How do you measure when cutting rounds?

One of the main reasons I'm doing my own cutting now is that the cordwood cutters I could buy from just don't understand the limitations of a small stove. I ask for 16", and I get anywhere from 16-18". Then, I have to chopsaw 20% of the splits to smaller sizes to fit them into my stove. It's a major pita.

Hey, if you wanna talk anal, I was thinking of mounting two laser pointers, one on each side of my saw and have them converge on a spot that is 20 inches away from the nose of the bar when the bar is perpendicular to the log.

I use the bar to the dogs. I just touch the dogs to the end then touch the tip to the log with the chain spinning. I then cut on the mark, after a few of these my eye is trained well enough.

Seriously?!? You guys have time to measure every piece??

At 8 cord a year, I eyeball it. True, true, I suck at the eyeball method. But I set the long ones aside and load them N/S on top of an E/W load. The too-long-end ends up as nice coals at the end of the burn, which then becomes the base for the next burn.

Jimbo

On Grapple loads ......it's easy to mark 4-5 trunks at a time and have at it.

WoodButcher

My stove takes 18" pieces and I have an 18" bar so I use that as a guide. 18 1/4" won't fit. For some reason it seems easier to eyeball 24" then 18".

Wow, I cannot believe that no one has posted using the Mingo. I have used this tool since I saw it on Bailey's and had to have it. My stacks have been very even and much easier to deal with since I started using it. Plus, my one week supply that I load on Sat or Sun's depending on the past week weather has to fit in the antique wood bin in my breezway, and it will only fit 18" or less. So it is important that I have a accurate cutting plan. Hopefully here is the link http://www.baileysonline.com/itemdetail.asp?item=265&catID;= different diameters are available and I have found a time savings versus using the stick method. You have to be careful rolling over obstacles, like limbs, but the time savings is worth it in my experience.

LLigetfa said:

Tony H said:

I must say I am amazed that so many people measure the length...

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My father bough a farm from an old Finlander whose family had homesteaded the land. One day my father was measuring a piece of wood on the barn when the old Finlander saw him and laughing said to him, "You use a measure tape on a barn? I never used a measure tape when I built the house!" It showed. There was not a level or plumb element anywhere. I never lost my marbles... I could always find my marbles in the same corner of the room.

One of my pet peeves when friends would help to buck up firewood was that they were every which length. It would drive me nuts getting free wood from tree service guys. For some reason they cannot be consistent in length and can't seem to even cut them perpendicular. I could just see the look on their face if I asked them for the rounds to be cut to exactly 20 inches, not 23 and not 17!

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I have seen some construction like that but not mine , when accuracy is called for that's what I do. After all I am not building anything with my firewood much less a house. For some reason I have a good eye for lengths and levels and can get pretty close on length and almost perfect on level on the other hand I may have lost my marbles. ;-P
As for the tree guys I never asked , one guy cuts almost perfect 18" by eye because his guys haul by hand and another guy uses a triple axle grapple loader so he is any size up to 800lbs I don't complain.

LLigetfa said:

Hey, if you wanna talk anal, I was thinking of mounting two laser pointers, one on each side of my saw and have them converge on a spot that is 20 inches away from the nose of the bar when the bar is perpendicular to the log.

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Dude a chainsaw with a laser?
Thats awesome

bogydave said:

When I was cutting 10+ cords a year, working & didn't wear "bifocals" (another benefit that comes with age)
I was with an inch or so.
Now the glasses make things right in front of you knee high or lower, looks bowed or looks like it has a hump & bigger so I cut shorter. Make sense?
Maybe I should leave the bifocals in my pocket & just use safety glasses when cutting wood.

I seem to cut the smaller ends of the log longer " & the big ends shorter" & don't know why.
Must be an optical illusion between my glasses, eyes & brain.
I believe that as I get back into the swing of things & am cutting more, I'll be able to stay within a usable margin of error with out measuring.
Maybe.

Sounds like I'm not the only one who's a little finicky about the length. sure stacks better also if the lengths are the same.

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Well that's funny, I use a measuring stick and while I was reading this thread was thinking about how I started using a stick and why I still use one, and came to the exact opposite conclusion, I tend to cut the skinny logs short and the bigger diameter logs longer.

I carry a couple 17" measuring sticks that are sprayed painted florescent orange so they don't get lost That habit started when I use to cut cedar shake blocks for a shake mill. They had two sizes they wanted them cut at, 24 " and I think the other size was 16",,,, anyway, if you sent them many blocks that were much bigger or smaller they didn't like it and we would hear about it, so we always used marker sticks and made notches in the logs before we cut. In fact we use to make two or three notches for each cut because the logs we were cutting were so big. Some were 8+ ft in diameter.
Old habits don't die easy and although I can eye them up pretty good, I can't do it 100% of the time and now I'm the one who gets upset if I get a round and has to be cut down so the splits will fit in the stove.

I was splitting wood yesterday and took a look at the lengths of my rounds. I see, to 'eyeball' 16 inches plus up to two inches and minus about 6 inches. The fact that I scrounge all my wood and it comes in variable lengths with lots of angled cuts from the tree service guys makes it tough to be consistent, but I am also not very careful and it doesn't really matter that much to me. As long as the splits aren't too long for the stove, i don't mind if they are a little short. I stack all of it in round holz hausens, so you can't tell if they are long or short- all you see is one end of some of the splits. I do like the holz hausens to look nice and uniform, but fortunately I don't need consistent length splits to achieve that.

