Fenceposts have always baffled me. Why would anyone take a perfectly good tree, cut it down, dig a hole to set it in, and then spend the next 20 years watching it decay? In my early days of…

After bucking this year’s firewood, I found myself with a collection of odd-shaped ends and crotches, perfect for charcoal-making. Charcoal is essentially wood that’s been…

Wood-splitting is a rural pastime rooted in tradition and experience – experience that’s often measured in broken axe handles and creative curses directed at knotty chunks of…

In the last installment of Tricks of the Trade, we examined the venerable peavey, and offered several modifications to make an already invaluable tool even handier. Now it’s time to head…

While the mighty axe rightly receives credit for felling most of the timber of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was the peavey that took the work out of moving these logs, on both…

Of all the silvicultural techniques available to forest owners, perhaps no method is more underused than coppicing. Coppicing is a reproduction method where a tree is cut back periodically to…

Is longer better when it comes to chainsaw bars? Personally, I like a shorter bar. It allows me to use a saw with a smaller engine, which reduces overall strain on my back and muscles. Plus,…

The demise of the local sawmill has been closely followed by the rise of the sawyer with a portable bandsaw mill. Usually the sawyer will come to your house, set the mill up parallel to your…

Chainsaws, despite their blunt appearance, are precision tools that need to be carefully maintained to work properly. The chain is no exception to the rule. There are two parts to maintain on…

If you’re considering building a log structure, you’ll need to learn to scribe logs. In most cases, you’ll be scribing for a saddle notch, used to join two logs…