I thought Black locust is supposed to be some of the hottest wood....How's that snow not melting??? Thinking about getting me some helping hands like that tong. A pickeroon and a logrite cant hook bar are also up for consideration. Wife is always asking me what I want for Christmas and I never have a good answer, but maybe these tools can make both our lives easier and safer.
The tongs are great! I didn't have to hug those dirty rounds so much. Today's take- I had to work for it!
Midwinter, you sure keep the car hoarding thread interesting and no one can say you're not willing to get down and dirty. Between my last comment and now a neighbor buddy came knocking on my door to tell me his neighbor was cutting a tree down. When I got there I saw it was an old apple tree with the base diameter about 17". It was about 3 times what you have there and there was also some cherry and birch. The birch is ready to burn now so I am happy about that. I really got to get set up to show pictures here, but the apple wood wasn't too pretty anyway. It was a friend of the family amateur cutter and so there were bad positioned cuts. Many 45 degree angles plus what I call jacks. Remember playing jacks? Well picture those shapes as full size logs that include clusters of branch nubs jutting out. I will be doing some re-sawing for sure, but hey its free wood!
Midwinter Did you get two of the tongs? I bought one and then got another one. It helps to stay balanced if you have one in each hand and the rounds aren't overly large.
I've gotten hacked- up apple too. Seems like a tree that amateurs aren't afraid of tackling. If you can get the chunks cut at a right angle, they split pretty easily, the wood is brittle. Don't you have a phone that takes pictures?
No, I only got one. I had in mind to use them for pulling logs out of brush piles. I may get another, they weren't very expensive.
Yes i do and I take plenty of pictures. The problem is I'm now using a basic web browser to go on the internet. Sick of viruses and this is my worry free solution and by the way it works great. However, I don't have the usual picture file and so not sure how to unload the pictures from my phone to it. I also am not that tech savvy or enthusiastic and I don't do all that cloud storing stuff. Anyway I'm told it can be done using my Chrome Book and so I just have to spend some time with my son and I'm sure he will show me what to do and then how to upload them here.
You will be pleased at how easy it is to post camera pictures to FHC using your phone. The only wrinkle you will encounter is, you will probably need to reduce the data size of your pics. I use a free photoresizer phone app by Xllusion, but there are many others.
Was out today driving my daughter back to school (TCNJ) the old Trenton State College, now its The College of New Jersey. Anyway, I always drive with a watchful eye for free wood and though I only had the small car today I still can scrounge. An Urban Woodsman must always be on the ready even when out of his elements in the country. Anyway on the way back home we drove down a country road with some farm houses, won't say the name of the road, but it was in Plainsborough NJ. It was then I spotted out the side of my eye a rather large Ash log laying down a utility road. I told my wife to turn around and drive down the entrance to that driveway. Turns out it led to a gate that was closed off to public traffic and behind it were train tracks serving an Amtrak commuter line which passed us while we were there. This is typical of how I find wood. at this time of year I'm really looking for dead dry and ready to burn, but this stuff turned out to be dead damp punky Ash that has been downed for at least 3 years. Unfortunately the biggest log was in the worst shape(a mix of wood and cottage cheese), and so I left most of it. Sorry about the picture quality, but it was getting late and because of that my phone was taking some blurry shots. Here you can see my secret weapon, the stealthy cordless chainsaw. This is the smaller one with less power I keep in the car. For my Ford Flex with the trailer crate I keep a more powerful cordless chainsaw. These shots are from 40 minutes later returning home in the complete dark and the unloaded stack I will cut to size during the week.
You fit quite a bit! If you have a rear hatch, you can get a decent load. I never understood the appeal of sedans. Nice job compensating yourself for the drive.
Thats exactly how I see it Midwinter. It partially paid for gas and tolls, plus I get a little thrill out of it. My wife hates this activity, always worried about someone looking or cops giving me a ticket. Admittedly I am daring, but never do anything I can get in trouble for. This time she didn't mind because we were in a real sheltered spot.
You have to be a bit of a pirate. I've had a few "Hey, what are you doing?!?" moments, mostly just people being nosy. One time I was in a culvert picking up riprap granite and a cop told me to quit it. He didn't make me unload my car though!
I wiggled a few honey locust logs out of the brush pile. Once again I used my logging tongs- I couldn't have pulled them out otherwise. They are pretty muddy, I'll wait for the rain to wash them off before cutting.
