What a wonderful get together this turned out to be! Carl met me a gas station and lead me to the wilderness site, about 200 yards from the Republican River, just south of Cambridg, NE. Glad I brought my Ranger 4x4. We decided to lay the saws down in a row for inspection:
Then Scott and Sid showed up and the row became a semi-circle:
In all, I counted 25 saws, and at one time or another, they all ran. Edwin (that's me, the cameraman) took the award for the oldest saws--his 1976 Stihl 041 and 1977 McCulloch PM 610. Scott's big saw, a Sachs Dolmar 133 was then put to the test to drop the biggest cottonwood tree we could find. The objective was to cut table top cookies. First he cut a perfect wedge:
And here's Scott at work on the felling cut, positioned perfectly above the wedge. You can't see it well here, but water was shooing out of the tree nearly 15 feet as he made this cut:
The tree dropped perfectly with a crash but only after everyone yelled, "Timber!" Time to measure the trunk:
I believe that's a 36" bar. I counted 110 annular rings, so figure the seed germinated back in 1900. The last 20 rings were really close together. Now it was time to make 6" thick tabletops out of the trunk. Here's Carl taking his turn:
We crowned Carl the king of giant cookie cutting. His were almost dead on square across. Now go to Part II for the conclusion (8 images maximum per post).
Then Scott and Sid showed up and the row became a semi-circle:
In all, I counted 25 saws, and at one time or another, they all ran. Edwin (that's me, the cameraman) took the award for the oldest saws--his 1976 Stihl 041 and 1977 McCulloch PM 610. Scott's big saw, a Sachs Dolmar 133 was then put to the test to drop the biggest cottonwood tree we could find. The objective was to cut table top cookies. First he cut a perfect wedge:
And here's Scott at work on the felling cut, positioned perfectly above the wedge. You can't see it well here, but water was shooing out of the tree nearly 15 feet as he made this cut:
The tree dropped perfectly with a crash but only after everyone yelled, "Timber!" Time to measure the trunk:
I believe that's a 36" bar. I counted 110 annular rings, so figure the seed germinated back in 1900. The last 20 rings were really close together. Now it was time to make 6" thick tabletops out of the trunk. Here's Carl taking his turn:
We crowned Carl the king of giant cookie cutting. His were almost dead on square across. Now go to Part II for the conclusion (8 images maximum per post).
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