saw horse design

[wood troll]

hi Steve,

I know that you are hand sawing but if you find that you needed bigger quantities and need to use a chainsaw I have a suggestion....

I have built a chainsaw rig out of my own timber which holds a stack of logs 1 metre high, off the ground. The width of the stack is dependent on the lenght of your chainsaw blade (mine is 45cm). The rig is solid enough to take lenghts anything from a metre upwards, for longer lengths it just a matter of balance. I have cut 3 metre lengths easily. The advantage of this method is that you only have to start up the chainsaw once after you have loaded the rig and then cut through the whole pile in one go as many times as is needed to make it into the lenghts that you want. This means the chainsaw is not idling whilst you are moving one log around. I can cut up 1 cubic metre in about 20 mins.

The rig is made only of wood so that any encounter with the chainsaw does not damage the chain and all parts are replacable. The basic design is an adjustable oak stand with legs and four upright hazel poles that holds the logs. It demountable and light so I can take it to wherever the timber is. People even pay me good money to cut up their wood piles using it!!

If anyone is interested I can send pictures to Tracy.

happy logging

wood troll

[Toby Allen]

I'd like to see the pictures please.

[steve rollnick]

Dear Wood Troll (no idea why people use less personal names, but maybe you have become your name? Joke),

Thanks for this outline of a rig. A bit ambitious for me right now, but many thanks all the same.

Steve

[wood troll]

hi Toby Allen

I've sent some photos of the chainsaw rig to Tracy. Not sure what she will do with them....

wood troll

[tracy]

Tracy will be good and put the photos up later. Right now I am going logging and splitting! We use a similar sort of rig...

http://peplers.blogspot.com/2009/04/logs-wildlife-and-trees-growing.html

[tracy]

Photos are up of the chainaw rig

http://www.swog.org.uk/articles/chainsaw-rig-by-woodtroll/

[Rich]

Hi there Wood troll,

Loved the pics of the saw horse, I constructed something similar at the weekend. Basically I just stuck 8 or so chestnut stakes in the ground, filled it with cord wood and cut it up, much as mike has suggested. I found a couple of problems: 1st off I made the stakes way too far apart, I was trying to cut small logs 8" or below and I found all the logs spilt through the gaps in the stakes. Then I put in more stakes and put a strap around the middle, which worked for most of the cuts until the last one, as long as I kept tensioning the strap, the stack eventually became so unevenly strapped it collapsed so I had to cut each log individually. The other thing I found was while cutting the smaller stuff, the chainsaw would grab the wood and spit it out violently or jam the saw. From your pictures you seem to be cutting much longer lengths, so maybe you haven't experienced these probelms?

Also just intrigued by the piece of wood sticking out of the saw horse? is it for measuring?

Cheers

Rich

[mikepepler]

Hi Rich,

I know what you mean with those problems you had. I made a couple before find the spacing of skates that suited me. I found that using a strap round the middle helped a lot though - how tight are you doing yours up? I used a ratchet-strap, and wound it up as tight as I possibly could before starting sawing.

As for the small logs spinning and flicking up, the trick is to stack the pile so that any smaller logs are in the middle, buried under the larger logs. I'd aim to have the pile at least a foot deep, ideally more, so that the weight holds it all steady.

Cheers, Mike

[wood troll]

Hi Rich

The piece of wood sticking out the rig has wooden pegs (turned on my pole lathe!) through it to enable the width to be adjusted. You might say where are the other holes for the pegs? Clever plan there, but I just haven't drilled them yet even after 3 years as I have managed to saw up over 3m long poles 15 - 10 cm thick without adjusting the rig.

The main reason I have developed my rig is because the more rustic version used by Mike risks blunting the chain on grit and stones on the ground. The time taken to sharpen the chain and the cost of loosing teeth is well worth the effort of making the rig. The only other alternative is to leave logs lying on the ground to cut into but if your cutting up a specific load you have to eventually cut them up somehow.

I did have problem to start with with the logs jumping out but I overcame this by always placing large heavy logs at the top of the stack locking the rest in below. Also keeping the chainsaw with the blade tip raised whilst cutting prevents the logs jumping out as the logs you are cutting are pulled down against the uprights. Also you might find keeping the revs high and the blade cutting effectively prevents the blade jamming. Ah, and the other thing is... size of chainsaw does matter... a powerful chainsaw obviously can cope with large stacks. (I'm just boasting! ;~) )

Tracy has asked me to send in more specific details on the building of the rig. I'll get round to it in the next couple of days...especially if it too hot to work outside!!

he he

Wood Troll

[tracy]

Thanks Woodtroll, good information there!

Mike has his logs on bearers, that's how he doesn't blunt the saw on the ground. The picture didn't show that.