More Wood Has Come My Way........Get Out The Chainsaws!

Stuart Ablett

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Location
Tokyo Japan
Just down the street from us, basically right next to the woodlot that I harvested a few years back, there is a new road going through the neighbourhood. I've had my eye on one cherry tree there for a very long time, it has a burl on it that is rather large. about 45cm x 50cm by 30cm thick (18" x 19.5" x 12") I just hope that it is not hollow.

A few weeks ago signs when up on the trees that were to be cut and a number to call. My lovely wife called and asked if I could get some wood, they said they would get back to us. Last week we met with the guy in charge and he said that on the day, everyone who shows up can get some wood if they want, but we were the only ones to contact them so far.

Today was the day.

We showed up at about 9:30 AM and watched as the cut down the trees, yes, I took some pictures and video too!

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The cherry tree with the burl on it.

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Said burl on the ground, ready to be cut out. This tree was rotten in the center, so I decided to take only the burl, but the arborist cut quite a bit extra wood for me with the burl.

I also decided to take some Enoki or Japanese Hackberry. It should be good for turning, and I should be able to get some good planks out of the pieces I took.

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I had them cut the trunk into two pieces, but we could not lift the one with the first junctions on it, so we cut that top part off, that way I could, barely, lift the chunks into my poor little van.....

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The the couple hundred meter drive home and I had to unload them, thankfully a cart and gravity were on my side.
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The water coming out of these two pieces was amazing!

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I did get them into the new 1st floor area, where they will stay for now.

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That is the top piece I had them cut off the trunk. there are a few very nice large turning blanks sitting there.

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That is the burl with quite a bit of extra wood on it, you can see the rot in the middle of the tree.

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I cut that rotten bit off, and will save the burl.

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The Burl cut free from the rotten bit, sitting on top of one of the trunks.

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From the rotten bit I was able to get some very interesting looking pieces of wood...

Don't take long to make a mess, the garbage man is going to hate me again.

OK, not a bad haul, right? Well this is what I left on the table......

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Sadly I just do not have the time or the space.

Now for some video.....



They don't really fell trees here, they use the giant hand method.

I have ordered some ripping chain to fit my larger electric chainsaw, I'm going to build a mill to attach to it, so I can have an electric chainsaw mill that I can run indoors, much better than running my Husqvarna in the small confined space. It will be able to to about 48cm/19" max, I hope it works out OK. So much to do, so little time!
 
Safe way to fell a tree. In the first video, at ~ 1 minute into it, there is a pedestrian walking by with what appears to be a respirator on. What's with that? Is that typical?
 
Safe way to fell a tree. In the first video, at ~ 1 minute into it, there is a pedestrian walking by with what appears to be a respirator on. What's with that? Is that typical?

A dust mask, for the hay-fever.

Tokyo has really, REALLY bad hay-fever due to the cedar trees. You see after the war, some people thought it would be a good idea to plant thousands upon thousands of acres of cedar trees in the empty areas around Tokyo. They thought that the wood would be needed in the future, and cedar wood has always been prized for building traditional Japanese homes. Well these wood lots were all owned and managed, they were 100% cedar trees, which is not natural and they were concentrated heavily around Tokyo. By the time the trees came to maturity to be harvested, the cost of harvesting the trees in Japan was so much more than just importing trees from Canada. Most of these wood lots have now been abandoned and the city is ringed by a huge number of cedar trees. I actually have an app on my iPhone telling me how bad the pollen is on any given day. I did not suffer from this hay-fever until a couple of years ago, now I do, it is awful, bad headaches and sneezing all the time, as well as itchy eyes, I too wear a dust mask in the spring while outside.
What we need is a good forest fire to burn them trees down!
 
Way to go on the wood score Stu. Thanks for showing us the videos. Fascinating to see. That wood sure was wet. I guess its not everyday one gets to see the cutting of a tree and recovery of the wood like you have. Makes me wonder what the guys find over here with the different trees. Gonna have to ask Larry and John. Is that wood aside from the burl a hard wood when dry or is it more like say basswood?
 
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