I had fun yesterday making a log 'skinny' out in the woods. Skinny == a balance beam for a mountain bike. The tool collection consisted of: 48" crosscut saw, professionally sharpened last month. Rogue Hoe Travis Tool. Pick mattok. 4 ton bottle jack Bark spud (which turned out to be close to worthless on this oak tree, the bark was still stuck on too tight). Draw knife. Pinch bar 2 ton grip hoist with 60' rope and 10' chain choker. 3 pound siingle jack, aka hammer. Folding Silky BigBoy 60" Cant Dog. Salvaged a 25' oak log that came down in the storm last summer. The location is a mile into the woods. Some of tools are stashed nearby. I carried in the saw, jack, spud, knife and hoe. Log laid perpendicular and on the downhill side of the trail. Cut off hollow stump and top. Bottle jack to keep it from pinching and to avoid an under cut. A bit of heaviness to carry a mile but worth its weight. The crosscut was singing. I bought it 15+ years ago, finally got it sharpened up. It did cost a bit to get done. The person who did it said that 'this is a nice saw'. I wouldn't want to cut a seasons worth of wood with it but for a few cuts its a lot of fun. Although it has a softwood pattern it can still get through the hard woods. I think I counted to 350 on that cut. Grip hoist to drag it onto the trail. Not the best photo, you can see the cable. I messed up and didn't get a roller under the log when I cut it and it wanted to plow its nose in while I dragged it. Took me more time to recover from that error than anything else. I had a 1' piece of trex to use as a platform for the jack. I would up digging in front of the nose of the log and using that piece of trex to get it to ride up and allow me to get a roller under. The grip hoist is a great tool for pulling things but with wire rope and chains is miserably heavy to carry even a short distance. It even sucks setting it up. We don't have a block there to allow a directional change. Another heavy thing to carry a mile. Without that you need to move the grip hoist to a different tree. Which can require re-threading it which means dragging a 60' rope out and back. I do need a Wallingford's logger grab to make hooking and adjusting the choke easier. Log placed. I did some bark peeling. The bark spud was a bust on this tree. The bark was still on tight and it couldn't get under to get chunk/strip to peel. The pick mattok worked better but that was just brute force chopping off chunks. I tried the hook of the cant hook, but it couldn't grab just the bark either. Ended out that the draw knife was best but there was a bit of a spiral to the bark and I couldn't get pieces bigger than a 4' feet. I have a cheap modern knife. It does ok when freshly sharpened but its not like they used to be made. I wish I knew where my grandfather's went. He had at least one nice old one. It still needs another day of work to peel the bark, plane it down, solidify the rocks that are holding it in place and add some to ramp up the entry and exit. The natural arc of the log came in handy for keeping it up off the ground. Only the right side is making contact with the ground at the moment.
