Spring in the woods and chainsaw sculpture

Sorry for the lack of blog posts recently, I've been busy with work, visiting these exciting organisations, and also making stuff like this:

Spring is fast approaching, with buds swelling on the Sweet Chestnut for a few weeks now:

Bluebell shoots are also pushing up:

And I got a nice picture of a bumble bee a couple of weeks ago, sunning itself on one of our log piles:

I'm pleased to see this pipe is in use again:

It may not be obvious, but once you look at the base of it, you can see that a bird has been busy filling it with moss to make a nest:

The exact same thing happened last year too, as you can see in this video:

I've also been trying a new way of making my chainsaw-carved wooden stools. First, you need a wooden board with some holes drilled in it:

Then, you put it on top of the log the log which will become the stool, and drill through the holes - only going in a short distance though!

Then, bolt the board to the log:

Turn it the other way up...

And start your chainsaw sculpture, as shown in this video I made a few years ago. Here's the end result:

All that needs doing then is to remove the stool from the board, and trim a slice off the end to get rid of the screw holes:

And there you have it, one piece of simple chainsaw sculpture!

All I need to do now is find a use for all the sawdust and offcuts...

Mike

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Stools for schools and other odds and ends

A local school recently asked if I could supply them with various items of wooden seating to use in the small area of woodland they have access to. Of course, I was delighted to supply them with what they needed!

I took the opportunity to try out a new idea for making the benches. I started with a couple of slabs trimmed from coppice stumps, and used the chainsaw to cut a V-shaped notch into each:

I then used these to support the log being made into a bench, which gave two immediate advantages - first, it stops it rolling around, and second, it elevates it a bit, so you don't have to bend down so low when working on it:

The next step was the usual one, as shown in my video on how to make a bench, cutting notches for the feet in what will eventually be the underside of the bench:

Now for the next new bit - rather than setting the bench on its feet to cut the seating area, I rotated it a quarter turn:

I then pushed the feet into the notches, just to check they were exactly vertical:

Then, I was able to walk along with the chainsaw, using it to slice a thin layer off to make the seating area. This is easier to do in a straight line from above than doing it from the side with the saw horizontal, and much more comfortable too!

The only downside was that having the saw at an angle tended to leave more chain marks on the wood:

But they quickly disappeared once I put the bench horizontal and did a quick skim over with the trailing edge of the chainsaw bar:

And I was left with a rather nice bench!

The school wanted some simple log stools as well, so I selected some suitably-sized logs to cut up and transported the results with my log trolley:

I even managed to get it all into the trailer and the car in one trip!

Here's the end results, delivered to the school field:

In other news from the woods... the Bluebells are growing, having had the first shoots pop out the ground in the second half of January:

And this hen pheasant has been following me around. She nearly ate some bird feed from my hand! Far too tame for her own good I think...

Back in Rye, we did get a light covering of snow one day in January, but it only lasted a couple of hours and there was no time to go to the woods and photograph it there...

I've also been playing around with my Carry Freedom Y-Frame bike trailer, and now have it set up to run on my mountain bike. I tested it out hauling about 25kg up and down a hill, but I'm not convinced I'll be bringing all next winter's firewood back this way...

Talking of firewood, the insulation I installed in our dormer roof a few months ago has certainly done the trick - it looks like we might be using about 30% less firewood than before!

Till next time...

Mike

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Busy day cutting firewood and felling trees for The Pelham

Today was a busy day! I arrived at the woods at 07:45, and after sorting some odds and ends out (like a culvert blocked with leaves...), I used the Truncator, mounted on the side of the trailer, to cut some logs to take over to The Pelham:

As I videoed it for the time-lapse using my GoPro camera, I know it took 28 minutes to cut about one cubic metre of loose logs, which I think is pretty good!

Once these had been unloaded over at The Pelham, my friend Dan and I got on with felling the trees in the car park - here's a timelapse video of the first two stems coming down:

The trees weren't huge, but we put the Tirfor winch on them anyway as insurance, as having them fall the other way, into the gardens of the adjoining houses, was not an option! We got a decent pile of logs out of it, which will be split up at some point in the next few months, and hopefully will be dry enough to burn next winter:

I also made a stool out of the bottom of one of the trees, which could be used in The Pelham once it's dried out. Here's Ollie, who works at The Pelham, testing it out:

Don't forget, if you're local to Bexhill, that The Pelham coffee bar opens in a couple of weeks:

Post by The Pelham.

