Rob's New Toy

Readers of the ...


… last newsletter will recall me waxing on about Gordon’s great new chainsaw & mill. There was a bit of a debate as it whether it was bigger than Rob Walker’s No1 Husquvarna. Gordy refutes the I’ve got a bigger one than you story on the grounds that it isn’t true and points out it isn’t how big it is it’s what you do with it.

Well to be absolutely sure, Rob bought a mill and the gubbins too that with it’s 5 foot bar it can comfortably cut 36” diameter butts which is as big as anything I deal with. I was keen for him to try it out for nothing on my difficult to cut timber – some Walnut and Yew.

Some people have a Swiss Army knife…

… to help them out. Rob had for a while Swiss crane driver Otti pictured below right to hold the other end of his enormous tool. So it was all going swimmingly bathed in unseasonal sunshine and clear blue skies on Halloween.

I had a feeling it was too good to last, but dismissed this with a nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong!

Having made light work of the walnut we got straight on to a large lump of Yew that Gordon’s mate Tractor Dave had brought over in the summer.

The first couple of slices came off lovely as they say but three quarters of the way through the third we hit what appeared to be metal, right in the middle of the trunk. The saw came to a sudden stop.

With the 167 of his chainsaw teeth...

... totally blunt and the seven of his own gritted Rob extricated the saw and investigated. Much digging with the small chain saws revealed a great big flint which had probably got in the tree 50 years ago and had waiting patiently for a chance to ruin our day.

The rope in the right fore ground was for Rob to insert my neck and string me up for buggering his new toy. On the surface he was quite chilled and philosophical but I heard on the grapevine that he was grumpy as a grumpy thing for the next 24 hours.

A more few hours sharpening …

…and he was ready to mill an Oak in a back garden. Unfortunately this too was riddled with metal and it was back to the workshop and the sharpener. This prompted Rob into buying a handy portable electric sharpener that he could plug into his Landy battery and has proved useful on subsequent jobs.

More of these jobs coming soon.

Regards,

Paul GOULDEN.

Top of Page