Practicing with wood

J

johnrosshayden

Joined
Oct 8, 2008
Messages
25
Im trying to practice my cutting and slight chopping with my new RAT 3. I want to get some wood that will help me with this. Where can I buy some wood and what kind of wood would you suggests to practice on? What techniques are their to use? Does Wal Mart or Home Depot sell wood? Thanks guys
 
You all are bad :D

For OP. I have seen 7-11 selling firewood. You may check there if you are in big Suburbia like I am. Around here it is seasoned blackjack oak. That'd help you on your cuttin.
 
Seriously, if you can drive to home depot, you can probably drive to a wooded area and find some fallen branches or standing deadwood to throw in your vehicle.

This way you get to practice with the real thing and not pre split firewood or a clean cut 2x4. You can also get a little book to help you identify different types of trees.

You even get to use your knife while collecting.

I don't see why you would want to spend money on wood to practice using your knife.
 
Sorry guys I live in complete suburbia (Pure concrete). If I go walking for random branches the cops would show up at my doorstep thinking im insane or stealing someones property. I figure it would be easy to go buy some from a hardware store.
 
theedge13 said:
You all are bad :D

For OP. I have seen 7-11 selling firewood. You may check there if you are in big Suburbia like I am. Around here it is seasoned blackjack oak. That'd help you on your cuttin.
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Yes often times convenient stores or sometimes even the grocery store will sell bags (looks like the nylon mesh used for onion sacks) of quartered firewood. This is good to fiddle around on batoning, making fuzz sticks and you can even baton off sections and do some carving like spoons and such.

As has been stated above, you should try to find your self some sticks just because you will find it a bit harder working with an odd shaped piece with no clean cut end. Also these sticks vary from one to the other in their dryness and ease to split and cut. That is why working with the cured, quartered firewood is so misleading. The aging/curing process makes it easy to split.
 
John, you might be surprised at the amount of woods hidden around you. there must be a wooded lot somewhere that you could drive, walk or ride a bike to. talk to the local parks and recreation or library staff to find out about any local parks or public wooded area.

if your search comes up dry, you can always just buy a bundle of firewood from the local supermarket, home depot, hardware store, etc. but as was stated, this is not entirely reflective of sticks and logs in the woods, as this is cut and cured in a controlled environment. in the woods, the deadwood is in all different stages of decay, and there is alot of variety of wood (each wood has slightly different properties)
 
You can get a 2x2 or 2x4 at any home improvement store like Home Depot or Lowe's. I agree that something more natural is better but if you must then just grab some cheap pine in 2x2 or 2x4. Or if you have any construction sites around I'm sure there would be pine scraps. It's a good wood to just fiddle with. Stay away from plywood (layered sheet wood).
 
Thanks for the responses. I will look around and see what I can find. I agree I need to practice on something more natural.
 
If all else fails, there's always the coffee or end table legs... ((( :D )))

Good luck, John. :thumbup:
 
Ring a tree-lopper in your area and ask him to tell you when his next job is and get some sectioned branches, generally he's just gonna chip it and then dump the chips.
 
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