Work in progress

[oetzi]

The last two years I havent been able to do any trail maintenance for health reasons.
Today, I decided to try it anyway and aproached a task I had my eye on since the end of 2006.
The upper part of a big old beech, long since dead, had finally broken down and blocked one of my favourite trails:

Today I chopped it. Thankfully, a 5" core of the wood was rotten, so it took me only 80min to complete the task. I had about forgotten how hard old beech is!
Re-larned a few things:
- resharpen the axe after half time
- blistered hands feel great.

Next step will be to chop off the splintered part on the right side.
Then, with an old pick-axe handle for a lever, I will slide the remaining trunk over the big branches seen lying on the path to the right side, thus clearing the way.
It felt great, doing all this again after such a long lay-off.

 

[spamel]

Hav you tried standing on the log with wide legs, chop in half way from one side then the same on the other? It may be a bit easier as chopping in one way like you have means you need to remove a lot of wood to make the cut wide enough to get the axe to the bottom of the cut. That certainly looks like a lot of hard work though, and you have my respect for tackling such a large trunk with an axe. take it easy when you shift it, take someone to give you a hand if you can to ease the strain!

 

[oetzi]

Hello Spamel. You are right, it is hard enough that I wouldnt like to make that kind of work my source of income. However, if i take it slowly, I certainly succeed. And the tree shown had a lot of rotten wood, otherwise I wouldnt have it finished so fast.
I use the method mentioned from you only when the tree is resting on the ground. In this particular case, I wouldnt feel comfortable swinging a sharp tool 1m above the ground.
BTW, shifting a tree is dead easy and requires not much force. Long as there are (quite smooth) logs to slide the tree over, its a doddle. In the past, I have used this method to move up to 4m of tree alone.