Firewood: Our young forester gives up sheep shearing

I wear a multitude of hats – firewood processing contractor, tree planter, sheep shearer and wholesale kindling merchant, to name but a few – but it’s about this time of year I enter the silly season. 

A friend of mine recently commented that I was beginning to look very tired and supposed that the reason was that I was going through the ‘harvest’ period of my yearly cycle. I laughed inwardly at his analysis but then it did get me thinking. Surely the term ‘harvest’ means a return on one’s efforts, resulting in a reward and followed by a period of rest and relaxation in anticipation of the year ahead? My harvests roll from one to another in a continuum with chaotic overlaps in between.

I began to realise that delivering sacks of kindling at midnight and sharpening chainsaws at 5am, all interspersed with long days of firewood processing, was unsustainable. My body was suffering and I knew that something had to change.

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Either I made some adjustments in my work pattern or I took a little less on.

I opted for adjustments. I stopped whatever I was doing and tore a strip off a large cardboard box nearby before writing in large letters ‘how to save time and make things easier’ and spent the best part of an hour jotting down thoughts. Below are my conclusions.

I surmised that during the day we can’t really be more efficient. We use the best saws – 500is, 661s and 881s – respective to the diameter of timber we’re up against, with enough pre-sharpened chains to get us through even the dirtiest of days. Fed on a diet of Shell’s Super Unleaded and Stihl’s Super HP, the saws can’t cut any faster than they already do. Fuelwood’s Splitter 400 does a great job of the splitting and at full capacity produces about 10 m3 per hour, which I have to remind myself is a very creditable amount. However, I concluded that what happens behind the scenes required improvement. A wagonload of oversize timber, for instance, takes between four and six combination cans to crosscut. We quite often process a wagonload in a day and originally I only had six Husqvarna combination cans. Having to mix fuel every morning or night with a headtorch and lifting heavy 20-litre jerry cans while bent over as the contents slowly glugged into each respective can was a heavy start to the day. After a swift and strong drink I convinced myself it was wise to spend over £1,000 on multiple Husqvarna fuel cans, pipes and fuel nozzles to ensure I never have to mix fuel through the week again. Sunday mornings are now spent refuelling my 20 cans while the nozzle gun makes it so easy even my wife can become involved (I don’t yet trust her fully with the two-stroke, though that may come in time).

Combination cans come in a variety of makes, but while Husqvarna are probably the most expensive, when buying in bulk I prefer them. Not only is the side container handy for storing chains, but I once had to use it for self defence and it didn’t let me down.

I was clearfelling some hemlock on the west coast and was accompanied in the task by a very large digger and rather inexperienced (and careless) driver in whom I never had the greatest of confidence. He was all gas and no brakes. It was a short extraction and we were chipping the brash, so I’d fell half a dozen trees, he’d skid them to the roadside and then I’d process them. As he began skidding I knelt down to refuel, placed the saw on a stump and picked up the fuel can. There are moments in our lives where time stands still. You know something is about to happen but it’s about what happens next.

Steve Harmison, an international opening bowler, once sent a ball hurtling into my grill. There was the time a Volvo driver drove head-on into my Hilux. Now, 100 feet away, the butt of a tree caught a stump and the point of the tree came flying directly towards my chest. I was about to be skewered! In the split second before impact I was able to lift the almost empty can upwards so it acted as a flimsy shield between me and impact with the hemlock. Because the can was almost empty it acted like an air bag and, as the stump drove into my chest, there was a loud fizzing sound as the remainder of the fuel and air were forced from the can. I ended up some five metres away with the can (now crumpled) held firmly against my chest. The driver, meanwhile, was completely unaware, though he must have felt some kind of impact.

Some old banana-like bruises formed on my chest but fortunately nothing was broken and after a few bashes on a concrete floor the can was restored to something resembling its original shape. Thereafter, I decided to refuel at a much safer distance.

