I hunt back in there all the time so I already had a few trees picked out to cut. This one is tall and I had my doubts the the wood would be any good. Usually trees in this shape are rotten on the inside. I figured I'd know when I went to cut it down. When you hit rotten sections the sawdust looks different and the saw cuts through very fast.
Here I'm cutting the notch. So far the tree is solid in the center.
Down it comes ...
The tree is solid all the way through and seasoned to perfection. It's an old larch tree and about the best firewood tree we have available here. It has splits through the entire length though wich will make it a little more difficult. As I cut the log the splits broke off so it was like the individual pieces had already been split. It also makes it a little more difficult to cut into firewood length since the slit portions often come apart before the chainsaw is all the way through. The good side is that I won't have to split them later. I'm making a cut up through the unsupported cenbter section here to make it easier to cut the log into firewood lengths safely. If I started at one end and worked toward the center the way the tree was supported It would have tried to squeze the saw's kerf shut on the saw. By cutting up here the log will lay flat and be easier to cut into small lengths.
I had a lot of problems with the chain coming off the bar on this saw yesterday. I put a new chain on part way through cutting and checked the bar over. The only thing I see wrong is that there's a lot of wear on the groove in the bar. I'll pick up a new bar next time we're in town. This is an old Craftsman saw that used to belong to Susan's dad. The saw runs great but uses a lot of gasoline. We have a newer Homelight that's nearly identical. It uses a lot of gas too so it must be inherent in the design of the saw. I need to order a coil for my Stihl and get it back into production. It's bigger and much, much faster...especially on the larger trees. This tre was about the biggest I'd want to take on with this saw.
This is the lower half of the log. It rolled into the ditch on the other side of the road when I cut the tree in half. (That's why I was standing on the uphill side when I cut through it.)
The second tree I cut down didn't cooperate as nicely. I had the notch cut but the weight was on the back side so It pinched the saw when it began to fall the wrong direction. Since I was so close to home I didn't pack an extra saw like I usually use when this happens. I used an axe to cut through and relieve the pressure on the saw to get it out. I was cutting into the notch I'd already cut with the chainsaw and the axe ricocheted (spelling?) off and ruined my shoe.
It came awful close to ruining my foot as well!!! I finished the cut with a 30 in. bow saw. The tree fell the wrong way as expected and got caught in the trees behind it. I backed the pickup to the base of it and hooked the chain onto it. I set the chain so it would twist the tree's base when I drove forward so the tree would slide to the side of the stump opposite the chainsaw's engine and ... hopefully!!! ... not land on my chainsaw. It worked and I used the saw to finish cutting the tree into firewood lengths.
We cut up some more trees to finish up the load and headed for home. Some of the wood is green stuff that was rejected by the loggers so it will be stacked in the back of the wood shed to season for a few months before we burn it. We don't get into the last half until late January so it should be seasoned by then.
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