Technique for noodling?

[esshup]

This is probably a silly question, but here goes. What is the correct way to noodle a round?

Set it so that you are cutting with the grain (i.e. with the dogs against the cut edge) or:

Stand the round up so the dogs are against the bark and cut down?

Rounds will be 16" long.

I'll have some pretty good sized rounds to whittle down later on this Spring. I can fit a piece of wood that is almost 9" tall in my insert, so I thought that I'd make some blocks so I'll have larger pieces to put in the last loading at night before going to bed.

Red Oak.
I have a Dolmar 7900 that I'll be using. 24" and 32" bars, what chain should I throw on? regular or skip? Semi chisel or full chisel? I guess the orientation of the round will dictate what bar to use. These rounds are big.....

 

[Dalmatian90]

Saw when ripping, which is used to make lumber.

Saw when noodling:

Note the noodles hanging down from the saw. You don't get noodles when rip cutting.

 

[Marshy]

Try it both ways and you'll notice quickly which is faster and easier on the saw, it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. In my opinion, I find it best to cut with the grain, the dogs at the cross cut. Keeping the bar tip higher than the dogs seems to cut the fastest for me. Keep a sharp chain and moving fast. The more you let the bar become parallel with the grain the larger/longer/stringier the chip gets and can clog your saw. If your cutting with the bark keep the saw from perpindicular to the grain or you'll get more dust than chip. If cutting with the bark I find it a slight advantage to lead the cut with the bar tip. A skip chain would help if you have one available. I use this method mainly for halving or quartering large pieces that I cannot handle to split. Other people probably have a different opinion if you are slabbing a log...

 

[Fred Wright]

After various tries I settled on basic noodling - lay the round on its side and start cutting at the end facing away, pivoting the bar downward. This cuts a path for the bar to follow so I don't go astray later. Back up a little and repeat. Halfway back, hold the saw horizontally and continue the cut partway through. Finish by swatting with the maul.

I cut 16" - 18" rounds; the bar is not quite long enough to cut end to end. So I make two cuts to quarter the bigger ones. Usually one swat with the maul is sufficient to bust 'em apart.

Clogged clutch cover is a real PITA and it wipes the bar oil off the chain. I have found that if I go a bit slower and let the noodles clear, it doesn't clog as much. Noodles pile up quickly... I avoid noodling close to the ground. This helps keep the cover clear as well.

 

[Marshy]

I agree and forgot to add that little tip Fred... back up out of your cut some and reset your dogs then pivot back into the cut with the tip/end of the bar. Once you reach horizontal again drop your dogs back into previous cut and hammer down. Rinse and repeat.

 

[CTYank]

Some saws are much better than others at clearing the chips, no matter how long they are. Keeping nose down, or elevated, relative to the cut line, makes for shorter chips and reduced clogging.
IME, PP5020 and RedMax GZ4000, of the saws I've run, are by far the best at avoiding clogging the clutch cover.
Seldom do I ever noodle all the way through. Noodled groove can be hit with maul, or have a wedge set in it. Faster that way & less waste.

 

[Mad Professor]

Buy a hefty maul or two. And 3 steel wedges. If bigger than 48" get a 20 lb sledge.
Never saw anything I can't spilt with those. But all the big stuff was gone before I was born........

 

[Dalmatian90]

Buy a hefty maul or two. And 3 steel wedges. If bigger than 48" get a 20 lb sledge.
Never saw anything I can't spilt with those. But all the big stuff was gone before I was born........

Some of us prefer to work smarter than wear ourselves out.

Never saw anything I couldn't handle with a 4-1/2 pound ax after at most noodling in quarters. And more often half a noodle and then split it with the ax like CTYank laid out.

 

[Marshy]

Buy a hefty maul or two. And 3 steel wedges. If bigger than 48" get a 20 lb sledge.
Never saw anything I can't spilt with those. But all the big stuff was gone before I was born........

I had some 35" red elm that was green this past fall and I tried like H*LL to split that with first my Fiskar then my 8 lb maul, then the two wedges and the maul but had no luck. All it wanted to do was crack aroung the growth rings but never split, and that was on the smaller 24" stuff I couldnt get my maul or my Fiskar to even stick in the 30+ stuff! I tried to noodle it, first a 1/4, then 1/2, then 3/4's of the way through each time stopping to beat it with some cold steel but still wouldnt comply. Ended up noodling about 30-40 feet of the trunk that ranged from ~35" to ~24". Way more work than I bargened for.

