A woodcutter's lament: the difficulties and dangers of cutting firewood. (The woodlot).

I've been cutting firewood off and on ever since I was a boy, and that was a long time ago. While I don't qualify as an expert yet (I don't think I've made all the mistakes), I do know some things about the problems that woodcutters may encounter--and some measures to help avoid or solve those problems.

First, a word about equipment. A woodcutter needs a saw, and these days that probably means a chain saw--actually two saws are better: one larger and more powerful to handle the log-cutting tasks, and a smaller, lighter saw for limbing and trimming. This is partly a safety issue, but I'll also point out that when one saw gets trapped in the wood (it will happen--particularly to beginners), you can use the other one to free it. Be sure to follow the basic instructions about maintainance and use provided in the owner's manual--especially those parts about keeping the chain sharp and properly tensioned. You'll also need a small hatchet for lopping off twigs, and a hard hat equipped with hearing protectors; chain saws are loud enough to cause permanent hearing loss. Some sort of eye protection is mandatory. A hi-lift farm jack is very handy for rolling logs over and for solving some other weighty problems. Once the tree is down and chunked up, you will want a splitting maul and at least two wedges--and maybe even a log splitter. But more of that later.

Felling the tree

So, equipped with your saw(s), hatchet and hard hat, you head for the woods. You select a tree to cut, perhaps because it is dying or has been struck by lightning, or maybe it's just in the way of another project. Put your equipment down and walk around the tree, trying to figure out which way it "wants" to fall. Some trees have developed a decided lean to one side, perhaps because of the loss of a limb, or maybe they just grew that way. In most such cases, there is no choice but to make the felling cuts in places that will encourage it to fall in that direction; any attempt to make it fall in any other direction is doomed to failure.

It may be necessary to clear away some brush to reduce tangles in the area where the tree will fall. In particular, remove any significant saplings; if caught by the falling tree, they can become "spring poles" which release with dangerous force when the tree branch holding them is cut away. When removing saplings, be sure to cut them horizontally and as close to the ground as possible. An angle-cut sapling stump is dangerous to people and to vehicle tires--it is perfectly capable of penetrating the sidewall of a truck tire. If that happens, the tire is history; it can ruin your whole day.

One of the reasons for going through the very hard and unrewarding work of brush clearing is to reduce the chance that the woodcutter will trip or stumble. When cutting wood, it is vitally important to watch your footing! Don't even think of beginning a cut when your feet are on uncertain ground or when you are off balance. If you must cut on a hillside, be very, very careful to plant your feet solidly. Chain saws are incredibly dangerous tools, and they will slice off your leg just as efficiently and cheerfully as they will cut a branch.

Before you crank up the saw and make the felling cuts, be sure to clear an escape route away from the expected direction of the tree's fall. And here's another important safety tip: never fell a big tree when you are alone; always have another person in the area--someone who can at least go for help if the worst happens. Once the tree is down, the presence of another person is not so vital--but it may still be a good idea. Be sure the person is well out of the way when felling.

If you are cutting a leaning tree, simply make the first cut (about 1/3 of the way through) on the "lean to" side--it is probably unnecessary to cut the traditional notch. Then walk around the tree to the "lean from" side, and make the second felling cut several inches above the first. When the tree fall begins (You'll see the saw kerf begin to widen), shut the saw off and get away with deliberate speed. A good-sized tree can weigh several thousand pounds, and when it falls it can kill or maim in an instant. Even if you're certain about the direction in which it will fall, be aware that the trunk of a tree that is breaking away from the stump can do amazing and unpredictable things. It might fall straight and remain propped on the stump--but it can also lash out to the right or left with incredible force, and it may even shoot backwards over the stump for several feet. Play it safe and get away.

If the tree you're working on is decayed or hollow inside, all bets are off. There is no way to tell where the trunk's strength's lie or (more important) its weaknesses. It may not even tolerate the first felling cuts without falling in an unexpected direction. If you must work on such a tree, take frequent breaks to evaluate the situation and be super cautious.

If the tree is not a leaner, it may be possible to use the felling cuts to bring it down where you want it--but don't bet the farm on it; if you cut wood long enough, eventually an apparently straight, well balanced tree will surprise you. Be prepared for anything. To "control" the direction of fall, cut a wedge-shaped notch (one cut horizontal, the second angled down from several inches above) on the side of the tree in the hoped-for felling direction. As suggested above, this first cut or notch should go about 1/3 of the way into the trunk. Remove the loosened wood wedge. Then go around to the other side of the tree, check your escape route, and begin the final horizontal felling cut. Begin this cut several inches above the first horizontal cut, and try to keep it parallel to the notch. The uncut wood between the notch and the final cut functions as a hinge of sorts, and that wood (as if viewed from above) should form a rectangle, not a triangle. When the kerf begins to widen, remove the saw, shut it off, and get out of there. If the tree comes down where you wanted it to, congratulate yourself; you've earned it.

