When I heard the the town was cutting down a big ash tree in the park to make room for a basketball court I was the first in line to ask for the wood. A huge plus for this tree is it is a block away from my house and I can see it from my front picture window. After the tree crew cut and limbed it I was told to have at it. Well I knew it was a BIG tree but on the ground I wondered if I had bit off more then I could chew. This thing measured at the trunk 45" across and went for a good 12 ft without tapering off much at all before hitting the first of two huge crotch pieces. Here is a good example of having friends with CAD comes in handy. A buddy of mine heard me talking about this bad boy and was more then happy to come up and chip away at the big trunk piece with his big Dolmar saw and a 32" bar (I think). When your two biggest saws are Husky Ranchers with 20" bar it was better then watching a movie watching this beast of a chainsaw make short work of this huge trunk. He was kind enough to cut this in 18' to 20" pieces so that I could noddle these down to quarters to be able to handle them for splitting them. I finally finished this up Saturday. I know bad on me for not taking a picture before and after but I was so gung ho to get going it didn't cross my mind. Here is a picture of the finished product. Man did I get a ton of wood off that tree. The partial front pallet would be full to the top if I had put all of the odd shaped crotch pieces on it but they found another home. Here are a couple of observations that I can make after the fact. I don't know it would be worth the wear and tear on my smaller saws to process this big of a tree if that is all that I had. After watching the big boy saw a case can be made that I should start shopping for one. Both of the crotch pieces were a bunch of sawing but well worth the wood return that was gained. I need to get some plastic wedges, I only have one steel one now. (You can about guess where this comes from) And finally I need to get my chain sharpening down better. I have 6 chains for the saws was down to 1 chain before my sharpening guy finished the four that I had dropped off a couple days before. Sorry I got a little windy here is the pic of the final product.
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