AZTimT
The Stripetition Finish Guy
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2009
- Messages
- 4,460
It's been a while since I posted a chopping thread or review. Life's been busy out on road the past few 5 years. I am starting up my own business creating custom concrete hardscaping as well as dirt work with the tractor, so in between projects I am getting back to having some time to do things around home again.
Anyhow, part of those chores involve clearing trees for fire prevention with the bonus of providing firewood to heat our cabin in the winter. Since my boys are getting big enough to help, they participated in this one last month. The picture quality isn't great due to the time of evening, but you will still get the idea.
This particular fir tree was in the path of a new ramp I am building off of the driveway, so it had to go. I don't like tripping on stumps in the dark or running into them with expensive machines, so I dig them out with my backhoe and bury the stumps in one of my numerous dirt moving projects. Seeing a machine rip a tree out of the ground always gets some interesting reactions.
Since the backhoe was holding up the stump attached to the tree trunk, I figured it would be as a good a position as any to chop the stump off with the BB13.
Ready to be delimbed.
First I delimbed the whole tree in about 10 minutes using the BB13. The boys and I also were moving the branches to where they would get buried at the same time. It's fun working with the little guys and teaching them how to be useful little man cubs with a good work ethic.
Moving on to the trunk chopping, the base was about 10-12" in diameter, but the thumb bucket was in the way there, so I moved up to where it was 8-10" thick with no risk of hitting the pretty orange tractor.
I chopped for one minute and then stopped to take this pic.
I take my time chopping so as not to run out of steam or develop an injury. That's code for I'm getting older/slower and I don't bounceback like I did before time became my kryptonite.
So here is 4 minutes of total chopping time at a leisurely pace.
This was at 7 minutes chopping before I asked my 5 year old son to be the camera man with my phone. Video follows this pic.
Amateur video is up!
At the very end, I lopped off the crown for another photo op, but the lighting was getting really bad.
The BB13 CG is pretty much exactly how I thought and hoped for years that it would turn out to be. A lightweight, hard hitting, efficient chopper that can work well at other tasks too. While I had initially hoped for an INFI version of the 1311, and still do, this design has a lot of strengths to it for a woodsman. The recurved portion of the blade can be used as a draw knife to peel bark or plane a log. This could allow one to build a log shelter from chopping down, delimbing, debarking, planing, and notching logs into the form needed to build a home all with one 24oz tool. That's pretty impressive for a basic "knife". I hope you enjoy this as much as we did!
Anyhow, part of those chores involve clearing trees for fire prevention with the bonus of providing firewood to heat our cabin in the winter. Since my boys are getting big enough to help, they participated in this one last month. The picture quality isn't great due to the time of evening, but you will still get the idea.
This particular fir tree was in the path of a new ramp I am building off of the driveway, so it had to go. I don't like tripping on stumps in the dark or running into them with expensive machines, so I dig them out with my backhoe and bury the stumps in one of my numerous dirt moving projects. Seeing a machine rip a tree out of the ground always gets some interesting reactions.
Since the backhoe was holding up the stump attached to the tree trunk, I figured it would be as a good a position as any to chop the stump off with the BB13.
Ready to be delimbed.
First I delimbed the whole tree in about 10 minutes using the BB13. The boys and I also were moving the branches to where they would get buried at the same time. It's fun working with the little guys and teaching them how to be useful little man cubs with a good work ethic.
Moving on to the trunk chopping, the base was about 10-12" in diameter, but the thumb bucket was in the way there, so I moved up to where it was 8-10" thick with no risk of hitting the pretty orange tractor.
I chopped for one minute and then stopped to take this pic.
I take my time chopping so as not to run out of steam or develop an injury. That's code for I'm getting older/slower and I don't bounceback like I did before time became my kryptonite.
So here is 4 minutes of total chopping time at a leisurely pace.
This was at 7 minutes chopping before I asked my 5 year old son to be the camera man with my phone. Video follows this pic.
Amateur video is up!
At the very end, I lopped off the crown for another photo op, but the lighting was getting really bad.
The BB13 CG is pretty much exactly how I thought and hoped for years that it would turn out to be. A lightweight, hard hitting, efficient chopper that can work well at other tasks too. While I had initially hoped for an INFI version of the 1311, and still do, this design has a lot of strengths to it for a woodsman. The recurved portion of the blade can be used as a draw knife to peel bark or plane a log. This could allow one to build a log shelter from chopping down, delimbing, debarking, planing, and notching logs into the form needed to build a home all with one 24oz tool. That's pretty impressive for a basic "knife".
I hope you enjoy this as much as we did!
Last edited:
I'd like to have a Moabbolo but the handle on that knife looks sooo! comfy and the cost is way less also. Thanks for the review.