Tree felling stories: From the sublime to the ridiculous to the deadly

Story #1: Some years ago, my wife and I walked up the sloping hill behind our barn to fell a big oak that had been struck by lightning. It was closely surrounded by other trees, but we thought we could make it fall between them. I cut a deep notch in the appropriate side, then walked around to the other side for the final cut. It seemed to take an unusually long time and a very deep cut for the kerf to widen. In fact, it didn't widen at all. The tree was virtually cut completely through, but it showed no inclination whatever to fall over. I shut the saw off, retreated, and we discussed the situation. Apparently the well-balanced tree was being supported by its upper-branch contacts with the surrounding trees. We decided that the situation had become unpredictable and very hazardous. There was no danger to other people or to livestock, so we just walked off and let the tree stand. Let the wind or the forest gnomes take it down. We walked back to the house, and we were sitting at the picnic table sharing a cold one when a mighty crash sounded from the hill. We smiled at each other and opened another cold one.

Story #2: A friend and I were once cutting wood on his property. He had identified a nearly-dead oak to be cut for firewood. We drove our pickups to within easy walking distance of the tree--then we slowly circled it, trying to devine which direction it wanted to fall. After discussion, we decided that it would fall to the west--perhaps the northwest or the southwest, but generally to the west. Since I had the bigger chain saw, I notched the tree on the west side, then walked around to begin the final felling cut on the east side. As I cut, I watched for the telltale widening of the kerf--but that isn't what happened. The kerf narrowed and trapped my saw blade as the tree tried to fall to the east. Although we were both experienced woodcutters, we'd been dead wrong about the probable direction of fall. I had to dismantle my saw's engine from the blade, and we used his saw to finish felling the tree--to the east.

Story #3: But the most thought-provoking event occurred when I was cutting a tree that had become little more than a 15-foot snag. Over the years, this thick-bodied oak had lost most of its big upper branches, until little remained but the 15 feet of trunk and its last big branch, broken with what seemed to be a typical greenstick fracture above, the tips of its branches resting on the ground. I figured to bring them both down by simply making the usual felling cuts in the trunk. I was in the process of doing this when I became conscious of the need to answer a call of nature. I shut the saw off and stepped away from the tree. My personal plumbing was doing its thing when crash,t The big 10-inch branch had come loose from its resting place against the trunk and had come down with terrific force precisely where I had been working just seconds before. I'm sure it would have killed me. What I had thought was a greenstick break (with the stump of the branch still attached to the trunk), had in fact been a complete fracture of dry wood. I had been very, very lucky; I sat down and considered the benefits of woodburning in particular and long life in general.

Cutting the tree up

Once the tree is down, you start cutting it up into stove-size lengths; measure your woodburner if in doubt about the length. It is usually best to start by cutting the branches, trimming off the smaller ones and tossing them onto what will become a large brush pile. If the branch is simply sticking out into the air, make your cuts from above. But if the branch is resting on the ground with any force, cut from below; this will keep the saw blade from being trapped. The somewhat thicker branches (about 2"-3" or so) will become kindling, and they are pitched onto a temporary pile--or perhaps directly into a truck box or trailer. Don't let them accumulate underfoot, where they can become dangerous impediments to good footing. By the way--if your "felling assistant" is still in the area, try to persuade him or her to pull away the branches which you have cut off. But make sure that the assistant is warned to stay clear of the saw; the woodcutter can't be expected to watch both the cutting job and another person at the same time.

A tree that has just come down is probably quite stable, but be aware that when you start removing branches, you may affect that stability; watch it. Once you have cut off enough branches, the tree may be free to roll away from a pivot point--perhaps a single large branch holding the trunk up off the ground. If the trunk or any large branches are well up in the air (as they often are), they can knock you flat or into the next county if the tree rolls or falls off its pivot.

Once the branches are off, and (hopefully) the trunk is flat on the ground, you're ready to really start makin' firewood. Most of the serious danger to the woodcutter is over, though the unexpected can still happen. We were once working on a thick oak trunk at the edge of a gently sloping field. I had made several cuts at stove-length intervals, and I was then working to roll the log over--it was nearly 30" in diameter. After several tries, it began to roll downhill with a speed that I had not anticipated. Helpless, I watched as it rolled inexorably toward our pickup truck--and breathed a sigh of relief as it veered away, coming to rest about 10 feet away from our transportation. In this conflict, our dear truck would have come out second best. Lucky truck.

