Spar for Anny von Hamburg

Having arrived Kustavi to stay with my sister she expressed her wish to have an old larch tree felled as it was growing too close to another spruce and was anyway making a mess every autumn when it dropped its needles on the ground. It was also taking up precious sunny area on the lot next to the garden so one morning I decided to put the felling in action. Originally it had been planted by our father but he doesn't visit Kustavi anymore these days so thought it was no problem.

Felling tree

Angle cut for direction of fall

Found the chainsaw in the shed but it was missing the chain so I decided to get to it by traditional means and broke out the old arc saw and put the axes in a bucket of water to swell. Then I cleaned out various garden furniture that may get under the falling tree. Checked out a good direction to fell the tree and started by cutting out an angle towards the felling direction. 

Timber!

Then followed frantic sawing on the other side as I got closer the tree wasn't still budging I went to get some lines and blocks to put some pull on it. The tree still wouldn't come so had to saw some more and alternated by trying to pull at intervals. Finally the tree was cut enough and it started falling and crashed down to the direction I intended and luckily broke nothing in it's path when it hit the ground.

Manhandling trunk to storage spot

As the next step followed axing off all the branches to prepare the trunk for cutting. I sent a quick WhatsApp to Juha showing off the larch as he had masts made for "Anny von Hamburg" of same wood. He straight asked for the dimensions of the trunk. The trunk had split in 2 further up for some reason but the solid length from ground up was about 10m and thickness was 40cm at base thinning to 24cm. He then requested not to cut the trunk into firewood but to save it for him as a spare spar for "Anny". I agreed but then I had the hassle of manhandling the trunk out of the way to dry up off the ground.

Stored for drying

When Cheche arrived I had her then help me with the moving of the trunk that I estimate is around 500kg. I cut the split upper trunk into 1m logs and shoved them under the main trunk and then I rigged blocks and lines to pull the log along towards the exit way of the estate. I had some 25m to move the log. The lines were so thin that I could not allow mindless tugging of the trunk so had to be sure it could move freely. Cheche was handling the rolling log stumps and I was doing the pulling about 1-2m at the time and then resetting the rig. It took us the whole day to have the trunk elevated on the side of the road and then I cut some of the bark away to enable better curing. Cheche was so tired she fell right into bed without dinner and was away with the fairies. Didn't take me much either to feel the tiredness creeping up my bones and soon I also was sleeping like a log...

Cut the bark off to let the trunk dry