Old Timer Firewood Stories

[spike60]

Anybody got any good stories to share about cutting firewood before people argued about which chainsaw was the best? With all of todays saws and splitters, cutting firewood would seem awful easy to people who never had these tools.

I read a book last year where a guy made a mobile buzz saw in the 40's. He stripped the body off a early 30's plymouth and put another engine where the back seat was to run the buzz saw. He would come to your house and cut your wood into stove lengths. Of course, people still had to cut down the trees that this guy would saw up. That was done with hand saws, which meant that most of the wood was 3" to 6" in diameter. Easier to cut by hand, easier to move and easier to work with the buzz saw. Even with that guys "invention", you're talking an awful lot of work to get in the winters wood.

A few years ago, an older guy told me that when he was a kid on the farm, they would drop a tree with a two man hand saw. Then they would drill a hole or two, fill them with black powder, and BOOM, split the tree. A few more cuts with the hand saw, then stove length wood from a buzz saw run off a tractor. Splitting wood with gunpowder sounds like fun, doesn't it? It would be a blast! (Get it! )

 

[stonykill]

well I don't have any stories like that. I also don't think any of the newer saws are better than the others brand to brand in the pro saws. Just what feels right. For me old saws feel right.

When I was around 12 and started having to saw wood , rather than just stack it, I ran an old, old even then Homelite Zip. My stepdad ran a Mcculloch 250. My dad, the little wood he cut, ran an ancient, huge Pioneer, probably a 600, but we are talking childhood memories here.

We would either drive the 2wd truck as far as it would go into the woods, knock down trees, load, leave, split at home. After a while we got a 40's Case, big one, not sure of the model. Tricycle wheels, suicide knob, and drag the trees out of the woods with that (my job, I liked that) and cut them up in the feild. All of this was done on the land where I still live.

You know, those old saws never let us down. Sure they would get tempermental, but a few minutes of cleaning and tinkering always seemed to get them going again. No cheap, crappy plastic handles to break.No flimsy air filter covers. No chain brakes(ok, that can be a good thing).All metal parts. If the saw ran lean, it was your fault, and not the way the saw was set up from the factory.

Speaking of splitting. Some of the homemade splitters we used. My favorite was driven off the pto on the case. This splitter was around 7 feet long, about 12 inches off the ground, and a monster. If you hit a stuborn piece of wood, You wanted to be out of the way, cause when it split....it was going to fly 10 to 20 feet. Got a few dents in the truck that way.

There was one day, we backed the 77 chevy cob job pickup into the woods, and our homemade driveshaft broke. It was 2 shafts we welded together, sleeved one in the other. Not balanced of course. I thought we were screwed. This is one of the rare times we weren't cutting at home. We were 30 miles away. My stepdad, grabbed the tool box, took out a punch, and drove it in between the sleeves on the cobbed up driveshaft. We cut, overloaded the 1/2 ton as usual, and eased it home. When we got home I took the shaft off and brought it to a friends house , who had a welder, we didn't until years later, and re welded it. I was 16 then. The rest was between 12 and 16.

 

[Mike Van]

Spike, I've got some old b&w photos of the farm here, my grandfather and a few uncles doing wood in the winter. Old woodshod they called it, pulled by 2 horses, they'd haul the logs off the mountain on it. Once here, there was a buzzsaw run by a big old hit & miss engine. I remember that old blade just singing all day long. Other days it would be the sledges hitting the wedges. We had a wood furnace in the celler till '62 or so, one big steel grate in the hall, you couldn't stand on it sometimes it was so hot.

 

[STLfirewood]

I'm only 32 years old so I haven't seen as much as a lot of you guys. There was an old man that rented the family farm house for years. He has a 50 something 2wd chevy 1/2 ton truck with a flatbed. He would drive it in the woods and set it up on blocks. He would then unbolt the rear tire and bolt a huge circular saw blade right on the hub. He would get a stick and set the pedal down on the floor. The blade stuck up above the flatbed. He had a fence made on the flatbed. He would cut anything from firewood to lumber on that thing. He would rip cedar poles into nice fence posts and put a nice sharp point on them. That man dies in the late 80's. I use to love watching him work he could make anything out of nothing. Everytime he smiled you could see both teeth in his mouth. He was a true old timer. I never heard him complain once.