With the trunk on the ground, make a series of "almost through" cuts at appropriate intervals along the trunk. Don't try to cut all the way through; keep the saw blade out of the dirt. Digging a running chain saw blade into the ground can dull the cutting teeth in a big hurry, and the grit can cause accelerated wear of the chain's bearing surfaces. Once you have made all the appropriate cuts, it's time to roll the log over so that what had been down is now up. Some_ times it is possible to do this by using a long, thick branch as a lever, but sometimes the size of the log or the irregularities of the terrain make that impossible. There is a device called a cant hook or peavey (and a modified model called a Log Lifter) that is supposed to be able to manipulate logs in this situation, but I've never found them very useful. When a log refuses to roll easily, I pull the hi-lift farm jack out of the pickup, and place it against the side of the log so that the lifting platform digs into the side of the log like a steel tooth. Start pumping on the handle, and the log will roll--usually. Sometimes, the foot of the jack will simply be pushed down into the soil; if so, try placing a slab of wood under the foot to effectively broaden its base. It may also be necessary to place chunks of wood in an appropriate location to keep the roll from going too far. Once the log is stable in the desired position, crank up the chain saw again and finish the cuts, producing chunks of wood that need only to be split and stacked.

Some woodcutters will leave the wood stacked in the field or woods for months or a year before taking it to the woodshed, but if you do so, be sure to take steps to insure that the wood is not in contact with the ground, especially in low areas. A piece of wood that is lying on damp ground won't do much drying, and it may even take on water like a sponge, becoming even heavier than it was when green. I've seen such wood practically spurt water when hit by the splitting maul.

If your chunks of wood are too big and heavy to be lifted into the truck or trailer, you'll need to do some preliminary splitting in the field so that you won't risk a back injury trying to wrestle them up off the ground. Bring a maul and some wedges along. It is possible, of course, to do all of the splitting in the field, but I find that the task requires fewer operations if I do most of the splitting in the vicinity of the woodshed.

Splitting and stacking

Once the wood has been delivered to the general area of the woodshed or other storage area, it needs to be split into slabs of appropriate diameter. Of course, thin slabs burn quickly, and thick slabs are better for preparing the woodburner to hold a fire all night.

The basic tools for splitting firewood are a maul and two or more wedges. Sometimes, if the wood is straight grained and the gods are smiling, a single blow with the wedge end of the maul will simply make the pieces fall apart. This is much more an art than a science, and no one can tell you much about how to do it; experience and practice are the only teachers. If the maul alone won't do the job, it's time to place a wedge (probably in the mark left by the maul) and then use the blunt end of the maul to hammer it down into the wood. But be careful. After a wedge has been hit by the maul or sledge a number of times, it will begin to peen over at the edges, producing something like a flange. Eventually, bits of this flange will crack and fly off, possibly hitting the woodcutter. More than one person has been blinded when these steel missiles struck an eye. Wear eye protection. Some woodcutters are conscientious about grinding this flange off, and that's a good idea. Also, every so often, a wedge will get stuck in a chunk of wood that still refuses to come apart; that's what the second wedge is for. Avoid using a saw or axe to free a stuck wedge; doing so could easily ruin a good edge, at the very least.

Straight-grained pieces are usually fairly easy to split, but pieces with branch grain or Y-shaped crotch pieces can produce profanity from the most serene woodcutter. It is sometimes helpful to split from what had been the lower surface of the piece (lower when the tree was standing), and attempt to split off a slab from the outer part of each leg of the Y. But sometimes even this trickery won't work. In such instances, I often resort to the chain saw, cutting the crotch into comparatively thin (four inches or so) sections. These dry well, and they seem to last a particularly long time in the fire.

For many years I cut my wood with these basic tools, getting excellent firewood and lots of good exercise in the bargain. But eventually too many of those years had passed, and I came down with a muscle and tendon condition that is often referred to as "tennis elbow." I consulted several physicians about the problem, and they suggested everything from ibuprofen to an arm strap to cortisone shots. (The doc who gave me the cortisone shots said that with this treatment the tennis elbow pain would get worse before it got better. He was half right.)

Eventually the discomfort became so debilitating that I couldn't even handle a fishing rod without pain--and that, of course, was intolerable. So I bit the bullet and, with my wife's concurrence, purchased a log splitter. In case you've never seen one, a log splitter is a heavy machine that uses a small gasoline engine to run a hydraulic pump which in turn powers a hydraulic cylinder which drives a big steel wedge into the wood with incredible power--on the order of 20 tons of pressure. These monstrous gadgets are expensive, they're hard to move around, they're noisy, and they stink. But they work; even those stubborn crotch pieces are no longer a problem. Nor is my tennis elbow.

