Our primary heat source is firewood, and I do the cutting. We're fortunate to live in a heavily wooded area with generous neighbors. I prefer standing dead trees (elm, ash, maple) but take whatever Mother Nature sends my way. So any other wood burners out there? Any left-handed wood burners? I ask because I have stitches in the palm of my right hand, and I tried (for a very short time) to use my chainsaw left handed. Not a good idea. Just wondering... Al
My neighbour is/has a wood burner. Dunno whether he's left-handed or not. Don't suppose that'll help much... I'm quite tempted to put one in my new log-cabin. It's not a real log-cabin of course, this being England - just log-cabin type construction i.e. the corners of the planks are notched and overlap. It pleases the manufacturers to refer to it as a log-cabin, though...
Burning wood is great IF (it's a huge if) you have a reliable source of wood (A coppice or woodlot that you can manage), you have the time, and you have the vigor to do the cutting, splitting, hauling, stacking, and chimney cleaning. I'm a young 55, but I did convince the wife to let me get a log splitter for the tractor on the premise that the purchase cost was less that the expense of an emergency room visit for chest pains. (We lack national health care here in the colonies...) All that said, cutting wood is the equivalent of a part-time job that saves me about $3,000 in heating bills since propane is spendy, and our house is large. So, it's $3,000 a year of tax-free income in exchange for the the sweat.
My neighbour made his, which he shares with some mates. I've no idea where I would get my wood from but I wouldn't be using much anyway. Ross (Spiritburner) gave me a chain-saw a few years back and I'd be using that...
For many years I used wood only to heat the house. As it gets more difficult to find (free!)fire wood and my back and joints are shouting ugly things at me I decided to get a coal stove that will burn wood as well. So, as soon as it starts freezing properly, and my left shoulder stops the yelling out will come the chainsaws and I'll clean up some willow trees (pollard willow?) that grow behind my garden. Being ambidextrous with a slight preference for left (my left arm is stronger) a chainsaw is no big problem. But one cannot use them left-handed, to awkward and even dangerous imho. Best regards, Wim
We have a multi-fuel burner which goes on to supplement central heating. Never had to buy logs as we lost some elms to the Dutch elm disease, some other trees were dead but still standing so we took those down. Husband uses chain saw. If we run out of wood we will have to move house!
Same here. Tap water and house are heated with wood only. Electricity is only used as a backup or when it's convenient e.g. when no one is home for several days. It's central heating of course, and the wood furnace is in the basement where one input will heat all 2.5 m[sup]3[/sup] of water in the accumulator tanks. That's sufficient to keep the house warm 24h when it is around -10C outside, as it is now. In sweden about 25% of all private houses are heated with wood as the main source, which of course is quite natural in a country where wood is one of its greatest assets. Around my area, those 25% is more like 100%. All my neighbours use wood to heat house and water. I take all wood from my own land, and I also cut and chop for my brother and his house as I'm at it. I mainly choose birch since that's the best firewood. The odd pine or fur will be tucked in if I happen to thin out in those areas, but they are mainly meant for timber. Felling season is right now, and I consider it to be recreation, not a shore. Splitting will be in March, or thereabout. Using heavy machinery is always fun. 8)
Yep, and I'll even give you a hand (hopefully, not literally ) so you can show me how to use it properly - it scares the sh!t out of me...
Even though I'm in England, I have a American Vermont Castings woodstove. It has a large flat top so it always has an 8 pint kettle sitting on it. In the winter we do most of our cooking on it. Yesterday it had two kettles, two coffee percolators and a a large stock pot making about a gallon of Mulligatawny soup. We have a friendly tree surgeon who gives a great discount if you buy wood uncut and unsplit. My chainsaw is a 110v electric Remington that I bought in Home Depot, Tucson for $49.99 about 8 years ago. Wrapped it in a towel and brought it back in my baggage. Must have cut 12-15 tons of wood with it and it's still going strong on it's original chain. I have a friend who runs his woodstove purely on wooden pallets. I think you call them skids in the US. He has an old van and he drives around the local industrial estate once a week picking up any broken pallets. He's been doing it so long that the companies now set them aside for him. I was offered a top handled Stihl chainsaw recently but turned it down as I value my limbs. Top handled chainsaws are strictly for the highly experienced.
Good idea about the broken pallets, which would save me using the chainsaw - co-incidentally, it's also a top-handled (aren't they all?) Stihl...
