Teamwork approach to firewood
We had my cousin Ben visiting today and talked him
into taking a few pictures of our new system of splitting firewood.
1. Anna selects a log and
places it on the chopping stump.
2. Then she steps back so the
split log won't hit her.
3. That's when I hit it with
the Chopper
1.
4. Load up pieces and push
them over to the cutting station.
5. Cut pieces in half with
miter saw so they fit in our small stove.
6. Put pieces in 5 gallon
bucket to be carried in and stacked by Anna.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I'm curious why you didn't cut the wood to the desired length when you first bobbed the wood? Or did you get it already cut to that size from someone else?
I'm sort of a safety freak, so I actually go around with some paint and measure out my chainsaw cuts before I make them. Lets me concentrate on just running the saw and not hurting myself.
The wood Mark cuts he cuts to size, but this is bought wood. Luckily, the new person we're thinking of buying wood from in the future is willing to cut the wood to the size of our stove, which will speed things up a lot next year! (Well, maybe the year after next --- we already have enough wood for next year, I think.)
When Mark does serious chainsawing, I come along and act as his eyes. That way, he gets to stay in the safety chainsawing zone and I can point out what to cut. It works quite well!
I use a 30cm (1 foot) dummy stick and a piece of chalk to mark all my chainsaw cuts. Then I can get the cuts all the same length.
Your chopping block looks quite short, or maybe it is the angle of the shot. For me, I use a large block about 45cm tall, then I don't have to bend over so much, and I can chop 15-20 pieces of wood before the splits are high enough to get in the way. Then I clear and stack the pieces. But then again, I work alone.