Milling Your Own Lumber

Chapter 1

All About Lumber Wood: The hard fibrous substance consisting basically of xylem that makes up the greater part of the stems, branches, and roots of trees or shrubs beneath the bark and is found to a limited extent in herbaceous plants. —Merriam-Webster

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arvesting one’s own lumber is not a single action, but an entire process.

It begins with a little knowledge about trees, and the wood they contain.

Once a tree is located (perhaps as close as your own backyard), it needs to be felled, hauled, sawn, dried, milled and stored properly. Each step is critical, and each affects the ensuing ones.

Softwood logs wait for the sawyer at Spearfish Forest Products sawmill in western South Dakota.

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People harvest lumber for a lot of different reasons. Some have sentimental attachment to a specific tree or grove, while others need quick cash. Some hate to see a great resource hauled to the dump or burned as fuel. But most woodworkers harvest for a very practical reason: they can achieve the species, cuts and dimensions they want without paying a lumber supplier to do all the work.

The first step in the process is to choose a tree to harvest. To do that, one should know the characteristics of wood.

Hardwoods and Softwoods There are two very distinct categories of wood. In North America, softwoods (coniferous trees that seed through cones) primarily supply construction lumber for studs, trusses, joists and other framing components. Hardwoods (essentially, trees that lose their leaves in winter) are harvested for furniture, cabinetry and decorative arts including woodturning. These latter are quite diverse. Hardwoods in general grow more slowly, which gives them a tighter grain structure. They are, for the most part, denser and thus physically harder than softwoods, although there are notable exceptions such as the very soft balsawood, which is technically a hardwood as it loses its leaves.

Being a hardwood doesn’t have a lot to do with being a hard wood.

Hardwoods are often darker and more visually attractive than the lighter colored softwoods. Their annual growth rings are usually not as distinctive

The most obvious difference between softwoods and hardwoods is that the latter lose their leaves.

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as those in pines, fir, spruce and other evergreens. They almost always weigh more than softwoods, and are often stronger in both compression (along the grain) and shear (across the grain). Softwoods in general contain a lot more resins, and they split more easily along the grain.

In the northern hemisphere, softwoods are widely available, easier to harvest, easier to convert into usable lumber, less expensive, faster growing (and thus more renewable), lighter to transport, and easier to work with carpentry tools. They are, however, less durable, which makes them a less attractive material choice for most furniture. For example, a pine tabletop is more likely to dent than an oak one. Hardwoods are, for the most part, more receptive to finishing: they take stains and dyes more evenly. They are also easier to sand evenly: the annual rings are usually close together, so sanding delivers a flatter surface.

There are about a hundred times as many hardwood species as softwoods and that provides a much larger palette of aesthetics for a furniture builder.

Different hardwoods often grow together, which offers the possibility of harvesting several species from the same grove.

The components of plywood are almost universally softwood, even when the sheet stock has a pair of hardwood veneer skins. Some products such as micro-plies (cabinet grade birch plywood that often comes from the Baltic region) are made entirely of hardwood, but most cabinet sheet goods have a less expensive softwood core.

Softwood is more common in millwork applications (windows and doors) than hardwood because it is less expensive, easier to work, more widely available, and more versatile.

Factories use a splicing technique (finger jointing) to create virtually endless pine stock that is crosscut to length for window components, exterior moldings (such as the brick mold around garage doors), and so on.

OSB (background) and the core of hardwood veneered plywood are usually inexpensive softwoods.

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On a drive through the western states, one can see endless mountains covered with neatly planted rows of pine. Because it grows quickly, softwood is inherently more suited to tree farming and re-foresting than most species of hardwood. Old growth softwoods are now essentially depleted, and today’s construction lumber was in large part planted by man, rather than

by Mother Nature.

Choosing Species to Harvest Sometimes, the species choice is already made for us, as when we come across the opportunity to harvest specific trees in a specific location. Perhaps a neighbor is thinning a grove, or some trees need to be removed for a construction project, or maybe they are standing dead and pose a threat to livestock or buildings. Unfortunately, most of those latter have rotted away from the inside before they can be harvested. That’s a pity, because much of the drying process has already occurred.

When we are free to choose any species to harvest, the keys are aesthetics (color and grain patterns), durability and workability. The aesthetic factors are essentially subjective: everybody has their own favorites. Most of those choices are based on experience—we have perhaps worked in cherry or white oak, and liked it, so that’s what we want to harvest.

