Sawzall to the rescue

[Johnny Yooper]

Had an unusually tough piece of firewood to deal with tonight, was a crotch piece where the two connected pieces were loose but couldn’t separate them with the splitting maul, so my first thought was just to noodle the darn thing. Naw…..too easy. Second thought was to fire up the splitter….nope – not for a single piece. Thought I’d use a wedge (or two) since I like to split a few pieces each morning and evening when loading the OWB….just to keep the ol’ aim up to par. Well…..a couple minutes later and two stuck wedges caused me to think something’s definitely wrong here, and a closer inspection of the joint revealed a good sized bolt holding the two pieces together, I was able to reach down into the joint with the sawzall blade and boy she made a “POP” when it broke apart.

Turned one of the pieces over and saw my old saw cut but stopped short ‘cause I must have saw the darn bolt – this was a tree I’d scrounged last year in town so was a neighborhood tree and someone must have been worried about the tree separating at this joint.


A carefully placed wedge and a few more swings revealed more of the bolt.

 

[ReggieT]

Wow...glad you had the wisdom to grab the Sawzall and NOT lose a good chain or mess up a good bar!

 

[Backyard Lumberjack]

OMG! that's a crazy tale! who would have thought!!!

reminds me of a metal in tree tale!...

some years ago, before my time up at my farm... an old owner had planted a young sapling of a tree near house. tied it to a T-post. when I arrived the tree had consumed the lower portion of the T-post, wrapping and growing the bark around it. the post stuck out about about a 75-degree angle. being steel, I was sure it would take a torch to cut it out. but dint want to burn bark. cutting torches get real hot!! and I dint want to hack saw it out, albeit I love my Milwaukee.... then this summer I decided to mess with it by had, see just what the looseness mite be with it in the truck, could I bend it maybe so as to do a saw cut? gloves on and I started to push n pull on it... and then.... WHACK!

it just snapped off...

clean as could be right at the bark line. so clean, it made me laff. when simple arrives, simple is the plan-of-the-day!! can't notice the spot in the tree at all, and I stuck the post in the garden bed just several feet from tree... dint want to disturb things too much....

 

[A10egress]

WOWZERS! thats a hunk of metal for sure. two years ago i have a Ash tree cut down at camp ( way beyond my ability and 5 feet from cabin) and buried in the trunk was a big piece of metal that turned out to be Zinc...odd

 

[Del_]

Looks like that crotch was braced by an arborist.

 

[7sleeper]

Did you count the rings that were outside of the screw? I would guess around 10.

7

 

[Johnny Yooper]

Did you count the rings that were outside of the screw? I would guess around 10.

7

I didn't count the rings but I would say not more than 10......below is a better picture of the end grain and you can see by the spacing of the growth rings, this was a rather fast growing tree for a hardwood in this part of the country; tree is a hybrid popple.