I don't saw too much wood these days, but when I do I always just eyeball it and I get it real close after a couple cuts. It comes out a lot more consistent than the guys who deliver my wood ever get it. I can't stand running out of room and ending up with a bunch of shorts, so I keep eyeballing the log until I get to the point where I can mentally divide what's left into stackable pieces. As long as it goes in the door, though, the stove doesn't seem to mind much. I do realize, however, that a goodly proportion of folks here put their wood into the stove in a N/S orientation, so for that I guess I'd like to measure.

I have spent much more time in my life cutting camp wood than stove wood, all with a big Sandvik bow saw. Many thousands of cuts over the years. You get pretty good eyeballing wood that way, too.

I'm a bit compulsive by nature, so if my wood was all really close to the same length, I'll bet I'd spend too much time making the stacks look perfect. More important to me is to not angle the cut. Just hate trying to stand up pieces that keep tipping over. But then, I haven't tried the tire method yet.

Battenkiller said:

I have spent much more time in my life cutting camp wood than stove wood, all with a big Sandvik bow saw. Many thousands of cuts over the years. You get pretty good eyeballing wood that way, too.

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With a swede saw, you have the saw itself as a constant frame of reference. Lay it on the log sideway and the distance from blade to bow tells you where to cut.

Battenkiller said:

More important to me is to not angle the cut. Just hate trying to stand up pieces that keep tipping over.

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The trick is to have your splitting block on a bit of an angle. That way you can turn the angled piece and cancel out the error. See, two wrongs do make a right!

Dear non-measurers - We don't have to measure. I eyeballed all my life up to two years ago. Every stage of processing to burning is much easier with uniform length wood, and THAT is the point.

[/quote]The trick is to have your splitting block on a bit of an angle. That way you can turn the angled piece and cancel out the error. See, two wrongs do make a right![/quote]

Yeah, but with that method, a right will make a wrong and fall off.

Ya, I know that trick with the saw, but no real need to do that in the woods. A little variety in length is better for campfires anyway. Know the splitting block trick too... still some that are a PITA. A little chunk of wood as a shim solves the problem, but a level block and a square end are best. All of the energy goes straight down into the wood. I'm a woodworker, so when I cut 'em, they're square. Those firewood guys, however.....

A close friend of mine used to live in UP Michigan. His entire family cut pulp wood for a living (Ray's now an organic chemist), and I always love to listen to his stories of his summers spent in the forest. They used those big Husky saws they had back then, bone-nimbing things that weighed a ton. One guy, Big Pete LaBarge, used a bow saw (they called them "Finn saws", a little ethnic variation) to do everything. Ray said Pete could cut pulp wood with the very best guys using chain saws. He said they'd get through the tree a lot faster, but Pete would blow them away in trimming the fallen trees, and he'd have more energy at the end of the day because he wasn't carrying and fighting that saw all day long. They'd get .15 a stick (between 8' and 8' 4" and at least 4" across at the smallest end), but they'd work so hard they made over $300/wk. Back in the early 70s, that was a serious hunk of change.

Favorite Ray story is about Ray's dad stopping by where Big Pete was cutting. It was the height of black fly season, and there was Pete sweating like a demon, shirtless and covered with black flies. Ray's dad says, "Pete, you're getting eaten alive." Without slowing down a single stroke, Pete responded, "I've got plenty of meat, let them eat."

Tough men up there. I'm sure you've met your share, LL, sounds like you were one of them yourself.

Enjoyed reading all of these ideas.

Like most of you, I tried several of these techniques... the tape, a stick, the bar, Bailey's mingo (borrowed the neighbors), played with a laser pointer but eventually come back to my basic finger spread.
From end to end, I know the distance from thumb to my index, middle, ring finger so I can easily do 16", 18" or 20" depending whether I'm cutting for myself or someone's smaller stove. I find it a lot less hassle than the other methods mentioned.
I have to make a slight adjustment if using big gloves on as they can mess with it a bit.

The best thing is so far, I've never forgotten to have them with me at the wood pile;-)

Birdman1 said:

LLigetfa said:

Hey, if you wanna talk anal, I was thinking of mounting two laser pointers, one on each side of my saw and have them converge on a spot that is 20 inches away from the nose of the bar when the bar is perpendicular to the log.

Click to expand...

Dude a chainsaw with a laser?
Thats awesome

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I dabble in wood working and some of my work looks as though I meassured with a micrometer and then cut with a chain saw.

You want 16" wood??...cut a pencil sized measuring stick 16" long and hold it on top of your grip with your left hand while cutting. Lay it on the wood quick to find your next mark, then cut again. I rest the tip of the bar on the log while measuring with my left hand, then grab the handle and cut another round. Simple, accurate and after a few cuts you don't feel the stick in your left hand against the handle. I work from left to right down the log while cutting.

24" wood?...24" stick...

I hate stacking wood, and I hate stacking uneven length wood even more....irritates the crap outta me.

Thats the girls job, run the tape out, and use a hatchet to notch the log, then I use a hatchet to quick limb the small branches while she starts on the big end with limbing and marking the notches with the little pull-on. By the time we meet in the middle, Im off to the big end to start cuttin the rounds. But then again we usually working on 90 foot + straight pines.

When dad is helping me cut, he often holds a stick with a couple of measured marks just above where I'm cutting.
But mostly I get 18" from the end of my saw to the bolts that hold the bar in place. I'm used to swinging it sideways
after a cut, to measure the next piece.
Dad thinks it's crazy - too much motion. "Just eye-ball it, son." (Yeah, right, dad.... That's why when you cut my wood,
I'd have to stack stuff from 14" - 22"!) (But I'm glad the 72 year-old fella is still out there with me!)
Happy burning.

Take a Sharpie and measure your log length from the nose of the bar and mark the saw.

With practice you'll be able to quickly and accurately 'eyeball" with this guide.

You'll get the occasional long piece that you can load on the diagonal during the day.

You really only need right lenght for packing the overnite load.