Durability and workability are also valid reasons for choosing a species.

Even if one has never worked, say, the lowly cottonwood, it shouldn’t be discounted immediately just because it isn’t pretty. Cottonwood can actually be a pretty decent paint grade hardwood, especially for jobs that don’t require a lot of finesse such as closet shelves, garage storage and so on. It’s very workable (although it does smell funny on the table saw), and as long as it has been properly dried, it is quite durable and stable. A lot of barns were built using cottonwood because there were no other options, and many are still standing. It carves well, too (especially the bark), and because it’s relatively hard it makes a good worktop in places like auto repair or metalworking shops, where toughness is usually more important than absolute flatness. Few trees, especially urban ones, yield as many board feet as cottonwood (0106).

People harvesting their own lumber need to know a little bit about the physical hardness of wood. That affects how the trees work with tools and how much use the wood will be later on for furniture, cabinets, carving, turning and so on.

chapter 1: all about lumber The hardest domestic species, according to the USDA, are (in order) hickory, pecan, hard maple, white oak, beech, red oak, yellow birch, green ash, black walnut, soft maple, cherry, hackberry, gum, elm, sycamore, alder, yellow poplar, cottonwood, basswood and aspen. It’s not an exclusive list, and other agencies change the rank a little, but these are some of the most popular species that we harvest.

Hardness doesn’t necessarily mean hardship. Just because a species is hard, it isn’t always hard to work. For example, most professionals would much rather work any of the oaks than gum. Oak is predictable and reliable. And hickory, though extremely hard, is a wonderful turning wood. It’ll dull high speed steel jointer and planer knives, but it won’t dull the new carbide insert turning tools very quickly.

Density

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Hickory is the hardest native species, but it turns easily with carbide insert lathe tools.

Wood density is weight per cubic foot. A few years ago, the Wieland & Sons Lumber Co. website (wlumber.com) used to say: “density is a way of determining the ease of working a specific species of wood. Dense woods are harder to work with and fasten together, but once fastened they hold much better than less dense types of wood.”

That, in a nutshell, describes the characteristic. Density (in simple terms, weight) certainly has a strong relationship to the hardness of the stock.

Lightweight basswood goes through the table saw with a lot less effort than heavy hickory. But density is only one way, and not always the best way to determine the ease of working a specific species. For example, butternut is relatively soft (lower density), yet it can be a pain to sand and finish. That’s because it is, in the words of one of my grandkids, “kind of furry”.

When considering a species to harvest, such characteristics should be considered. For that, it’s a good idea to visit local sawmills and talk about

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Specific Gravity of Wood Species

what’s popular in your region, and why. The sawyer will often know more about the characteristics of the species that pass through his mill than most of the experienced woodworkers around, simply because he sees and works with more species.

In the industry, density is expressed in terms of specific gravity, which essentially measures how the weight of a cubic area of a certain wood species compares to the same volume of water. If water has a specific gravity of 1.0, then wood with a rating of less than 1.0 will float, and more than 1.0 will sink. Below are the specific gravities of some of the most popular species

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Specific Gravity of Wood Species continued

being harvested in North America. Note how closely this list equates with the hardness discussed above.

These numbers can change a little depending on region. That’s because weather and soil have a huge impact on wood. A red oak grown at the Canadian border has a much shorter growing season than one harvested in southern Appalachia, so the annual rings are much tighter up north. And the minerals in the soil affect the rate of nutrition, which of course impacts the growth pattern. Tighter grain structure weighs a little more, so the specific gravity is a little higher.

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Log Weight Chart

By the way, minerals can profoundly affect the color of wood, too.

For example, the heartwood in some red oak is almost white, while other samples are a deep, rich red, and still others have a brownish hue.

Location can also affect grain. A tree standing alone usually has a bulbous dendritic pattern. The word “dendritic” refers to the way that limbs, branches and twigs grow. Where a tree has room to spread out, it does so horizontally. Trees growing tightly together, on the other hand, tend to grow tall as they compete for sunlight. So, the same species can have two different shapes, depending on where it grows.

