Cordwood, Peacefully by Charles McRaven Country Journal (Nov/Dec 93) It is winter, and the Saturday morning frost crunches under our boots as my daughter and I carry our tools down to a dead oak in the hallow behind the house. Down there, water from the springfed branch slips over bottom stones and sand under the ice. The sun, which never reaches into these deep woods in summer, peers through bare limbs now, incredibly cold. The oak came down the last windy day, and lies in a tangle of young poplar and maple sprouts. Its shedding bark is rimmed in fungi, its brittle limbs snapped off and scattered like old bones. We speak little, cherishing the hush of a place always quiet, down out of the wind and away from the house sounds above. We will disturb little with our woodcutting. The long crosscut saw snakes whiplike across hard oak, its razor teeth catching, biting. The sound is rasping and metallic, but soothing; a ringing that echoes across a half century in my head. (saw1.pcx) (We cut everything this way, back then.) Sawdust in choppy strings slips out of the deepening cut to spangle dead leaves. The sound grows hypnotic, insistent. Muscles long unused begin to speak. The stroke is long, light. You pull only, letting just the weight of the saw do the cutting. Don't push or bear down on the saw; it'll cause the saw to bind. I have forgotten how long handsawing takes. It is not something many people do now, because of the time and effort. But as exercise it's excellent. There is no racket, no vibration, no pall of blue chain-saw smoke drifting through the clean woods, no danger of kickback or severed body parts. I own two chain saws, but they have conspired to be in the repair shop today. And our wood supply is low, since we cut only dead trees. We don't stockpile much ahead, because it's definitely a cold weather business, this cutting firewood. And cutting wood by hand gets the children involved for as long as their attention spans last. I have both a 6-foot, two-man crosscut saw and a short, one-man saw. Both are quite old, but I use them periodically in teaching cabin building, and sometimes for firewood, like today. Amanda is 17, and while she'd rather be somewhere eIse, she's a good sport about this. She recently raised eyebrows at her high school when the visiting technical school representatives talked about masonry: She knew how to lay stone and bricks. Amanda is a budding writer, and the magic of this place is not lost on her. Its impressions are rich; it seems primeval and unspoiled. And when we leave there will be only the sawdust, going quickly back to earth, to mark our presence. I tire before she does, and the number of blocks cut is still small. I split some, to use different muscles, while she rolls others up the path. We could toss them across the stream to an old road, and load them onto the pickup later, and perhaps we will, another time, but these we'll take home by hand. The secret to handcutting wood is long, slow strokes, using almost all the saw's teeth, pulling straight, twisting your body. Sometimes you must pry the log up with a pole and block it so it won't bind or pinch the saw. When a saw blade gets buried in the log you can use a wedge to free it. Time is plentiful when you cut by hand; time for reflection, time to trace a winter bird's flight, time to daydream. From the age of nine I have used the crosscut saw, bucksaw, and bow saw to cut wood. The most efficient method was for two of us to crosscut the trees down, then use the bow or buck saw individually to limb and top the trunk. We'd cut long sections of small trees, then set these poles in a sawbuck (two crossed 2-by-4s nailed about 3 feet apart) to hold them for cutting, or bucking, to length. For this we used a bucksaw. It had a wooden frame and a turnbuckle to keep the blade tight. Years later the tubular steel bow saw, much lighter in weight, replaced the venerable bucksaw. (saw2.pcx) Bow saws are found in hardware stores, but not so bucksaws and crosscut saws. Because so few people use them anymore they are sold as antiques, often tole painted with folksy scenes. But auctions are still good sources, as are flea markets. Big, country hardware stores and surplus stores sometimes have them as well. (saw3.pcx) Look for a saw with long teeth, at least an inch for a crosscut saw, that'll give you a long life of cutting, with plenty of metal for shaipening. Avoid a saw with kinks in it, or missing teeth. You can find replacement handles, but try to find a saw with good ones. Deeply pitted rust can mean a brittle saw, or one that's been in a fire and is probably soft from loss of temper. Pay a reasonable $l5 to $30 for a crosscut or bucksaw. I