I’ve cut a lot of firewood on this old beast. At least half of everything we burn in three houses was “stick wood”. Or to look at it differently enough for 1.5 houses a year. Most dangerous part I see is my tractor is an oddball MT drawbar. Someone converted this saw before I was born from a 3 pt hitch. The belt is right in front of your face with an MT. Would hate to find out what happens if that belt comes apart. Anyone using an old one of these Id suggest you investigate the blade. We used ours forever with a rip blade on it. Makes it so much more dangerous. My guess is these rip blades made their way onto a lot of old buzzsaws from old sawmills or edgers. Once I finally finally finally figured out it was a rip tooth design I used some fine sandpaper with rubber backing wheel on a 4” angle grinder and reconfigured the teeth to crosscut. What a world of difference. Big smile. Sharpening with sandpaper, rubber backer and angle grinder is the way to go. Zip zip fast.
Used a belt driven saw off an old Case VAC tractor for years as a kid. Made firewood for Grandpa and Grandma and our house. Like Dennis said, we never had an accident, but you had to be mindful of what you were doing.
For sure, especially on smaller poles. I should get one to have around here. I think I could find a tractor to run it off.
I can agree with that. One caveat, if you do mess up it might be worse than most chainsaw accidents. Take your hand off in the blink of an eye. Just like logsplitters, never put your hands where they don’t belong. Period. Follow that simple rule and you’ll be ok. Also don’t like gloves. Also if you have someone taking the cuts away they must understand the cutter and only the cutter controls the cut. I’ve had people want to help power through a pile of sticks. No good, too many cooks in the kitchen. My belt always worried me more than the blade. Have a new one on there now. The oriGinal was dinosaur hide sewed together with cat gut.
ahh, my new belt is canvas. Had a problem with it slipping, big time. Super tight belts add more danger IMO. As a conpmmercial Mason we had this waterproofing for masonry called Karnak. Went on like tar but wasnt tar. Water based product. Dried like a hard rubber. I had the bright idea of coating the inner belt with it. Well it didn’t stick to the belt when I used it but transferred to the steel wheels/pulleys. Didn’t work as planned but worked well anyway. Still on there gripping like crazy
Growing up we had one of those saws on the farm. Ran it and a hammer mill we used to grind feed off an Allis Chalmers CA. Looking back I’m not sure which was more dangerous, the saw or the belt between the tractor and the saw. Same with the hammer mill.
The running joke at the feed mill was you could tell how smart a farmer was by the number of fingers he still had. My grandpa had 9 so 90th percentile…
The WD series were good tractors. The CA was the only Allis Chalmers we had. The other tractors were bigger IH’s. But I’ll always remember that little CA running the saw and the hammer mill.