Wood is a living resource, so it is subject to genetic variances. If you harvest the same species from two different locations, they may have different grain structure and different color. Knowing that up front is better than finding out after you’ve built the new kitchen—and the door colors don’t match. If possible, keep flitches together through the sawing and drying processes. (“Flitch” is the word used to describe the boards that make up a log. It is also more widely used to describe the dozens of layers of thin

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veneer that make up a log). That way, boards from the same tree can be color and grain matched more easily, so that adjacent panels look similar.

Grain Pattern and Defects When you’re looking at a tree and deciding whether to harvest it, wouldn’t it be great to be able to see inside the bark and view a cross-section of it first?

Observing the outside of a tree gives some clues, but you don’t really know what you’ve got until it’s sliced into boards. The first clue is grain pattern. It’s an indication of how well a piece of wood will work, and how Trees like these giant redwoods grow tall and branchless as they compete for sunlight. stable it will be over the years.

Nice straight trunks usually deliver nice straight boards, and windblown, burled trunks deliver lots of figure, but not a whole lot of furniture grade lumber. If the log is relatively straight, it can usually be milled in more than one way, too. Quartersawn boards (more on this later) will in general move less and hold more. That is, they will expand and contract across their width at low rates, and glue joints are stronger.

A straight board will be stronger than stock with wavy or spiral grain, although it might not be nearly as interesting aesthetically. Irregular grains such as fiddleback or bird’s-eye are beautiful to look at, but can be rather difficult to work. The key is perhaps to progress from straight grain to figured stock at the same rate that your woodworking skills evolve. Some species are prized for their natural defects (such as burls, insect damage, water damage and so on). If your sawmill operator has a lot of experience, then harvesting “interesting” wood becomes easier.

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Turners, carvers and rustic furniture builders may want to use their new chainsaws to harvest burls.

Webster defines a burl as “a hard, woody, often flattened hemispherical outgrowth on a tree�. There are various schools of thought on what Windblown, burled trunks deliver lots of figure, but causes them, but there is not a whole lot of furniture grade lumber. general agreement that they are abnormal growth.

Possible causes include insect or weather-related damage, fungi, genetics, and the chemical composition of the soil. Burls are one result of the tree repairing itself after suffering some kind of trauma, which in many cases can be physical (such as storm damage). Quite Wyoming furniture builder Bill Pridgeon harvests pine burls, which he uses to build rustic furniture. often, the biggest burls are underground, and these are sometimes visible where the root system meets the trunk.

Small burls are often harvested for use as components, rather than to be milled into boards. That is, they remain on the limb or small trunk where they were found, and the harvester does little more than strip the bark. These decorative elements can be overwhelming if too many of them are used in furniture, but as rustic architectural elements, they can work well.

Harvesting burls is a guessing game. It’s impossible to predict what the inside will look like. And after cutting them down, they are virtually impossible to run through a band mill whole, because of their bulbous shape. If the burl is not being used as an entire entity for something like carved bowls, then the best option may be to cut it down the middle with a chainsaw, and then slice it into short, highly figured boards on a band mill.

When wind, snow loads or other factors place stress on one side of a tree more than the other, the tree compensates over time. This is true of

chapter 1: all about lumber gravity, too. A limb growing horizontally (that is, parallel to the ground) will have tight grain near the top, and wider grain lower down as it fights against constant pressure. This is known as reaction wood, where the tree is reacting to a foreign stimulus and compensates by adjusting its growth pattern.

It can be subtle: the tree may still look fairly straight, and the reaction only becomes evident when the limb or trunk has been harvested and cut into boards. In hardwoods, such an effect is called tension wood and it happens on the face of the tree being attacked.

In softwoods, it is known as compression wood and it occurs on the opposite face— the other side of the tree.

Neither is desirable from a woodworking viewpoint, so reaction wood generally ends up as firewood or chips. If one tries to machine it, the wood can twist, warp, crimp the saw blade and in general present a number of situations where the sawyer can be hurt by kickback. It also dries erratically (unevenly), and if a kiln operator accidentally chooses some reaction wood boards to run humidity tests,

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Offering some sense of scale, the author’s wife rests against a burl at the base of a California redwood.

As rustic architectural elements, small burls that are still attached to limbs can be quite dramatic.

Artist Denny Zimmerman carves pine, oak and cottonwood burls into exquisite natural edged bowls. Photo by Dennis Zimmerman.

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Denny Zimmerman (left) and Bill Pridgeon discover the magic inside a harvested burled pine limb.

he/she may end up making mistakes programming the kiln because those decisions (heat and time) are being made with inaccurate data.

