Zeez are my Fotos

Midwinter · Jul 26, 2018

Enzed Bill, how's your winter? Is your drying rack keeping up with your wood consumption?

Woodwidow · Jul 27, 2018

Enjoyed this thread. As Midwinter asked, how is it going?

T.Jeff Veal · Jul 27, 2018

Enzed Bill said: ↑

"Why so many noodles?" I hear you ask. Well, I'm glad you asked.

It's something I learned on this site and it has come in really handy over the last couple of days. You see, I had thought that anything other than cross cutting was to be strictly avoided, but I didn't understand that ripping and noodling, although they give the same result, are completely different with respect to saw performance.

I have a big pine tree trunk up on blocks in a small wilderness area between my property and the neighbouring farm. The landlord told me to help myself. When I moved in two years ago I took some cuts off it, but it was so big in relation to my chainsaw that it made me nervous at my level of experience, so I jacked it up onto a solid masonry block on one end and a thin round on the other to keep it from rotting, peeled the remaining bark off it and forgot about it.

Then, the other day I realized that summer is half over and, although I've got plenty of hardwood I have very little softwood to make kindling. In the picture above with the tub of noodles you see the stump it was cut from, so way too big to saw through in one action with an 18" bar, and I'm not much good at matching cuts coming from each side (and the trunk is far from cylindrical with lots of large branches having been cut off).

btw, I'll adopt the practice of putting small, fast loading pictures in my posts and full sized (or bigger at least) in my albums if anyone wants to see a higher resolution.

Noodling allows me to cut two half rings more in line with my saw's reach:

View attachment 157918

There's another very significant benefit. The trunk is scarily massive up close, and it's off the ground supported at two points. On one side it's resting against two small trees but on the other ... well, the thought of it rolling onto me as the removal of rounds causes the weight to shift is terrifying. Actually the thought of just a full round coming at me is scary. Although I didn't realize it until after the above photo was taken, noodling allows me to cross cut the dangerous side half first without any risk of anything coming off, then when I noodle from the end the half round drops off well clear to my right. I still have to cut the "safe" side, but with only a half round left I can rope it to a tree to control its fall.

The round log you see in the foreground was under the trunk but never supporting it (I decided it could be rotten), but you can just see the short round that was then right at the edge once I took the other half out. So I had to re-rig to cut any more.

I decided to do two things: put a chain and heavy-duty ratchet tie down combo to tie the trunk to a nearby stump, and put a sturdy log in at an angle to prevent it rolling forward if the chain (or padlock) didn't hold:

View attachment 157920

You can't tell, but it is sloping up to the end closest to the camera (I double checked with a spirit level!) The piece of square-section steel is just compensating for a slight down slope to the left - i.e. to make sure the roundwood doesn't roll off the block. That would be bad.

Different angle before cutting the last two rounds. Spacing cuts already made and chalk line to assist.

View attachment 157922

The bounty:
View attachment 157923

Another great thing I discovered was that a "wood grenade" type wedge I bought, that I had found useless with gum (popped right out every time) actually works great with knotty pieces of pine:
View attachment 157924

Which brings us neatly back to noodling. You can see that the grain goes at right angles within this split, so once I had opened it up I could see that it was useless to pound away at it with a maul, so I noodled it to get some stackable and size-appropriate pieces for my (small) wood burner.

Although the heartwood was fine, an inch of the entire circumference of each round had to be chipped off because it was infested with huhu grubs. Here's one of the little buggers:
View attachment 157925

And here's the damage they do:
View attachment 157926

All in all a very satisfying day's work. And just as I was packing up, a package arrived from overseas. Some special Italian wood:
View attachment 157927

They forgot to send Sicily!
Click to expand...

We have grubs here like that. Flat head borers, only gets in decaying wood. When I find them, I save them in a can until I get finished splitting. I telly wife they are chicken candy. My hens love them.

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Zeez are my Fotos

Midwinter

Woodwidow

T.Jeff Veal