Hi David. "Top handled" refers to the location of the grip that houses the throttle trigger. On most chainsaws the trigger is at the rear with a second handle on top to take the weight of the saw. It is pretty much impossible to use this type of saw with one hand and therefore very difficult to cut the other arm off: With top handled chainsaws, the trigger is set into the grip above the saw. In the UK they are referred to as 'Arborist's Chainsaws' and are designed for one handed use when working at height in trees. Retailers are only supposed to sell them to qualified forestry workers and tree surgeons. Of course that doesn't stop them appearing on the second hand market and on Ebay. As they can be used one handed, you have much less control and the other arm is very vulnerable: Regards, Terry
Thanks, Terry - the chainsaw I got from Ross is an older version of the 'safer' type shown at the top of your post...
I can certainly see the advantage of a top-handed saw, but I know that I don't have the grip to deal with one for long. I don't do it, but many of the folks around here use what are called "skip-chains" that have half of the teeth of a normal chain. The gap between the alternating teeth enable the chain to cut deeper and faster since it doesn't end up floating on accumulated chip. I compromise by taking down my depth control "rakers" for each tooth for a more aggressive bite. You can have a razor sharp chain that will cut nothing if you don't attend to the depth control rakers too.
I file the rakers appr. every third or fourth time I file the teeth, but it varies after demand of course. You shall always use a depth gauge when doing this. If only working on soft wood, I take the raker down more than the gauge tell me just to get the better cutting, as you describe, but then the teeth must be very thoroughly filed for that extra bite.
Christer, you're right about the depth gauge, and I do use one. I got carried away the first time i filed the rakers and really had to handle the saw with care so as not to stall it. I also found that there was no way that I could bore cut with that chain. I don't see well enough to file a chain in the woods, so now I carry a bag of sharp chains with me so that i can use my chain sharpener in the warmth of the garage! It saves me a lot of time and aggravation.
I heard that top handled chain saws were designed to save the user having to find somewhere to place his pint.
Exactly! A too agressive filing generally means that the saw will be more prone to kick-back, and that is not good when doing a bore cut. Even if the entrance is safely done without kick-back, it will be very noticeable once pushing the blade straight into the tree. It won't behave exactly as you like. It will kick and toss inside the cut, and even if it can't kick back and hurt you as it's trapped in there, it feels really bad. I actually prefer to use a bore cut behind the open face notch (giving the hinge thickness at once), and then work my way out to the back of the tree. Atleast when the dimension of the tree allows it. It gives a better control compared with sawing from the backside towards the directional notch, and also allows to leave a strap in one of the back corners to prevent pinching the blade before a fell wedge or iron is inserted. I also do as you do with taking an amount of sharp chains with me into the forest rather than filing on site. Sure, I can file the chain in field, but it's better and more precise to do it at home. It's also part of the therapy to calmly sit in the warmth of the furnace with a cold beer and file the chains you've just used up during a hard day. (It's also good practice to bring two saws. Sooner or later the saw get pinched so bad that you need another one to set it free... Also, it's much nicer with a lighter saw for the delimbing.)
Two saws would be wonderful. I've had to call a friend twice to cut my saw out of a pinch. How embarrassing... I've had one tree fall "backwards on me and bend my bar. I abandoned the saw as soon as I saw things going badly, and was grateful that it was just the bar. I hung it up in the barn for a while as a testament to the mixed luck a guy can have in the woods! This is the saw that I use: Although it's small, it is a good match for my size, and has impressed some folks since I try to keep my chains well tuned. I'll probably get a Stihl or Dolmar when I get a second saw. Now that it's heating season again, I'll likely spend two days a week cutting to keep the racks full.
Husqvarna's are nice! I use an old model 36 (or is it 38? ) and like it a lot. Very reliable! There's also a cheapo made-in-cheapoland small one (10inch blade) used to climb in trees (it is light enough to use single handed) and a bigger Dolmar model. Haven't used them for a while, will have to check machines and file chains if I want to harvest this winter... Best regards, Wim
Yeah, I like Husqvarna too, but don't have any myself. Not a saw, atleast. I have a couple of Huskvarna shotguns and carbide lamps of course. I'm kind of hooked on Stihl, so I have two of those but also an old Jonsered (another good Swedish brand still under the Electrolux concern where Husqvarna also used to belong). A clearing saw is also a must, and I use a Jonsered, but it's getting pretty worn out so I actually plan on getting a Husky there.
