The Book of Camp-Lore and Woodcraft

by Daniel Carter Beard

Wood-Yard Conveniences

With pine trees, however, this is not always the case, because the pitchy nature of the sap of the pine prevents it from fermenting like beech sap; in fact, the pitch acts as a preservative and mummifies, so to speak, the wood. Pine knots will last for a hundred years lying in the soft, moist ground and for aught I know, longer, because they are fat with pitch and the pitch prevents decay.

Beech when cut in June is unfit for firewood the following winter, but authorities say that the same trees cut in August and left with the branches still on them for twenty or thirty days, will make firmer and "livelier" timber than that cut under any other conditions.

An expert lumberman in ten minutes' time will cut down a hardwood tree one foot in diameter, and it will not take him over four minutes to cut down a softwood tree of the same size.

Clear Away Everything

Before attempting to chop down a tree; in fact, before attempting to chop anything, be careful to see that there are no clothes lines overhead, if you are chopping in your backyard, or if you are chopping in the forests see that there are no vines, twigs, or branches within swing of your axe. By carefully removing all such things you will remove one of the greatest causes of accidents in the wilderness, for as slight a thing as a little twig can deflect, that is, turn, the blade of your axe from its course and cause the loss of a toe, a foot, or even a leg. This is the reason that swamping is the most dangerous part of the lumberman's work.

How to "Fall" a Tree

If the tree, in falling, must pass between two other trees where there is danger of its "hanging," so cut your kerf that the tree in falling will strike the ground nearest the smallest of the trees, or nearest the one furthest away. Then, as the tree falls, and brushes the side of the smallest tree or the one furthest away, it will bounce away, thus giving the fallen tree an opportunity to bump its way down to the place on the ground selected for it, in place of hanging by its bough in the boughs of other trees.