Cutting Wood (Safely!) With a Chain Saw

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Proper cutting techniques can help protect you from most of the dangers coming from the wood. They can help keep trees from falling in the wrong direction, stressed limbs from snapping your head off, and rolling logs from crushing your legs. But proper cutting techniques can't protect you from the falling limbs that we call widow-makers. Obviously, large, dead limbs are dangerous. The vibration of your saw in the tree's trunk can cause them to fall on you. Parp's only suggestion is to avoid cutting under limbs that might fall or to have a watching helper warn you when one does. You can rehearse signals to facilitate your escape.

Small falling limbs are the ones that can surprise you with their speed, power, and deadly sharp points. They come down like spears and can penetrate several inches of frozen ground—or anything else that happens to be in the way. All Parp can say, faintly, is that felling trees is dangerous. If you're not up to it, buy logs or mill-end slabs and use your chain saw to cut them up on sawbucks. If you are going to cut down trees, you should most certainly study the tree, use the cutting techniques recommended here (a lot of research and experience are behind them), stay alert, and wear a hard hat at all times. When you hear something snap and start to fall, leave your saw and retreat quickly.

Chances are you'll be alone with your chain saw often. Carry a whistle . . . a good loud one. If you get pinned by a tree, cut yourself, or break a leg, you can blast on the whistle. Someone will probably hear you, almost anywhere.

How to Handle a Chain Saw

Now practice holding your chain saw and simulate a working stance (Fig. 3). Space your feet far enough apart to permit a firm but comfortable balance. Grab the handles as if you mean it. Hold the saw firmly with both hands, with your thumbs curled around the handles. When you're bucking a log or working on the woodpile, you should keep your left elbow locked or your left arm as straight as possible. Then if the saw does kick back, you have more strength behind it to protect you. The saw will throw your arm up, on a pivot from your shoulder, instead of collapsing your arm backward with the saw coming straight at you.

It's not a contradiction to say that you should work close to your saw. Don't be afraid of it. If your right arm is stretched, you will tire quickly and increase the chance of kickback. Hold the saw firmly and work close to it. When it's possible or convenient, as in limbing, keep the work between you and the cutting attachment of your saw.

Practice moving with and holding your saw until you are comfortable doing so. (Don't, however, walk with a running saw.) Also, become familiar with the location of all controlsespecially the ignition switch, or "kill" switch, and the oiler control. If your saw has no ON/OFF switch, you must kill the engine by fully choking it. Get used to reaching that choke control. There will be many times when you'll want to turn that thing off fast without looking at it—when you're watching a tree fall unexpectedly, for example.

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