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| Lee, leaning on the machine |
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| Bill giving the lesson |
Today we began in the greenhouse at Sentinel Elm with a lesson on how to sharpen the teeth of a chainsaw. With a speed of 70 miles per hour, that little chain (looks like a bicycle chain with canines!) tears through wood and tries to tear through anything else it can touch. So the blades need regular sharpening--daily, as suggested by Bill!
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| Note the jig |
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| Betsy, limbing |
When we had sharpened the chainsaws, we returned to the woodlot to have Nora fell her second tree and then each of us took a turn at bucking and limbing. Bucking is chopping the stem of the tree (and large branches) into 26-28 inch long segments. We had steps to make a plan for this process, too, which can be equally dangerous: look for overhead dangers, assess the butt of the log (on the stump, near, how far, did it slide), does it have any spring poles and assess the pressure of the log. (Fellow chainsawyers--I think I'm missing some parts of this plan...). In addition to chopping up the stem, we need to remove the little limbs that stick off the side, too small to call firewood.
Our last challenge of the day was to learn the geometry of spring pole cutting
(to be continued)
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