I was cutting wood today to get ahead of a cold weather front headed our way. Lots of mud, but at least the tree tops weren't frozen to the ground! I have a Kubota RTV900 named "Murphy" as our farm utility vehicle. Murphy has a 3000-pound electric winch up front that I use to drag the trees to a cleared cutting area. In this case the cutters dropped the tree tops into a stream and I was glad to be able to pull them out. Mud is the big limiting factor to how much that I can haul out. If the ground is hard, I can carry about 1000 lbs in Murphy, and pull a trailer with an additional 800 lbs. (The trailer by itself is very heavy) Photos for your amusement!
Now I'm confused - doesn't putting fuel in Murphy negate any savings (or ecological benefits) you might get by burning wood. And then there's your time...
If you take the fuel to run the chainsaw and the fuel for the kubota and try and use that amount to heat your house for the winter I'd be very surprised if you'd be warm. Then there's the fun part. Playing with the chainsaw and then the log splitter. Not to mention having to build 2 logs sheds and fill them! Then there's the fun of starting a fire, chestnuts and marshmallows and it seems to encourage you to have a dram more frequently... And you get to play a making things. (it might just be a wood burner thing! I've got it bad!) Oh, I'm a Husky man!
A log boiler doesn't really inspire to those things... You'll take the efficiency away if you open the hatch to roast chestnuts or other stuff. But nothing wrong in taking a wee dram after lighting it! You can always take out the latest electrical bill, and have a good laugh as you enjoy that dram.
David, don't tell me you're working seven days a week in Britain!? Here we only do five days, so there is plenty of time to do other things... Seriously though. Many wood-burners already have the forest as their working place in the first place (farmers generally have a good portion of forest that still need attending, and the fire wood is only a bonus from the real thing, i.e. the timber and maintenence of the land). That's not the case with me though, since I'm not a farmer despite owning some land and woods, but there's still plenty of time to do this when not working. The odd weekends plus that I actually have a friday free every month or so which is a perfect day to go out in the forest. The fire wood doesn't take that much time in demand anyway. The machines has shortened the efforts severely. One full day in the forest is generally all it takes to fell one years consumption of wood including driving it home and unload it where it's stored. Then there's a couple of days to split and stack it in the early spring. And finally one day to drive one years consumption into the boiler room in early autumn (not the wood splitted the same year. It's supposed to be from the year before that). Very good money earned for just a few days effort. And it's not just the money. You will still have full comfort with heat and warm tap water, even if there's a power cut in the coldest winter.
Woodcutting is a very common activity here for most households. The time is considered a non-discretionary chore since the cost of heating fuel (gas, oil, or electric) is quite high. The Amish cut for lumber and leave behind the tree tops and slab wood. The "English" go in behind them and cut firewood from the tops, and trim the thicker slabs for firewood too. My annual cost to cut firewood, including saw chains, gas, and diesel, is about $100, with most of that in saw chains! I'm retired, so I enjoy the option of when I cut. I prefer to cut in the cold of winter when the ground is hard, and the sap has left the wood. Summer cutting is good, but the bugs are bad We have a wood stove on a weather porch, and a pressurized boiler in the basement. The downside of the boiler is that it DEMANDS electricity for the circulating pumps. A loss of power can result in an over-pressure within 30 minutes. We have an emergency generator primarily for the boiler, but it actually runs most of the house. We also have a propane backup boiler so that we can leave the house for extended periods of time. It's an expense, but it gives us some freedom. The house came with the two boilers, and I added the generator.
Al, well done for retiring at 55,,,in the UK the retirement age seems to be rising each time I look at it...sounds like a good lifestyle, you have much more space than us and therefore much more availability of firewood,,,here a cubic metre of dry seasoned hardwood is around £50 ($80) ,delivered free if you are close to the supplier.even in the coutryside there arn't too many places you can nip out with a chainsaw and get some wood ,my pals lucky as he's clearing an old woodland so its more acessable for shooting parties. fortunately i'm on mains gas and in a very small (even by uk standards)house so its still cheap(ish) to keep warm...
Could do and in the past I have, many times. People like to get married on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays in this country. I'm still contracted to work weekends so they could call on me to do it. However, Saturdays are spent looking after my mother and her affairs. I need one day a week to sort out my own house and affairs. So that's how it goes - no opportunity for tree-felling...
