Cleaving chestnut

We popped up to the wood on Saturday to collect some materials for the roof and walls of the firewood shelter we're building at home (pictures will come soon, I promise...). It's not the usual time of year to fell trees, but we need some wood of a certain length for the roof and we're certainly not going to buy it! Felling in the summer means the wood is wetter, and therefore may not be as durable, but these pieces will be under a tarpaulin once they're up, so we think it'll be OK.

Tracy got stuck into cutting some of the regrowing chestnut along the footpath - we want to keep this region as a kind of shrub layer, as this will be more beneficial for the wildlife.

It's also of a size now where we can use it to weave the walls of the firewood shelter:

While she was doing that, I felled a few selected chestnut stems which were beautifully straight - I got five 2.8m logs out of one of them. I then used a froe and mallet to cleave the logs:

The wood has a really nice grain, very straight:

It was also dead easy to peel with the wood being so wet - after cleaving I was able to peel the bark off the whole log in one go for some of them. Then home they go to be bolted onto the roof of the shelter...

Mike