Scott

 

[Bowtie]

My Grandpa had an old buzzsaw with a Wisconsin motor on it they used for cutting any wood that needed it, mostly firewood. Anytime I asked to help he would get an owl-eyed look and show me what was left of his thumb and tell me to run along and play, and DONT shoot out any of my old car windows!

 

[Dok]

I've listened to stories about how they cut firewood on my cousins ranch back in the day. Before WWII they would buck the oaks into 4' lengths (one and two man hand saws) then split these rounds with sledges and wedges. The split wood would be cut to order, say a 4' piece would be cut to 12", 18" and 18" with the 12" for cooking stoves. The old buzz saw they used to cut the split wood is still in the pasture. It looks like its based on an old Ford with a 4 cyl engine (Model T?). It has a sliding deck to feed the wood through the circular saw blade, which looks like 3' in diameter. A big flat belt drives the blade off the engine. People had a lot of ingenuity back then, you couldn't just buy whatever you wanted nor could they afford to do so. It must have been back breaking work. I can't complain about splitting 16" long rounds.
Dok

 

[habanero]

Dad has a couple old powder-driven wedges (not sure what else to call them). Have a big heavy steel wedge on the end, and a hollow tube in the back to fill with black powder. He's never used them that I know of, but he said the old guy he got them from used them all the time. You'd just drive them into the wood so far, then fill the tube with powder, and light the fuse.

I chuckle at everyone talking about buzz saws in such a nostalgic tone. I use mine all the time, so it doesn't seem too nostalgic at all.

 

[computeruser]

A few years ago, an older guy told me that when he was a kid on the farm, they would drop a tree with a two man hand saw. Then they would drill a hole or two, fill them with black powder, and BOOM, split the tree. A few more cuts with the hand saw, then stove length wood from a buzz saw run off a tractor. Splitting wood with gunpowder sounds like fun, doesn't it? It would be a blast! (Get it! )

Sounds like something to try at our next GTG!

And yes, I am serious.

 

[hoot gibson]

when i was younder we heated with wood and coal , but the wood was alot cheeper.. lol we use hand saws , and a two man saw to cut it , didnt know what a chainsaw was . on the farm now we have a timber harvester portable band saw to cut boards with , we had a big oak that was to big to get in the saw . so we ran thechainsaw bar down into the log halfway through , cut a slice in it , then dumped it full of black powder . wicked it , and packed it ,, we were trying to split it so to get it in the saw . well we lit it , and took cover ,, might have just used a little to much powder , she split all right . and broke about every little fiber in the log ,, oh well it still burnt for firewood , hoot

 

[blackdoggy]

Are those powder driven wedges illegal or just to much of a liability for manufactures to make due to the stupid people in the world?

 

[Corley5]

Grandpa had a buzz rig mounted on the front of our 37 A JD. We just took it off a few years ago. My other Grandfather had one mounted on an F-12 Farmall. Another neighbor had one mounted to the front of B JD. They all ran off the tractors flat belt pulley. Better than a crosscut but I'd rather cut wood with a chainsaw than wrestle long poles onto the saw table :greenchainsaw:

 

[turnkey4099]

Back in the day (40s/50s) we heated solely with wood. Fall teh tree with a misery stick (crosscut -hated that thing!), then cut rounds with a one man dragsaw. Slow but it did allow you to split and load the prior round while the next one was being cut.

Got our first chainsaw (McCullough something, used logger saw) in 1952.

Harry K

 

[chipshopper]

In the years after WWII untill the early sixties, one of our neighbours had a buzzsaw that was powered by a motorcycle that the Germans left behind.

He removed the rear tire and replaced it by a long belt to get the power to the huge circular saw.
The front forch was anchored to a tree
Everytime again it was hilarious to see him jumping on the bike and cranking it.
Sometimes the fluttering belt went off and he had to jump for his life.
Due to abuse, the muffler was gone and one could hear him from miles away.
Seeing him was a bit more difficult because it was a 2-stroke engine and his mixture was very rich.
Needless to say that there was no safety on his system and a lot of do-it-self men lost their fingers on the home-made creations from left behind war vehicles