Efficient wood harvesting for the woodstove woodsman.

I guess everyone has their own method. Many hardwood trees have WAY too many of those size limbs, I would be there all day

I try not to fell trees....... In the last four years, I may have cut down three trees. Try to scrounge storm clean up and tree service work. The advantage of that is that many times the limbs are already gone, or at least somewhat.

I think it also depends on if I am alone or not. If I have help, I cut the brush as they pull it away from the tree. If I am alone, I will cut until I am so crowded with brush that I cannot walk any more, and then drag it away from the tree, and then repeat.

I wish that I could select my trees (both species and diameter).......When some of these things get much larger than 20" around, they get impossible to lift.

Of course, that is why my trailer has a tailgate that I can roll large rounds up

If it works for you, have at it.

But I'd much rather limb a tree with my saw. I dont get the aversion to gas and noise when gathering firewood

Throw a tarp on the saw? Just wonderin. Is that like makein a bad child sit in the corner?

The title says "efficient." I guess it's fuel efficient. Definitely not time efficient.

In my area firewood trees are not so precious that I'd ever hang onto thumb-sized branches, but I think it's worth remembering that hand tools can actually be useful. Too often the only hand tools we encounter are, as the OP put it, Gramp's saw from the shed. Gramp's saw is probably rusty, dull and has badly improvised replacements for missing parts, and if that's the sort of hand tool that one generally encounters then one ends up with the mistaken impression that hand tools always work slowly and do a poor job. Like power tools, hand tools work much better when they are in good operating condition -- sharp, well lubricated, etc. A dull, abused power tool might be much easier to use than a similarly sorry hand tool, but when both are tuned up the performance difference is sometimes smaller than you'd think.

I have determined that most of the small stuff isn't worth the PITA to cut it up. I lop the small branches and throw them in the brush pile to be used for starter at a later date if needed.

If I bully my BIL into cutting a shagbark hickory for me, I save everything from the tree, twigs and all, a practice I use with several other species.
He takes the tree down and I clean it up. It maximizes my use of his time.
I have a top handle pruning saw. Husky 334T. It weighs 7.5lbs. I also have all the assortment of hand pruning equipment associated with an orchard.
Since I keep a great deal of the tree for the stove(s) What doesnt get kept is small enough to get cut off the processed branches with a very sharp camping axe. My BIL came up with this idea and its amazingly fast!!
Whack off the small stuff and rake it out of the way. I use a 2-3 pronged pitch fork to rake it all onto a cart and off to a ravine or gully or creek bank.

Preference is a better term than efficiency and not my choice. Cut, limb and buck with the same tool an 036 99% of the time. But I prefer getting er' done. I think a nice dbl edge axe freshly sharpened would be more efficient than a bow saw for limbing up to point - especially with pine trees.

flueguru said:

Efficient in terms of getting the most wood from your tree and in time as your gas saw is not the tool for the smaller limbs.Technique is important here and I`m used to negative feedback ,but for me it works on many levels.Much safer too

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On the contrary. I have no problem and salute you for using the bow saw but efficient it is not. Perhaps you have too large of a saw if you consider it not to be efficient?! And why tarp the saw? That just seems odd.

I use a Fiskars 27" cutting axe to limb everything 2" or less. Usually only takes one swing with a well placed sharp axe.