Anatomy of a Tree The small cedar shown here was photographed a few days after it was felled, as is witnessed by the still-oozing sap. At the center of the tree is the pith (1). This was once the sapling that grew (in this case, for thirty-five years) into an adult tree. Each year the pith wrapped itself in layers of new growth, expanding not by enlarging its cells, but by adding new ones. The rich red heartwood (2) in this tree is actually dead, and the white sapwood (3) is a conduit that brings some water and nutrients from the ground to the leaves.

That colored heartwood is an extremely strong wooden post that supports the weight of the tree, and even though it’s dead it usually won’t decay as long as it is protected from the weather by sapwood and the other outer layers of growth.

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There is an area (4) next to the sapwood that is actually made up of three very thin layers of cells—so small that, to the naked eye, they look like a single ring in most trees. This is the cambium layer, composed of phloem, cambium and xylum, and collectively it’s the part of the tree that is growing into new annual rings. Phloem is a short-lived layer that passes large amounts of food to the rest of the tree (which in our photo appears as flowing and hardening sap). Cambium repairs injuries and creates new growth, and xylum circulates water and dissolved minerals. While these layers are vital to a tree, they don’t make a whole lot of difference to a harvester.

The final layer of growth is the outer bark (5), which protects the tree from weather, and stops moisture evaporating when the surrounding air’s ambient humidity declines.

5 1 2 3 Bark also acts as a barrier to 4 most insects, although several species-specific borers such as the pine beetle and ash borer 6 are not slowed down.

Each year, a new layer of growth occurs. These annual A cross section of a felled cedar shows the pith, rings (6) are each made up heartwood, sapwood, cambium, bark and rings. of a fat area of earlywood (spring and summer growth), and a thin area of latewood (fall growth, that usually has a darker color).

It’s hard to tell the difference between heartwood and sapwood in some very light-colored species such as cottonwood, and this isn’t all bad. If there is little difference between the two, then the whole board is usually quite usable. If it dried too quickly, one can sometimes see a physical separation (splitting) where the heartwood and sapwood meet, and in this case it’s usually best to discard the sapwood.

Choosing a Cut Once you reduce a tree to logs, those need to be sawn into boards. When choosing a species, that can be a consideration. Some species work better with different cuts.

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The distinction between heart and sapwood can be unclear in some species, such as cottonwood.

There are three ways to saw a log and each one produces very different boards.

The three methods are plain sawing, quarter sawing, and rift. These are discussed in detail in Section 4. If you are harvesting furniture grade lumber in a desirable species, quarter sawing is definitely a contender. This cut yields very stable boards with tight, straight grain and minimal movement.

It is, however, a little wasteful.

In some species, most notably white oak, this cut also delivers a ribbon-like effect (called flake), which is a result of slicing through medullary rays.

These rays run between the pith (center of the trunk) and the

bark, carrying small amounts of nutrients.

If you haul your logs to a mill and the sawyer only knows how to plain saw, read through Section 4 and you’ll be able to have a more meaningful conversation with him.

Know Your Grade The National Hardwood Lumber Association has created guidelines for grading hardwood (and again, there is more detail on this in Section 4). Your sawyer will most likely be familiar with the basic grades listed below, and will plan his cuts accordingly. By its nature, wood is not all identical. The Association’s rules get you close, but you may still need to add some specs of your own when placing a mill order. For example, if you just ask for FAS cherry, you will get a mix of heart and sapwood in random widths. If you need all heartwood in 7" wide boards, you need to tell the sawyer.

FAS (Firsts & Seconds) is the clearest grade, where 10/12ths of each side of every board is clear. FAS is generally used for large clear parts such as wide

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Log Sections moldings, tabletops, solid wood door panels, etc.

Transverse section FAS-1 (Firsts & Seconds on one face) means that 10/12ths Ray figure of each board is clear on Radial section one side. It may have minor Ray defects on the other. #1 (No. 1 Common) is 8/12ths clear and is a cabinet grade hardwood. More than Tangential section 50% of #1 hardwoods end up in kitchen cabinets. #2 (No. 2A Common) is 6/12 clear and most of it ends up as flooring. And #2B (No. 2B Common) is 6/12 sound wood, and is essentially used in upholstered furniture.

Transverse = End Grain The grading system is Tangential = Plain Sawn Radial = Quarter Sawn or Rift Sawn based on 1/12 increments because it must average condition over a large area.

