Axes And Chainsaws – Rockwell Stephens

Assemble and drive in wedge (use wooden mallet) Test for alignment and hang. Saw off excess with hacksaw. Final step is to drive in the wedge, which fixes the handle firmly in place. A wooden wedge or two usually comes with the handle when you buy it, but steel wedges in various sizes also are available, if this is not the case. Cut off part of the “deer foot” on the end to get a flat surface on which to pound and drive the wedge in place.

1kitap1.com/en Bow Saws Axe and chain saw of course are the principal tools of the woodlotter, but the sharp little bow saw must not be excluded, for in some respects it is the handiest tool in the woods. Razor sharp, it will fell a sapling or lop off a limb in a few strokes, and is equally quick to trim off low branches when pruning or to cut a path to get away from a tree before it falls.

The bow saw originally was the pulp wood sawyers’ principal tool. The long blade made quick work cutting four-foot pulp logs. But some years ago Swedish makers brought out much shorter models, of which the 16- or 18-inch blades have become the most popular. Replacement blades are so inexpensive that one seldom bothers to resharpen an old one.

Little skill is required for fast cutting. The trick is not to press down on the blade (it will stick) but to work it at first lightly across the wood with a rocking motion—front of the blade down, then coming horizontal, then rising up as the hand comes forward. The rocking action, plus the weight of the saw, does the work—not pressure on the saw blade. 1kitap1.com/en Chain Saws The lumberjack with axe and cross-cut saw have long since disappeared from our forests, replaced by the chain saw that now cuts more than 90 percent of all the timber we produce.

Logging has become almost totally mechanized, and in some large-scale operations even the chain saw’s role has been taken over by huge machines which reduce whole trees at one crunch into wood chips that are automatically fed into waiting hopper trucks.

It’s a funny thing about axes. Lots of folks have an axe or two around the place. Sometimes they might be what you could call working axes, for a man who gets out his own firewood or splits his own kindling, but they may be just odd tools that don’t have any regular job to do. Either way, they sometimes can give you a pretty good clue to what the owner knows about an axe and possibly even what kind of person he may be.

If the blade has a good shape to it and the poll isn’t all battered over from being used and abused as a sledge hammer, and the handle isn’t all splintered up under the head and maybe wrapped with tire tape to hold it together—chances are the owner may be a pretty good axe man. At least he shows some respect for a good tool. And if it turns out that he really knows how to use it and keep it sharp, he more likely than not will agree with you that swinging an axe is a satisfying—you might say even pleasurable—kind of occupation.

There is a skill to it, to be sure, but unless an axe is set up right, just banding away at a piece of wood can be a pretty dreary business. It should be natural, in a way, to respect an axe and take care of it, for the axe must be the oldest tool in the hand of man. When he discovered, a million years or so ago, that he could fasten a sharp-edged stone to a handle of sorts, he was really on his way.

Perhaps this is why axe and knife may have a deeper relationship to man than any other of his tools. They became, in fact, essential to survival. The saw, by comparison, is a modern invention. Given a good axe, the pioneer could make a life in the wilderness, fell his trees, build his cabin, warm his hearth, and clear the fields to sow and reap. It took a while for today’s axe to find its shape, and this is evident in any collection of old tools. Even these came a long way from the Stone Age.

It was not until the early 1700’s that there developed a reasonable resemblance to the present style. By that time early explorers and traders were bringing “trade axes” to exchange for the Indians furs. These had a “tomahawk” shape and lacked a poll, the flat surface suitable for pounding at the opposite end of the head from the cutting edge or “bit.”

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 9ee9dac5d793dd1c
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 3,943,019 bytes (3.76 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 0882661876
• Pages: 37
• Language: English (en)

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