And log splitters are also, of course, potentially dangerous; don't ever get your fingers under that wedge. Also, unlike many of the other woodcutting operations, it is important that the operator of a log splitter work alone. It would be unwise for one person to be handling the wood while another managed the splitter's hydraulic control--there is just too much danger of that wedge coming down just as the wood handler had his hand in the wrong place.

After you've split a fair pile of wood, it's time to stack it neatly in the woodshed--or perhaps just in a convenient spot where it can be covered with a tarp to keep off the rain and snow. This, also, is something of an art, one which you'll begin to develop a feel for with time and experience. The first thing to do is to lay down some long, straight branches to keep the bottom wood in the pile from picking up moisture from the ground. For each long stack, use two such branches (or several branches in two rows) lined up parallel to each other. As you stack the wood, be careful to keep the stack vertical; rebuilding a fallen stack is no fun.

If it is important to keep the ends of the stacks straight up and down, this can be accomplished in several ways: first, you can select, for the stack ends, firewood slabs that are regular enough in shape so that they stack solidly. Second, you can drive posts at the ends of the stacks, though this is impractical if the stacks are very tall. Third, you can use what I call the bailing twine method: use loops of bailing twine to hold the end pieces in position by placing one end of the loop around an end piece, and the other end around another piece of wood within the stack at the limit of the twine's length. Use two loops of twine for each end piece selected. You don't need to thus tie in every end piece--just one every two vertical feet or so. The additional wood you stack on the twine and on the internal piece holds the end pieces firmly in place. Using this method, I've never had a stack collapse at the ends.

Although it might seem logical to have one stack for kindling and one for larger pieces, this method really doesn't work very well; it requires more work (in both stacking and unstacking) for little or no advantage. Just mix the kindling in with the larger pieces--where the kindling pieces actually seem to add to the stability of the stack.

Stacking on a slope is problematic; avoid doing it if at all possible. Stacks built on a slope seem doomed to lean and to eventually collapse.

If the wood has been stacked under a woodshed roof, the job is done. But if the stack is built in the open, cover the top with a plastic tarp or something similar, leaving most of the sides and ends open to the air in order to provide ventilation for drying. At this point, you have a perfect right to feel immensely satisfied--and perhaps a bit smug.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote that a man is warmed twice by his firewood: first when he cuts it, and again when he burns it. Now, I yield to no one in my respect for the Concord philosopher, but he was way off base on this one. Do you have any idea how many rimes a woodcutter handles each piece of wood? No--forget that I asked that question; that way lies madness. Or at least a degree of concern for one's own sanity.

Saw sources

DR[R] Country Home Products, Dept. 43613X, PO Box 25, Vergennes, VT 05491; 888-394-0032; www.drwoodsplitter.com

Better Built Corp., 785 Woburn St., Dept. CS, Wilmington, MA 01887; 978-657-5636; www.ripsaw.com

Norwood Industries, Inc., 252 Soewill Dr., Buffalo, NY 14225; 800-661-7746 ext. 357; www.norwood industries.com

Linn Lumber Co., 26380 Fern Ridge Rd., Sweet Home, OR 97386; 541-367-6900

Cook's Saw & Machine, 800-473-4804

Crosscut Saw Co., PO Box 7878, Seneca Falls, NY 13148; 315-568-5755

Stressed trees:

A target for insects and disease

There's no foolproof way to keep insects and diseases away from your trees, but keeping trees healthy and free of stress will help. Forestry resource specialists have these tips:

* Keep trees watered when there's not enough rainfall.

* Put mulch under your trees. Mulch helps retain moisture around trees during dry periods. It also helps prevent other plants from growing around the tree and protects it from lawnmowers and weed-whackers.

* Try to keep construction and heavy traffic away from tree roots. Root loss is the most damaging type of construction damage, says Gary Johnson, urban and community forestry specialist with the U of M Extension Service.

* Don't remove too much foliage when pruning. Remove no more than one-third of the living crown in one year. If you need to do more than that, spread pruning over a couple of years. But don't remove foliage from newly planted trees unless limbs are broken. And don't prune oaks until at least July 1 to reduce chances of oak wilt disease.

* Don't "top" your trees. Not only does it look bad, the largo open wounds may attract diseases and insects. "Often the new growth is weakly attached," Johnson says. "But most important, topping trees encourages decay in the stems, which is the number one cause for tree failures in wind storms."

RALPH SCHNEIDER
ELEVA, WISCONSIN