For example, when the grade mentions 6/12, then the area is divided into twelve small sections, and six of those must meet a certain requirement. If the fraction is reduced from 6/12 to the more logical and intuitive 1/2, then the The medullary rays of some species such as white oak sampling would probably deliver ribboned flake figure when quartersawn. be less representative of the larger area.

The NHLA site is worth a visit (nhla.com). They have a very comprehensive array of publications covering a multitude of hardwood topics, and their prices seem quite reasonable. If you decide to harvest

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and sell hardwoods or hardwood products professionally, or if you’re a serious amateur who wants to know more, there’s a very detailed analysis of industry standards available called Architectural Woodwork Standards.

It’s published by the Architectural Woodwork Institute (awinet.org), which is a most reputable and impressive organization. In the summer of 2013, the book costs $12.50 for members and $125 for non-members.

Dimensions Hardwoods are measured sawn but not yet planed (called “rough”), and the unit is a board foot, which is 144 cubic inches. A piece of wood that is 1" x 12" x 12" contains one board foot. So does one that is, say, 2" x 6" x 12", or even 2" x 3" x 24". Multiply these numbers together and they come to 144. Multiply the three dimensions of any board (thickness by width by length, in inches) and then divide the result by 144, and you’ll know how many board feet you have. Some mills charge by the board foot, so when you’re choosing a tree to harvest, a little basic arithmetic can give you some idea of what the mill will charge to render (saw the logs into boards).

Hardwood thickness is measured in quarters. There are four quarters in a 1" thick rough sawn board. That is described as 4/4, which is called “four quarter” and is written without the inch marks ("). 5 /4 is 11/4" thick in the rough, 8 /4 is 2" thick, and so on. Most kilns stop at about 16 /4, because boards become more difficult to dry evenly the thicker they are.

Any thickness is available if you harvest the log and have it sawn to your custom specs, or do your own sawing. If you have access to a thickness planer and a substantial band saw that is capable of re-sawing wide boards, your best bet is to have boards milled thick even though they take longer to air dry (about a year per inch of thickness if they are covered outdoors).

Turners who are going to face-glue boards to create large turning blanks, or furniture builders who make laminated curved pieces will also appreciate thicker rough stock. According to Keith Morrill, the resident woodcarver at the National Museum of Wood Carving in Custer, South Dakota, carvers have another set of standards—they often want to harvest large squares of stock, especially basswood (linden), if they are carving in three dimensions.

Keith teaches classes in caricature carving too, and the blocks required for those small 3D sculptures can often be saved from the sawmill’s waste.

If you’re building fairly conventional furniture or casework projects, and your boards are going to a kiln, you may want to save a few drying

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dollars and stick with thinner 4/4 or 5/4 stock. Depending on the species and the project, I usually opt for 5/4 because it gives me a lot more options to get straight and flat 3/4" thick finished panels or frames later on. If the stock has warped or bent a little, or there are surface defects, these can usually be jointed and then planed out of 5/4 stock.

If you’re harvesting to sell lumber, then species, cut and grade all factor into the price. The more decorative or rare a species is, the higher its price.

The thicker or longer the board is, the more it will command per board foot.

And the fewer defects, the more expensive it will be.

A Word About Planing If you don’t own a thickness planer and you’re going to hire this part of the process, here’s the terminology. S2S means that a board is planed on two faces, but the edges are not straight. You can usually have the sawyer rip one edge straight (called, coincidentally, straight-lining). The most expensive process is planing on both faces and both edges (S4S), and it’s probably not as useful either. It’s best to have just one edge straight-lined, and leave the other natural so that the boards are at random widths. There will be less waste this way (more on this in section 6). After initial hit-and-miss planing, 4 /4 stock is usually 13/16" thick. That is just right if you’re edge-gluing boards and want to plane them to 3/4" after the glue cures.

When you bring dried lumber back to the shop, let it sit for a few weeks if possible, to acclimate to the ambient humidity. This will reduce the amount of movement after your project has been assembled.

Identifying Trees If you need to identify a specific tree, Red Planet has a remarkable encyclopedia of trees at cirrusimage.com/trees.htm. In May 2013, there were 486 species listed, all with full color images. Another good tool for identification is offered by forestry.about.com. Once on the site, click on “Identify a Tree”. The stated goal of the site is to “help you identify and name the 100 most common of 700 tree species that are native to North America”.

