I cut six trees down in my yard today. Trying to push back the inevitable encroachment of the woods and get some more sunlight on my garden space and septic area. Two large cherries 14" dia, two 14" sugar maples, a 4" sugar maple and a 3" ash. My son and I brushed all of them out (stacked brush) so only the firewood-worthy stuff was left. Problem is with yard trees, they are so branchy that you wind up with a lot of waste if you don't use it all, I cut everything down to about 1-1/2" and even a bit less with the maple. I have been racking my brain for years trying to come up with a good solution for processing smaller stuff, in the 3" and less range. I have a wooden sawbuck and an EZ-Holder, and both suck for the really small stuff. And I don't want to just leave it. Everything under about 3" diameter is in random lengths from about 4' to 14' long. So I thought that maybe I would build a saw bench that stayed outside, and set up a cheap used 12" chop saw, plug in to the electric in the garage, and basically just zip through the branch wood with a stop on the end for cut-to-length and put a wheelbarrow or my tractor bucket under the cut side to catch everything. This is just a stray idea bouncing around in my skull at the moment. Has anyone tried this and if so, what did you think of the idea? Or are there an other cheap solutions out there that would be fast and relatively simple?
I gave a friend about a full cord of mostly 2x6 scraps accumulated through the year from what I collected building skylight tunnels. When it came time to process, we simply set a 16" stop on the mitre saw, avoided the nails and cut it all in about 2 hours. There was some apple branches from a yard tree and we handled them the same. It worked good enough but we had to hold some of the branches firm while cutting as they tended to bind if they were not able to be held tight against the fence of the saw.
Ive done that for years. I keep the saw outside year round. Just cover it with an empty tote. Such a time saver.
my branch wood is never straight enough for a chop saw. but I left a cheapo table saw outside to cut slabs doing about the same thing. The shed I had to store it in was just too far away. I have a good pull pruning saw that zips right thru green wood and I'll use that instead of the chain saw. It's just easier and sometimes even faster. Dead wood is a bit slower. I'll save some pine tree branches in a pile for kindling. They dry out and bust up pretty easy after seasoning for a year. Faster than cutting them.
Yep a chop saw or I have even use a table saw. Sounds like a plan to me. When I do my kindling I do it all on the table saw.
I’ve had some problems with my chop saw, the saw will ‘catch’ the branch wood so it will pull the saw and just wrapped it around the blade, automatically stopping it. Often this happens when the wood has room to move and the saw just jerks it out. If you ask me, a band saw likely sounds better as there’s a much better chance of control without the wood likely to fly at you since you can hold it with two hands but with a chop saw its 1. Ive done this to cut my wood for smoking sized bits. Helps when I can get them sized right and all. Just fruitwood tends to have a lot more knots in it so errors are more prone.
Quick branch buck, 3 cinder blocks + 6 2x4’s everthing gets loaded in then cut in 1 shot... anything too small for that branch buck is campfire wood. Easy!!!
I use my 12" miter saw to cut splits. It can get awkward. Several small branches at once could be dangerous. Keep your fingers!
basically this, each cinder block gets 2 2x4’s like a v shape. They just sit in the cinder blocks maybe 4 or 5 ft long each. Of course its not letting me load the pic rt now