Having addressed the fuel-mixing efficacy I now needed to turn my attention to persistent chain sharpening. I haven’t used a hand file now for nearly six years and once you buy chain by the reel and grind it there’s no going back. Any attempt to discuss the rights and wrongs of chain sharpening on social media will open a can of worms, but here I can talk about it honestly with no repercussions. I don’t sharpen chains as Facebook would have it or any other gimmicks in an attempt to achieve the perfect Instagram hook. I sharpen chains because cutting wood is my business and it makes me money and the more wood I can cut in a day the more money I can make and the more jobs I can provide for other people. After 12 years of trial and error and independent research and testing, these are my thoughts...

Full chisel or semi chisel is all about the hare and the tortoise. The full chisel does cut faster on the first tank without a doubt, but after the second and third fill the tortoise semi chisel takes the lead very quickly, especially in dirty timber, and goes for longer, taking less damage when encountering metal.

As for the brand of chain, for me the cheap and cheerful 3/8 chain run by the 500i and 661 is Australian-branded but made-in-China Archer at £130 a reel. I’ll admit the steel in the Stihl chain grinds beautifully with fewer heat problems, but at over twice the price it’s not economically viable. Stihl, Archer, Rotatech and Oregon all have similar cutting abilities after encountering a bit of muck.

On the 881 running 404 chains, I went with Carlton from the USA, simply because it was a semi-chisel run and recommended by an experienced and trusted harvester driver. It was the cheapest and grinds well and I have no complaints about its performance. The grinding may shock you. I currently do all my grinding on an Oregon hydraulic-assisted grinder and as I’ve had it for about seven years I could nearly use it blindfolded. I can effortlessly get my chains exactly how I want them, although it can be time consuming after you’ve used 20 or 30 chains in a single day cutting mud-coated timber. I’m in the process of trialling a Markusson to work alongside me, but we’re not quite there yet.

When it comes to doing the rakers, I find it a lot easier to use an ordinary draper bench grinder than chaining wheels and putting them around the Oregon. I’ve used Archer for so long now I can pick up a chain and assess whether the rakers need lowering just by eye. I can’t do this with any other brand of chain and even with Carlton I need to double check with a depth gauge. I tend to run the rakers quite low for the firewood chains and almost on the verge of being unpleasantly ‘grabby’ and a nightmare on smaller branches. However, as they are taking bigger chips with every cut, I cut more wood with every cut. It’s a strain on the saw, but I cut more wood before I need to change the chain. On dirty timber a chain with low rakers will cut a heap more than a new one.

With a full-skip chain there are many benefits. Archer doesn’t do a full-skip chain so I simply make my own by grinding off every third tooth but leaving the raker on. This creates the same amount of teeth per metre as a traditional full-skip chain, instantly reducing the amount of labour time by about 33 per cent. I personally prefer how they run and believe it extends the life of the saws. Being air cooled, two-stroke engines are happier operating at high RPM. If you want to break one then bog it down, run it flat out and sooner or later the piston will seize. Taking the rakers down puts a high load on the saw, but because there are only two thirds of the teeth it still runs at a cool RPM. 

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got 10 teeth or 100 teeth on your bar because if you hit a stone then the whole lot goes blunt, in which case it’s quicker to sharpen 10. Another small positive of the high RPM is the sawdust extraction. All of my saws have the chip deflector removed and a piece ground out of the side cover so that the sawdust can come directly off the chain and away without getting bunged up in the sprocket, which is of more importance when cutting with the grain. I’m told this is called ‘noodling’, where the dust is flung far and wide rather than just collecting in one place. Understandably I was a bit apprehensive of fully committing to vandalising all my chains, but after repeated tests I’ve been running on a solely full-skip chain for four years.

However, all good things must come to an end and I rang the boss of the shearing gang and told him that I would no longer be available for full-time service next year. I began learning how to shear six years ago and it’s taken me around the world three times, during which time I’ve made lots of friends but drunk the bulk of the profits (I was at least able to surpass my brother’s record of 345 sheep sheared in one day by seven).

Reality has kicked in and I can no longer do both as I’d rather be cutting timber than wool. I am no longer a forester and shearer, but a forester (who does the odd bit of shearing).