bought my one-man crosscut at an antiques shop four year ago in Chadds Ford Pennsylvania, for $25, in excellent condition. My 6-foot two-man I bought from an old farmer in Missouri in 1976 for $7. At auctions recently I've seen three or four crosscuts in varying condition go together for about $5 each. You should learn to set and sharpen these handsaws. A dull saw makes you work too hard. The set is the outward bend at the tip of each tooth, which cuts a wider path than the thickness of the blade, and reduces friction. There are probably tools for big saw setting, as there are for handsaws, but we always used a hammer, punch, and anvil. Just the tip of the tooth is bent, so the saw is laid on the anvil with about 1/16 inch of the tooth extending over the edge. The right amount of force from a light hammer on the punch bends the tip out. It takes practice to get each tooth even with the others. Every other tooth gets set one way, and the odd ones the other. (saw4.pcx) There are several crosscut saw tooth designs. Older ones tend to be just big teeth. Later ones have two or four cutting teeth, then a drag tooth to take out the sawdust. The drag doesn't get set, but must be sharpened along with the cutters to be just a fraction shorter than they are. I file my saws in a big blacksmith's vise for better control. Out in the woods, the procedure involves cutting a small tree off about 4 feet from the ground, then sawing a slot down into the stump. This slot holds the saw upside down for sharpening. Crosscut and bow saw teeth are sharpened on a bevel with a flat file. The point is to the outside, and the set takes this farther out. When properly sharpened, the saw will bring out strings of sawdust - worms we called them. If the sawdust is fine bits, the drag teeth are too long or the cutters too dull. If the saw rubs and binds, there's not enough set in the teeth. My favorite story about sharpening saws is from my teenage years when we cut saw logs with John Henry Childress, a neighbor. He had visited an old uncle who lived alone, and found him out sawing firewood with a terribly dull saw. "He was just sorta rubbin' his way through," John Henry recalled. "So I got my tools, and I set an' sharpened that ole saw up like new. Felt good, to be helpin' the ole man. But you know, I was by a few days later, an' there he was, out rubbin'on another log, not cuttin' nothin'." "'Uncle Billy,' I says, 'what's wrong with yer saw? Didn't it cut good?" "Oh," he says,"saw cut fine, but it was too hard t'pull. So I just dulled th'teeth some with a hammer. Does just fine, now." Rust slows sawing, so use a belt sander to shine up an old crosscut. Keep a little kerosene or light oil on the blade, or the newly sanded metal will rust again quickly. As with all handtools, these woodcutting saws are a lot safer than their powered replacements. The principle is, simply put, that the saw doesn't move unless you move it. Cutting slower gives you more time to react when a tree begins to fall. You have more time to sense a pinching cut: It all happens slower. And you know, the darned thing aLways starts. My daughter is determined to wear me out today, and she's about to succeed. I decree that we have alI the firewood we want to carry up the hill. Amanda wants to cut one more piece that juts out over the stream. The sawdust worms fall onto the thawing ice, and some are carried with the current. The smell of the red oak is pungent, a bit sour, a wild scent. It has become unaccountably warm. We finish, retrieving the last block from the stream. I pick up the splitting maul and shoulder the long saw. It makes a soft ringing twang as it bends and bounces on the way home. Felling Trees When you must cut a standing tree by hand, do it with a helper and the two-handled crosscut saw. The cuts and notching (see illustration [felltre1.pcx]) are the same as for chain-saw cutting. Begin with a horizontal cut 2 to 6 inches (or 1/4 of the trunk's diameter) into the tree on the side toward which you want it to fall. Notch this with an ax, then start the uphill or back cut an inch or two above the first cut. If a tree is leaning badly, make side cuts to reduce tlhe chance of splitting and kickback (when, in tlhe midst of a back cut, the trunk suddenly splits with the butt jumping up and out away from the direction of fall.) Don't cut a tree by yourself. I occasionally chop a tree down to buck it with my one-handed saw. My father would sink his ax into a tree low down to serve as a platform over which would slide his one-handled crosscut saw, enabling him to cut alone. I tried it once and yes, it can be done. But you really have to need firewood to fell a tree single-handedly and alone.