It only took about two minutes to answer enough questions to land on a page that described and correctly identified white oak. But perhaps the most user-friendly site online is the Ohio Public Library Information Network, which allows one to scroll down through a list of 173 common tree names (as

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of May 2013). The URL for their identification tool is oplin.org/tree/name/ commonname.html.

For more information on a specific species, you can visit the Hardwood Council Web site (hardwoodinfo.com) and download the free American Hardwood Species Guide mobile app. It includes information about many of the popular American hardwood species, their appearance, physical and working properties, availability and typical applications. A stain simulator displays the species in clear, light, medium and dark finishes, to help you imagine what flooring, cabinetry, molding and furniture in a specific species might look like either separately or together. There is also information on workability, and as an added bonus, each species profile includes images featuring the wood in finished applications.

Chapter 2

Chainsaws

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he first thing that a wood harvester needs to know about his/her chainsaw is that this is the most dangerous power tool in America. There are an estimated quarter of a million chainsaw injuries every year in the US. Logging is the most dangerous occupation because the saw and the tree can hurt or kill a person. If you have no experience and your harvesting budget allows the hiring of a professional logger, this may be a smart way to go.

That’s especially true of urban lumber (trees in the city), because a falling tree on a residential street can potentially do a whole lot more damage than the same tree in a woodlot.

If you do decide to buy a chainsaw and do your own felling and field cuts, it is highly recommended that you accompany an experienced sawyer a few times before working alone. Your chainsaw store or a local sawmill may be able to recommend someone. The store may also offer basic instruction and if they do, then take them up on it.

The following is a collection of notes on buying and using chainsaws. It is not intended as a replacement for any source of instruction. These notes are intended only to encourage you to ask questions and discover what you don’t know, rather than to provide comprehensive answers. Always read and follow the instructions in your owner’s manual regarding safety and operation.

If you’ve had a pacemaker installed to treat arrhythmia, check with your doctor before getting close to a running chainsaw. According to

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A bucked spruce. Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.

Medtronic.com, “the spark discharge of the ignition system of a gasolinepowered chain saw produces electromagnetic energy that may affect your pacemaker or implantable defibrillator. Effects may be caused by current inadvertently conducted into your body (leakage current), or by the electromagnetic field. You may not feel the leakage current passing from one hand to the other through your body, but it may still affect the operation of your heart device. Gas-powered chain saws that have the spark plug located near the handgrips pose a greater risk of conducting leakage current.�

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Where to Buy Buying from a dealer rather than a big box home improvement store offers a number of advantages. First off, a dealer can answer questions that will leave a department store clerk scratching his head. For example, the horsepower of the saw motor, the speed of the chain, the length and type of the bar, the weight of the saw and the shape of the handle are all considerations when investing in a chainsaw. And a dealer can tell you which brands he works on, and also what the various warranties are. Buying from a dealer means that you can bring the saw back there for service. Buying from a giant retail corporation means that you might have to ship it to the manufacturer for even the smallest repair.

Before visiting the dealership, visit the woodlot to get a good, solid understanding of what you’ll be cutting. Estimate how tall the trees are, how thick they are, how close together they are, the branch structure (mostly vertical or horizontal?), how many trunks (basswood, for example, often has three or four), and the general conditions of the terrain—swampy, sloping, frequent high winds, and so on. If you explain in detail what species and sizes of trees you will be tackling, the salesperson will have a better idea of what size saw you need.

If you’re not an experienced sawyer, invest in a new saw rather than buying a used one. Chainsaws often see hard use, bouncing around in the back of a truck or being dropped from a height for example, and a surprising number of them are run without proper lubrication. Despite that, chainsaws tend to hold their value rather well (especially the better brands), so a lot of the purchase price can be recouped when your harvest is complete, or if you decide to upgrade your saw before taking on the next project.

Ask a professional and they will tell you to avoid budget brands and stick with reliable industry leaders. These companies primarily serve professionals, while brands sold at budget stores are intended for the homeowner market.

The professional ones are, for the most part, easier to work on, easier to sell, and much more reliable.

Choosing a Chainsaw Brands are important, but comfort is paramount. You must be comfortable with your chainsaw. They seem to be getting physically lighter every year, and they’re not giving up any power or toughness to do that. However, don’t bring that up in conversation with older loggers, or you’ll hear all