First scrounge of the year. I was a bit slow-moving initially after last night's cricket club NYE function but came good after lunch. Didn't have to travel too far for this scrounge. This black wattle was trying to grow horizontally and broke about six months ago. Since then it has been sitting there annoying me but I had Mt Cowboy to move (which was next to it) and other wood to cut so it had to wait. I also had a couple of other wattle sticks that had fallen over elsewhere that needed shortening.
Wattle is a hardwood and some people like it but it has a few less BTUs than the worst of the local eucalypts and plenty of ash in it. It doesn't make big coals but seems to disintegrate into hundreds of small coals and lots of ash when burnt. I have used some of it to heat the house but more recently it has been firepit wood. Not only is it inferior firewood, it is actually ugly as well. This one was maybe 12 inches at the base.
A number of years ago I bought a log saw horse for this sort of thing. I have hardly ever used it since most of the stuff that I was cutting was way too big for it. Also if the log wasn't tied on and you tried to cut between the forks often wood bits would fall and hit the saw and knock it sideways into the metal fork. I never had kickback from this but it always made me uneasy. Certainly at that time I was less experienced so the fault was probably mine. In this particular case, I thought I'd dust it off to see if it made things any easier - which it did with these long skinny poles.
Messy trees to clean up. The small stuff makes great kindling though so I'll see if anyone else wants it before I torch it.
There was its mate next door that I had dropped a while back but hadn't cut the stump flush so I did that at the same time.
Here's the haul.
Toughest day of the year so far. I think I've earned this.
Hope the weather is nice, wherever you may be.
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