I was talking to a relative who grew up on a farm. They burned wood for heat as did many others. He told me about this setup they had where a big 20' saw blade was mounted on some type of table and attached to a belt on their tractor. He called it a Buzz Saw. They ran this thing rain or shine, ice or snow! It amazes me how many dangerous chores were done on the farm back in the day. I asked him about the risks, and he just shrugged and said, "we had to cut wood". Can any of you relate to having seen or done this?
I picked my user name not realizing it was an actual tool. jo191145 has one. Kinda scary to watch in action.
I grew up going to the local apple harvest festival (parents were great friends w/ the guy that made the apple syrup). There was always a steam powered loco that cut cookies and shingles and would brand them with a hot iron for the years celebration. Pictures below are from there. So I've seen one a bunch but never worked with one.
I'm sure you meant 20"? 20'! Buzzsaws were pretty darn common...there's actually still quite a few around...my brother has one...powered by a small engine though (Kohler or something)
My grandfather had one powered by a tractor pto. Was only big enough to do less than 10” rounds. Everything else was handled with a chainsaw. It had a cradle on a pivot so you could place a log in the cradle and push it into the saw. just like this one:
We used one to cut "limb" wood. The first one ran off a pulley and belt on the super H International. Dad bought one later that ran off the pto shaft. Dangerous as all get out. Had a piece of wood fall back into the blade one time and it shot it out and hit me in the thigh. I was black and blue for a month.
Tim, I have used several of them. When I worked with a portable sawmill we often would get guys together to buzz up the slabs and sometimes we would do that when someone came for firewood. It gave us a break and was good to do something different for an hour or two. The last time I used one was just before my sons left home to start their own life. I ran the table. Oldest and biggest son brought the poles to me and youngest son took the cut-off and threw them on a wagon or trailer. We could cut a lot of wood fast that way. We uses a Farmall Super M and it was belt driven rather than pto. Very similar to the one Barcroftb pictured but ours was a bit larger and we did not have a guard on ours. You really had to be careful and of all the time I've been around those saws I've never seen an accident. The worst thing about them was the sharpening! There are lots of teeth.
Mine is a Dearborn like in the video , there is no better way to cut slabwood that I know of.A friend of mine had eleven bundles of slabs delivered with a log truck last fall. We put the buzzsaw on another friends 2 N Ford and had them all buzzed up before lunch. The PTO belt pulley is made to fit the Ford tractors so I am going to have an adapter made so I can use it on my Johne Deere. I had two men feeding me and one off loading. My grandfather would fell a tree with an axe and a crosscut saw , then use steel wedges and gluts to split the trunk into rails . The rails where then manageable to lift onto the buzzsaw . I like my chainsaw and hydraulic splitter but for some thing you can't beat a buzzsaw
It's probably easier to sharpen a West Virginia or Tennessee buzz saw than most buzz saws. There's less teeth on those versions.
WV and Kentucky...Tennessee is further south and the tooth average is starting to tick back up by the time you get down to the state line
