Had a productive afternoon round at Mark's workplace yesterday. He took one of the big trailers up into a field on the hill behind his warehouse where we could do the chainsawing without worrying too much about disturbing people and making a mess. It was easy enough for the tractor, but a challenge for the jeep as the access was fairly steep and churned up mud about a foot thick, got up there at the second attempt though !
Mark did a great job using the tractor and lifting strap to move the bigger logs on and off the trailer for cutting, would have been a real struggle without it. I'm sure I need one of those at home !
I'd packed the jeep up with all the gear in the morning, or so I thought, but on going to get the alaskan mill attachment out of the jeep to show how it works I discovered I'd left it under a bench in the workshop, d'oh #-o (homer)
As it turned out the pieces we were working on were better suited to freehand sawing anyway so luckily wasn't an issue on the day.
Then I discovered the bigger husky with it's nice sharp new chain didn't seem to want to cut at all, weird. Closer examination showed that the muppet that had put the new chain on had managed to put it on with the teeth running in the wrong direction
:lol: Turning it round not surprisingly restored the cutting performance and the afternoon went pretty well after a dodgy start !
Didn't take many pics as I was busy working most of the time and dodging Mark and his tractor with big lumps of wood swinging around on it ! Mark was keen for a big pile of firewood for his woodburner, but surprisingly we discovered that there really wasn't much firewood there at all (and it doesn't burn very well anyway of course) and the wood he had was only really good for turning, wouldn't have been suitable for anything else at all really
He ended up with a few token offcuts as firewood though to keep him in a good mood :lol: Here he is with his firewood pile, I did try and stop him, honestly :shock:
As the light was starting to go we heaved all the cut pieces back onto the trailer and slid down the slope back to the car park. Mark didn't see it but I nearly took out a fence and gate post on the way as the jeep was sliding about in the deep mud and the braking wasn't having much effect ! Managed to miss it some how though thankfully.
Back in the car park we transferred some of the cut pieces over to my wee 6'x4' trailer with a bit of discussion about how strange it was that the whole tree only seemed suitable for turning and not much else, but he did manage to hold onto some decent pieces for himself despite my best efforts :lol:
Mark's new 6' manual saw had arrived earlier in the day and his mate Gordie came round at the end of the day to help try it out on the large stump. My back had stiffened up by then, as well as elbows and wrists and pretty much a bit of a wreck all over, so I stood/sat and watched and took photos and gave helpful bits of advice that I had read about on the internet while managing to eat bits of cake and drink some tea, some good multi-tasking I thought :lol:
I'll leave it to Mark to describe how they went about tackling the stump later if he gets the chance, but here's some pics of the guys in action in the meantime and the not too shabby result of a fair bit of hard work =D>
Looking forwards to seeing how the cutting up of the bigger logs goes at the mill if I get the chance, and might need a second round on the remaining smaller stuff once we've recovered from yesterday's efforts, but a very satisfying and productive day yesterday, enjoyed it a lot and the aches and pains subsided a lot after some ibruprofen and best malt medication last night :wink:
Many thanks to Mark for the opportunity to help out and for sharing out the timber, much appreciated. Just got to go and unload it now and move it into the workshop, now where's that tractor..... !
Cheers, Paul
