On December 11, the New England region was hit by a devastating ice storm, affecting Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, trees down everywere, power lines down, utility poles damaged, Maine had around 30,000 customers without power at the worst part of the storm, New Hampshire had almost 300,000 without power...
We lost power for SIX days, and only saw a utility crew on the tail end of day five, thank Og we have a woodstove in the sunroom, and the house, a 200+ year old Colonial has three fireplaces (Family room, dining room, kitchen), the woodstove was used to keep the sunroom and kitchen warm
We also lost a significant amount of tree branches, the biggest being a massive limb of one of the maple trees in the lawn, a few smaller pine branches, and a couple small birch trees
Over the past couple weeks, I have been cutting up the branches with the chainsaw, and setting them aside to dry (can't argue with free firewood...) and I've discovered a few things....
Pine is incredibly easy to cut, the chainsaw tears through it with almost no resistance, I could cut fallen pine branches all day without breaking a sweat, the wood itself is light and easy to toss aside
Maple is *hard* stuff, it takes the saw twice as long to cut through the same size pine branch, and the wood is nice and dense, I know understand why pine furniture is sold so cheaply, and maple is generally sold at a higher premium
Once I find a nice piece of pine, I'll set it aside, stain and treat it, and make up a set of scales for one of my SAKs
Anyway, to get to the point, I was out this afternoon cuttin' down some branches, tearing through the pine like a hot knife through butter, and working harder at the Maple, all the time, with the strains of Monty Python's "Lumberjack song" echoing in my head (well, aside from the cross-dresser stuff, that I eliminated
)
After a relaxing afternoon behind the throttle of my Skil chainsaw, I wandered back into the house, covered in a fine sawdust, smelling vaguely of pine and maple, I grabbed a McIntosh apple out of the fridge, and my Boker Whittler, opened the whittling blade, just then I noticed that the area around the stem of the apple was a little rotten, perfect, I wanted to perform an experiment anyway.
With the skill of a surgeon, I guided the scalpel-sharp short whittling blade around the rotted area, it dropped free of the apple with almost no residue, I then halved and then quartered the apple, and cut the remainder of the rotted part out, the thin, short whittling blade was easily guided through the apple flesh, a quick rinse of the blade and I went back to de-coring the quarters, the whittling blade steered easily through the apple
I then went and slivered off some thin, tasty pieces of apple with the whittling blade and the clip blade, let the knife sit as the carbon steel blades darkened some more, the iridescent blues, oranges and magentas becoming stronger and more intense, then a quick rinse, dry, a couple swipes on the Sharpmaker, and a light stropping on my jeans leg, a light coat of canola oil and back into the pocket
I know I've remarked on it before, but the amount of control over the direction, and depth of the cut, and the sheer ease of cutting, lack of resistance and smoothness of the cut still amaze me, the ability to steer around the core, or to surgically remove a rotted section of apple is rather impressive, especially coming from the much thicker bladestock of the modern "tactical" folders
We lost power for SIX days, and only saw a utility crew on the tail end of day five, thank Og we have a woodstove in the sunroom, and the house, a 200+ year old Colonial has three fireplaces (Family room, dining room, kitchen), the woodstove was used to keep the sunroom and kitchen warm
We also lost a significant amount of tree branches, the biggest being a massive limb of one of the maple trees in the lawn, a few smaller pine branches, and a couple small birch trees
Over the past couple weeks, I have been cutting up the branches with the chainsaw, and setting them aside to dry (can't argue with free firewood...) and I've discovered a few things....
Pine is incredibly easy to cut, the chainsaw tears through it with almost no resistance, I could cut fallen pine branches all day without breaking a sweat, the wood itself is light and easy to toss aside
Maple is *hard* stuff, it takes the saw twice as long to cut through the same size pine branch, and the wood is nice and dense, I know understand why pine furniture is sold so cheaply, and maple is generally sold at a higher premium
Once I find a nice piece of pine, I'll set it aside, stain and treat it, and make up a set of scales for one of my SAKs
Anyway, to get to the point, I was out this afternoon cuttin' down some branches, tearing through the pine like a hot knife through butter, and working harder at the Maple, all the time, with the strains of Monty Python's "Lumberjack song" echoing in my head (well, aside from the cross-dresser stuff, that I eliminated
)After a relaxing afternoon behind the throttle of my Skil chainsaw, I wandered back into the house, covered in a fine sawdust, smelling vaguely of pine and maple, I grabbed a McIntosh apple out of the fridge, and my Boker Whittler, opened the whittling blade, just then I noticed that the area around the stem of the apple was a little rotten, perfect, I wanted to perform an experiment anyway.
With the skill of a surgeon, I guided the scalpel-sharp short whittling blade around the rotted area, it dropped free of the apple with almost no residue, I then halved and then quartered the apple, and cut the remainder of the rotted part out, the thin, short whittling blade was easily guided through the apple flesh, a quick rinse of the blade and I went back to de-coring the quarters, the whittling blade steered easily through the apple
I then went and slivered off some thin, tasty pieces of apple with the whittling blade and the clip blade, let the knife sit as the carbon steel blades darkened some more, the iridescent blues, oranges and magentas becoming stronger and more intense, then a quick rinse, dry, a couple swipes on the Sharpmaker, and a light stropping on my jeans leg, a light coat of canola oil and back into the pocket
I know I've remarked on it before, but the amount of control over the direction, and depth of the cut, and the sheer ease of cutting, lack of resistance and smoothness of the cut still amaze me, the ability to steer around the core, or to surgically remove a rotted section of apple is rather impressive, especially coming from the much thicker bladestock of the modern "tactical" folders
). It's stories like these that makes us want to give it a shot.