Sunday 23 September 2012

Log cutting experiment

My old log cutting bench has seen its last season:

As I was sketching out a new, improved design, I remembered something that friend and helper Alex mentioned a few years ago. She said she'd made a log cutting system involving uprights with many logs stacked on top of each other. I guestimated she meant something like this:

This is how many logs you can cut in a couple of minutes, the first time you used it:


It's a huge efficiency in time and energy (physical and fossil fuel). There's at least one log lift less required than with the previous bench, and it may be close to perfect. It will also mean only one large pile of sawdust (for animal bedding and compost toilets), instead of several small piles with the old, portable bench.

This is a Mark I experiment to see if the gaps and angles work. It's based on the width and blade length of my chainsaw, to produce the 40 cm lengths required for our main woodburner. We have a second burner that uses 25 cm lengths and I'm still thinking about that.

(Worth mentioning that, going into my fourth winter in a yurt, I've never been so prepared when it comes to fire wood. I have dry wood in various locations, and have even got the beginnings of a pile for next winter.)

(Also worth mentioning that I'm hating the new blogger interface that I've been forcibly migrated onto. Instead of struggling with it, I'm going to start looking for another platform. I've stopped following other blogs that have migrated but please bear with me.)

1 comment:

Stephen H said...

Alex you dark horse you !

And there was me thinking you might be a last minute logger ?

Hey it was cold this morning but turned out a great day
Stove on now so I am in for a little last minute logging, must keep my mouth shut !

Interesting system, do you get much kickback ?
Would love to see you in action doing these things, but you know that.

I have been playing on Wordpress and have found odd things working in a very strange way, but it looks good, could just be the iPad, maybe it doesnt like Apple ?
But it does look very good, good luck

Do they have better ethics seem to think they might or is it just PR ?