Was desperadely looking towards a day in the woods after almost four months jerking from one job to another and back to faculty. One day of some canopy opening and snag cutting in acceptable sized oak-pine mixed forest, making some firewood, maybe even some photo into Falling pics or Todays job thread. And a day with a good friend also.
Most part turned into liliputic matchstick scavenge. And many "firsts" came in:
I got chain thrown the first time in my life-on a 15" bar... One cutting edge had some little ding, five rakers had seriously banged up foreheads-and they weren´t them that hit the chain catcher. At least the one on this small saw is plastic covered, so not much of secondary damage. Took 1/4 hour to true two and de-ding about dozen drive links. Turned out I hit a part of bullet jacket-a good advertisement on Stihl chain. Still I have no clue how it came (no, I don´t have "show me your drive links" kind of sag on that bar).
The only "big" tree-10", 30ft tall oak snag, slight lean, just 2 ft pegs left instead of branches. Got talked into going against the lean into clear instead going with lean and hitting one branch in the way, which might produce a light hangup. I made perfectly aimed undercut, finely finished backcut, after six strokes I went off lifting capacity of stacked wedges (first time)-no more room for them (I hate 6-12" range of trees somehow...), the tree should go on a 1/2" hinge and common techniques of back cuts in different heights were off-limit due to very high strenght of the wood combined with extreme brittlenes (it was totaly diferent site than a year ago, btw). Few seconds after starting thinking about what the hell I got wedges spit out (first time), the tree sat back (first time) onto empty kerf with barely audible "crack" from the hinge. So new, a bit box cut face in the lead above the first kerf, 1" of hinge-nothing, 1/2" hinge-nothing, standing as far as possible while 1/3" hinge-nothing. Pushed it hard with a stick, some go. Inspecting what the ****, got nailed by piece of branch into hardhat-first time in my life while cutting, no matter if axe, bucksaw, frame saw, chainsaw, uprooting 6-8" snags by hand and rope instead of going to the gym. Hell!
Pushed it by two man power, lazy go and a hangup which I wanted to avoid by going against the lean initialy. Before I brought in the pulley block set, my friend rocked it to fall, having no clue about he made a serious suicidal attempt. A very sane person he is, otherwise:msp_ohmy:
Very late in the evening, when I wanted to publicly whine, the computer bliped, almost done text disapeared and clear page autosaved in less than one second.
Some strange moon configuration, or something. It´s like an office jerk´s first maiden day out of town, but for sure could be worse. I have no "ran over my saw two times", "got my thermos smashed by...", "started a fire wit a set of working plans and forestry maps for the day", "got rid of pizza by anngry fox/dog/whatever", "the tree mysteriously jumped off the stump, danced around and suddenly jerked against the lean to hit dead on the borrowed Toyota" kind of story, thankfully. But this alone is enought.
Yeah, no snow here.
