Humble Axe Choppin'

[SLOBuds]

I was listening to that leftie-leaning NPR radio last weekend and heard an interview with an up and coming rock star. This was a very humble rock star who apparently spent much of his youth 'chopping down trees with an axe' ... because of his family's extreme poverty.

Well, I thought about that for a bit and tried to picture guitar player/singer with axe in hand. Kind of a whimpy guy at that. Then I tried to remember if EVER in my life, including those times when I was REALLY leftie-leaning and in the braun of my ages, had I ever chopped down a tree with an axe. The answer is 'no I have never chopped a tree downl.'

It's pretty clear to me now that axe-chopping has propensity to leave blisters and sore muscles. Not that I mind sore muscles. It's just that I like to be able to move the next day and chopping down anything bigger than a seedling would probably leave me bed-ridden.

So basically I'm thinking that our singer is full of himself. Humbly full that is. But not so much that I'd want to buy an album or two.

I'd like to do this scientifically just to be up and proper.

Have you EVER cut down a tree with an axe?
Was it larger than a Christmas tree?
If you do this on a regular basis, how often and how big, and WHY WOULD YOU???

Have a nice afternoon. It's 72 degrees and 20% relative humidity in Los Angeles right now.

Martin

 

[dooleysm]

My parents gave me an axe last year for Christmas. After opening our gifts, we (myself, my folks, and my 7 month pregnant wife) went outside to 'play', as it was fairly nice for the time of year. Me and dad took my tractor up to the trail through the woods to work at clearing it. My mom and wife went for a walk around the trails I have cut through the pasture. There were several evergreens down across my trail through the woods, so dad and I set to clearing them with the tractor and axe. Most of the trees I just chained to the tractor and drug off.

One evergreen was about 14-16" in diameter and was too big for my little L3000 to drag off. We decided to chop through it with the new axe. Now, dad has a chainsaw, but it was at his house, 3 hours away. Also, there's no reason this trail through the woods has to be cleared. It's only purpose is for liesurely strolling and ease of toting out deer. We mostly decided to chop through that tree because it was there and we were there and we had a new axe. It took probably 45 minutes of us taking turns swinging and trying to break it by pulling with the tractor.

In the end, the tractor wasn't able to break it apart, and we had to chop all the way through the tree. My arms weren't the sore part, it was my hands that took the beating. I probably should have taken off my wedding band, and would if I had to chop another tree down. It was alot of work, but it was fun at the time.

There is no way that chopping down trees with an axe makes any kind of sense. Any person with a fit enough body to chop down a tree could go get a job doing manual labor for someone else for $6/hour and buy more wood than he could ever chop and split in a similar amount of time.

 

[rox]

My dad cut doen plenty of tres wiht an ax. He usually worked in cold weather and had a saying, it warms you twice, once when you chop it and again for firewood.

For the really big trees he and my uncle used a two man saw. My dad never had a chain saw. I can still visualize the two of them using that 2 man saw to cut down a big tree. For a little kid it was quite facinating to watch. I would say this was in the early to mid 1960's. My dad was always good with an ax, he and his bothers had to chop their firewood for home heating when he was a boy on the farm in Wisconsin.

 

[Highbeam]

As a teenager working for an outfitting company in the cascades us younger guys were always trying to be macho. Yes, we had seen the logging shows where a guy stands on a log and chops it in half, and yes, there were plenty of very attractive cowboy loving ladies there. We chopped those logs in half. They were the 16" doug fir variety and they were laying. I have never chopped a standing, live tree down.

I have used a chainsaw to cut another chainsaw out of a standing tree when the tree tried to fall the wrong way and pinched my blade.

 

[dmccarty]

Martin,

I have cut through trees with an axe that had pinched my chainsaw. Maybe I cut up a 12 inch tree. Maybe. Not fun but I did not really have a choice. This weekend I was clearing property lines with a DR Mower and a machete. The machete is a good hefty one but it really tired me out cutting through 3-4 trees that maybe where up to 4-5 inches in diameter. I really find it hard to believe anyone would really use an axe to cut down trees much over 12 inches in diameter. Possible but I think a saw would work better. And to make money you need to work fast which means a chainsaw.