Mike

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Coppicing, stools and benches

We had a productive day in the woods yesterday, coppicing a few stools and adding to the pile of split and stacked firewood, ready to burn in a couple of years:

I also picked out a number of straight sections as I went along and made stakes from them, which will come in useful at some point:

I also turned some of the logs from windblown trees into benches for the community garden in Rye. There's a video of how to make the benches here.

I also made a couple of stools (again, video here), one for use at the wood, the other to sell:

Finally, when I got home I found this bizarre sight  a mushroom had been growing under my car! Presumably it's feeding on the wood chips lying on the drive, left from cutting logs up with the Truncator (video here):

It looks like the weather is turning colder soon - it'd be nice to have a frosty day to work in the woods, it's a bit warm at the moment when wearing chainsaw trousers!

Mike

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Timelapse chainsaw scuplture: making a stool

I've been out playing with my GoPro camera again... Here's a timelapse video of me making a stool from a log using the chainsaw:

Don't forget there's a longer video with full instructions on how to make one of these stools as well:

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Video: using a chainsaw to make a stool

Back in December I posted a series of pictures on how to use a chainsaw to make a stool in one piece from a log.
Well, I thought it was about time that I made a video of the process, as it might be easier to follow. So here it is:

Mike

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Making a stool

When I did my chainsaw training last year, one of the things David Rossney showed us was how to make a stool out of a short log, which could then be used to hold logs for sawing while upturned. Here's some step-by-step photos on how to do it. But first, here's what you end up with:
UPDATE TO THIS POST: I've made a video of this now, which you can watch here, then carry on and read the text below it...
To start, get hold of some sufficiently large diameter logs. I got mine from a tree we felled back in January, which I sawed into suitable lengths after felling, so I could leave the logs to season for a while. Here's a picture of them after felling last winter:
Assuming the ends of your log are already flat and parallel (if they're not then re-cut them), then the first step is to put the log on its end on some flat ground, and put four gently sloping cuts in on the sides, leaving it looking like this:
Then cut around the top, a couple of inches from the end, allowing the slabs to fall of the fours sides. Make sure to leave enough thickness for the seat!
Depending on what you're going to use the stool for, once all four sides are off you might want to tidy up the underside of the seat:
Then, put the stool upside down, ready to cut the legs out:
Make a cut parallel to one of the sides:
and then a cut parallel to the opposite side, meeting the first cut at the bottom so that you end up lifting out a wedge of wood:
Give the stool a quarter turn, and then do the same again:Don't worry if the cuts don't meet exactly at first. Just go in again and cut a bit more, maybe with a little twist to curve the cut slightly:
Once they meet you'll have a couple more wedges:Again, if you're trying to make a neatly finished stool, at this point you can tidy up the underside of the seat, carefully!
The next step is optional, but it does make the stool look nicer. Stand it the right way up, and use a pushing chain (top of the chainsaw bar) to put a chamfer on the edge of the seat:
After that, this is how the stool should look:
For this particular stool I also chamfered the underside of the seat, to try and minimise the risk of splinters (it's going to a school).
I also chamfered the corners of the legs. Again, this is just finishing touches, and optional:
And here's the finished product:
We took the stools down to a local school that is buying them from us this afternoon.

A few points:

• Your first stool may look a bit scrappy, it took me four or five before they started looking neat.
  
• Making these stools can make your back sore - try and get yourself in a comfortable position to minimise bending when possible.
• If the log isn't heavy enough then it will try to move around while you're cutting it. Treat your first stool as a practice to find cutting positions that keep the stool from moving. If you're going to put your foot on the stool be very careful to make sure that there's no way you can get the chainsaw bar anywhere near it! Even though you'll have safety boots on (won't you!?), you still don't want to cut them.
  
• It's gas guzzling work - making two stools used a whole tank of fuel.
• Start with a sharp chain, because there's a lot of cutting!
  

I'll do another post tomorrow on the other stuff we got up to today.

Mike

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