Light weight bar?

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
And don't forget a Pickeroon (aka hookaroon) and a Cant Hook (or even better a timberjack) which are both a huge help in the more dull physical efforts of logging.

You’re absolutely right, but I would get $150 worth of the other stuff if I was making firewood.

I’ve also been spoiled almost all my life by having equipment around, from skid steers and midsize tractors to 150,000 lb excavators to move logs.
 
If you’re short and not in big wood, 28 is pretty good too. To your above post, honeycombed bars are more likely to have a lateral movement but are less likely to twist. I haven’t really worried about it.

I’ll echo what was said above. The chainsaw, unless you’re running it all day, is probably one of the easier parts of doing forestry work or making firewood. Up and down hills, through brush, dragging brush, moving wood, splitting it, even on and off bigger equipment or dragging cables and chains to hook up through the woods is hard. More time on the saw will build up your muscles and it won’t be as big of a deal anymore, just like all the other parts of working in the woods.

Get good at that and acquire tools to help in that before you spend $150 on a bar and the chains for it. $150 will get you a pretty decent maul, some falling wedges and a Council Tool axe, or an older head and a handle you can put together. Or, an inexperienced user can bend an $150 bar that won’t be easy to get straight.

I noticed you mentioned Counsil Tool. I’ve considered going the direction of a Stihl brand or Gränsfors Bruks for a do all axe. I currently own a GB splitting axe and absolutely love that thing. However I’m not dead set on those brands. What brands, along with Counsil, would you recommend?
 
I carry a Council tool 3.5 lb Jersey miner’s axe with a 26” straight handle when I’m out in the woods. I just bought an older 5 lb Sager head I need to put a handle on. I think the Council set me back $50, and by the time I out the Sager together it’ll be sixty bucks or so. I had a Gransfors Brüks American Felling Axe that was stolen from my truck toolbox a few years ago. Nice axe, but I can’t justify paying that much money for something to do what I ask an axe to do.

Most of the time when you’re in the woods with a saw the axe is a wedge driver or a dirty bark remover. You might use it to get yourself out of a pinch. The edge is going to get messed up no matter how good the steel is. It’s going to take a beating. A Gransfors won’t do any better than a Council that costs a fifth of what the Swedish axe does. A good axe to accompany a chainsaw, regardless of what some tall, goofy “homesteader” dude says is 3-5 lbs with a straight handle that’s not super long so it goes in your belt. The saw is your primary cutting tool.

Council still uses good steel and makes their stuff in the U.S. Very few other manufacturers still do that outside of the ones that rival or exceed the prices of the Swedish axes. Council still is what FSS purchases for USFS. It’s the standard tool for almost every wildland crew. Husqvarna makes a nice axe, it’s just light for what I want. Hults Brük is nice. Stihl’s forestry axe is lighter than I want too, but it’s a nice axe. I have the Stihl splitting maul and like it a bunch.

Or, you could go look for a good, older axe head in the 3-5 lb weight range (most all of the older heads are good) and then either purchase a handle, or make one yourself (you can make it fit your hand exactly how you want) and then have your chainsaw mate. I’d go for an older Sager Chemical, Collins, Council Tool, True Temper, Kelly, Hults Brük, blah blah, American style head with a big poll. True Temper & Collins are still in business but their tools have gone down the toilet.

Just whatever you do, for gods’ sake, don’t get a Fiskars.
 
I agree that the forest axe is low duty, but is an essential tool for working in the wilderness. Still, definitely not something to mortgage the house on. In addition to what catb said to bring an axe for, also is to test the soundness of a tree. Avoid the trees that look good but sound hollow. You get deep into falling a tree and it is hollow, it could be game over. Leave them for someone else to deal with.

I also use my axe and my hatchet as carry tools. Driving the axe head into the butt of a log, makes for easy carry, and 2 at a time.
 
Back
Top