred disposition is unknown and only slightly guessable. I know gravity is pulling straight down, but it's pretty hard to estimate the torque and center of gravity.

Consequently these things frequently don't go smoothly, and this activity was no exception. The problem arises from the unknown stresses on the tree and from working with only one saw. You get most of the way through a cut, and without warning the tree shifts and you have a firmly trapped saw. The saw isn't hurt (the bar is solid steel) but it isn't going anywhere. Sometimes a second saw can make (very careful) cuts and free up your stuck one.

Well, I had a second saw once, but I sold it to a professional tree trimmer, who never paid for it, by the way, and I lost his "business" card, so I can't even try to get it back. I actually do hope he's getting good use out of it—it was a good saw. Bigger than my 25-year old farm boss, and brand new. My current one, by the way, according to the guy at the implement dealer, is still worth what I paid for it on ebay. It's a really good saw.

I wanted to shorten the supporting branch so the log would be a safer cutting height. And sure enough, on my first major cut, I cut a little too deep, and the tree settled on my saw.

Sometimes, if you have wedges and a sledge hammer, and the bar is in deep enough, you can wedge the cut open. Not this time. (Actually, you're supposed to wedge the cut open before it binds up, so you can finish the cut. Just be careful not to let the top of the bar hit the wedge. Good way to dull your chain really fast.)

Sometimes you can lever the tree to the side a bit and work the saw loose that way. If you have something better that rotten sticks for levers.

And sometimes you can rock the tree and open the cut enough to let the saw come loose. Rocking can weaken the uncut wood, too, so if you hear crunching, it's good to rock a couple more times. Makes things looser.

This is me trying to rock the tree. It did actually move a bit. And levering with a board I found moved it somewhat, too. I dickered around with it, trying several angles and some more rocking. It was harder work than cutting.

I got lucky. The tree collapsed and the saw escaped uninjured.

Now to finish those six hours. Next post I'll have a few pictures of the cut-up tree.

You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them. The picture of the stuck saw is fuzzy because Val was laughing. They say say only the truest of friends will laugh at you when you're in a predicament.

Val is the truest of friends.