 

[DSS]

This isn't me, but this is my saw now.

 

[Nosmo]

Laying a round on its side and cutting through the bark lengthwise is what is called noodling. Standing the round on end and cutting across the end downwards is ripping.

Noodling is the easier method by far if the saw is using a crosscut chain. There are chains (rip chains) made for the purpose of ripping a round.

 

[wudpirat]

Don't forget to save those noodles. A hand full and a couple pine splits and you got a fire going.
A couple of embers will lite your fire.
I save mine in a 50# bird seed bag.

 

[mainewoods]

The best way to "noodle" a piece of wood too big to pick up, is to set your saw down ,extend your foot, and roll it down a gully. Excess wear on your saw avoided - problem solved.

 

[Marshy]

The best way to "noodle" a piece of wood too big to pick up, is to set your saw down ,extend your foot, and roll it down a gully. Excess wear on your saw avoided - problem solved.

On my case I would have given up a free cord of wood! Not this guy. Done properly it won't hurt it at all. I've seen more damage done with a dull chainsaw in the hands of an idiot than proper noodling.

 

[CTYank]

Buy a hefty maul or two. And 3 steel wedges. If bigger than 48" get a 20 lb sledge.
Never saw anything I can't spilt with those. But all the big stuff was gone before I was born........

Depends totally on just how you mean that. Most of the "hefty mauls" out there are instruments of self-torture. Took me a while, but I "discovered" that a few years back, when I got a Mueller (3 kg) maul. I took a 7" disc-grinder and mimiced its head shape on a couple of Bradlee's cheapie mauls, with most enjoyable results. Last year I got a Wetterlings 2.5 kg maul. These tools now make splitting FUN.

Noodling definitely enters the picture when you have nasty, gnarly forks & knots, and don't want to toss that wood away. (A really big bandsaw would be ideal, IMHO.)

It's not so much about size, but about crossed/interlocking grain, and wanting to avoid hernia.

 

[esshup]

Thanks guys! NOW I understand. Ripping and Noodling are 2 different things.
I'll be cutting 16" cookies and I have a skip semi-chisel for both the 24" and 32" bars. Dolmar 7900.
It's Red Oak. Looking at the Sherrill Tree log chart, the first few cookies will weigh somewhere around 1340 pounds each. Somewhere between 3 and 4 cords of wood in this log. I have a tractor with a grapple bucket, but I think 2500# is about it's limit, so picking up the log is impossible. With the cold weather, even rolling it is impossible too. It's frozen to the ground, AND it made a pretty good dent in the forest floor when it tipped over.

 

[MarcS]

That's a big log! I love carving up big logs into firewood. A suggestion, don't buck it all up at once. Cut a round down to maybe 8" from the ground so it's still solid to the rest of the log and then quarter it from the end into manageable pieces, then proceed to the next round. Safer than having huge rounds rolling around. Rounds that big, if you choose to buck off completely I think would be safer to bust up with wedges while they lay flat on the ground rather than standing up to noodle. Also be careful for kickback if you are noodling with the bar buried in the rest of the log, I try to use a shorter 20" bar and buck the round so that the nose of the bar when noodling barely breaks through the backside into the kerf.

 

[jrider]

Buy a hefty maul or two. And 3 steel wedges. If bigger than 48" get a 20 lb sledge.
Never saw anything I can't spilt with those. But all the big stuff was gone before I was born........

You try this out on sweet or black gum? Would like to watch that.

 

[esshup]

That's a big log! I love carving up big logs into firewood. A suggestion, don't buck it all up at once. Cut a round down to maybe 8" from the ground so it's still solid to the rest of the log and then quarter it from the end into manageable pieces, then proceed to the next round. Safer than having huge rounds rolling around. Rounds that big, if you choose to buck off completely I think would be safer to bust up with wedges while they lay flat on the ground rather than standing up to noodle. Also be careful for kickback if you are noodling with the bar buried in the rest of the log, I try to use a shorter 20" bar and buck the round so that the nose of the bar when noodling barely breaks through the backside into the kerf.

Here's my nephew with that log.

 

[MarcS]

Looks pretty nice, I was picturing some gnarly cow pasture oak about six foot diameter and 20 feet tall.