I cut up some downed trees earlier in the year that should give me about 4 cords of wood if I remember right. I think it took me about something like 4 hours to cut the logs into rounds. Maybe 6 hours. Can't remember exactly. But if you had to do this with a human powered saw I would have been out there for days. One of the trees was over 24 inches at the stump.

I just don't see how you could be so poor that one could not rent a saw or save up. If trying to make money I don't know how you could do it without a chainsaw....

The story sounds like BS but who knows.

Later,
Dan

 

[HappyCPE]

OK, Martin, here goes....
I didn't grow up poor. Not rich, either. Sorta lower-middle class. Living in densely-packed Long Island [Lawn Gyland] a chainsaw was a tool a professional would own. As far as an axe, well, we didn't have one of those either. I had a hatchet. A dull one.

We had a chinese chestnut tree growing next to the driveway. At the wild and uncontrollable age of 15, I was asked if I wanted to cut the tree down. It was about 10-12 inches caliper. It was picking up the concrete driveway, but my parents knew better - They wanted me to get out some of the physical, violent frustration I was having.

Took all day but that tree was down and cut in 4' long pieces, bundled for the town to pick up.

Felt real good. That's a reason to cut a tree down by hand. And that rock star, I think I can identify with him. The old hatchet is in my garage.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

Had to cut TWO trees in pieces small enough to drag them off a road where we were basically "stuck" until the trees were gone. That was after a storm blew through while we were in the "back country" of a park. This was back in the 1980's. I was leaning all sorts of directions myself, induced by a cold adult beverage or 20. All we had was an 18" "camping axe" and a machete.

A couple hours of swinging a short axe will work off an alcohol buzz faster'n all the coffee I've ever drank.

Didn't turn me into a famous rock star either.

 

[SLOBuds]

Well actually, yesterday I went sailing in an old boat with my dad. My son was with us.

The boat scooted along at 4-6 knots. More bobbing along than anything else.

My father was in heaven. I was fine just being with father and son on Father's Day. My son was dreaming about all of the fast Cigarette-style boats shooting by.

One thing apparent to me was the value in spending 'slow' time at least part of your life. Like having talks with dad about what the different things were that he worked on as an engineer with Douglass Aircraft Company. Some times it's much better just listening to the ocean spash against the bow, compared to pushing buttons on your XBox controller to avoid that bad guy from shooting your brains out.

I'm sure that our forefathers got pretty good, and fast, at cutting down trees. But even at their fastest it wouldn't be near speed of the chain saw. And not as noisy as the chain saw. I'm hoping that all the extra time we get by using that chain saw doesn't drive us over to added time with the XBox. I'm hoping that the extra time is used for saying hello to the little lady and the little ones.

 

[zeuspaul]

16.5 seconds for a twelve inch tree with an ax. How much faster is the chain saw??

****UNDERHAND BLOCK CHOP
Using a five-pound single-bit axe, competitors chop through a vertical standing aspen log 12 inches in diameter and 28 inches long. Timing begins on the signal “GO” and ends when the log is severed. The world record was set in 2001 by David Bolstad in a time of: 16.50 seconds.****

Why use an ax? Because it is fun. Also. I chop my Washingtonion palms because the high fiber content messes up my chain saw. Twenty so far and counting up to eighteen inches in diameter. I wish I could do it in sixteen seconds. It takes me about a half hour per tree and I enjoy every minute.

Zeuspaul

 

[GeneD14]

We had a wooded lot near our house when I was a kid and my friends and I would spend countless hours out there chopping down trees to make "forts". Looking back we are very lucky that no one ever got hurt.
I still have an axe but almost never use it. The chainsaw is much easier.