How to cut wood | TA Outdoors

Description

Graeme Pullen from Totally Awesome Outdoors gives you some tips on how to use an axe to cut wood. As well as how to use a saw. He uses various techniques for chopping wood down to a useable size and he goes through safety techniques too. We hope you enjoy the video!

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Tags: Saw,Axe (Product Category),Knives,Blade,Woodturning,axes,saws,how to,beginners,safety,wood,chop wood,cut wood,guide,tutorial,simple,easy,battoning,outdoors,bushcraft,woodwork,carving,wood carving,firewood,totally awesome outdoors,ta outdoors,graeme pullen,graham pullen,mike pullen

Video Transcription

welcome to the totally awesome outdoors show

now that outdoors reason it was clean mending week just from the outside of the cave and have fires in there and now it's almost coming full circle the huge expense of heating your house electric gas heating or you know whatever it is of all three here three different bills a lot of people have that obviously is you cannot be having either an open fire or outside with a brazier if you're working outside she's like a mess one he'd see heats he's all the wood up outside or better still a lot burner now for people who are just moving into the countryside or into the edge of towns where they do allow fires in chimneys I hate it too and a full proper chimney well I think what am I gonna get all this wood from the burn well where do they think it comes from do they think it grows on trees well actually it does grow on trees but one place you can get them as industrial estates you go running get some pallets now those pallets are what I call seasons is up to you to dry them but they probably mean all around the world over a number of years on different ships in different containers Charlie in Australia South America New York who knows around the world so they been traveled they've been seasoned they really really good for burning I'll show you in a minute how to knit them down and how to make really good kindling around because you've got to start the face of any fire with 35 strips of kindling wood however how else would you go and get some wood obviously logs now you cannot just go whizzing trees down cutting them down willy-nilly you need permission even on your own land you might have it when it's called a teepee home which is a tree preservation order put on it by the area Council which is extremely expensive to be cut down over here in the UK I think it's something like a twenty thousand dollar twenty thousand pound fine it's a big lump it's a lot of fires put it that way so be very careful perhaps ask permission of somebody if you can cut wood on their land they might have some dead wood they might want something trimming so what tools do you need well trust me it's worth investing in the tools because the last time I had a load of logs delivered it cost eighty pounds and the colors just threw them in the back of a ping locks commercially obviously commercially done through them on the ground I looked a little when it's not gonna last me warned a few weeks so rather than pay eighty pounds again get burned second time around I thought for sixty pounds I could buy an electric chainsaw well that opens up a whole new world of one exercise to 3-wood these are some of the other tools you're gonna need if you're gonna collect your own wood now they saw wise you can either cut largest pieces of timber up without any petrol or an electric powered chainsaw now I'm not going to go deeply into chain stores because they should have a whole program on their own and they come with directions for placements on the niche if you're moving it around keep the chain guard all the time you have an adjuster down there do not have the chain very tight and it binds you will see that it might snap and something disastrous happens also to not have it loose you want a little bit of play just a little bit of play there will tell you how many millimeters are played to having the chain saw when you buy the chains'll within the directions it runs or hits only chainsaw oil which you fill up here electric or petrol either way it does make a difference it's going to run it's got a habit all over the journey and that is important to keep it topped up do not let the run dry constantly after you cut six rate cuts I would say just check that blade if it's electric switch the power off before you go anywhere hear it just check that blade okay that will cut down a full tree it would also cut there not to make you look then you go to chain saws they have a safety pet guard here for kickbacks with the front there read the directions and also I always wear a really thick paper of welding gloves now they might be deemed a little bit cumbersome but if there was any chain break or anything like that it might just give me I might be going to play the piano still might night you know it's gonna be important over mum but an accent would have changed all today we don't want any of that at all so read the directions on chainsaws they are dangerous they do a good job much more your fully trained in it even take a court that we have to now for noisy decibel items like chainsaws electrical petrol or other source you're gonna need something to protect your ears so get yourself a good and good painful ear defenders these were nothing are for shooting actually they're really really good and they really good and they're cheap so get those as well but for wood or timber about up to four inches in diameter which is basically a lot of what I do and certainly for breaking down the pallet cutting it down or usually standard but they call was super painting saw which is basically a saw blade here which I'll get that one out what we come in our car I figure so cold today you can buy these off the internet replacing the saw blades they just drop him you've got a little locking key with them I've let the locket and they store back some fours it beats the heck out due to my hand they are excellent at very very good use them carefully and again common-sense redirection now once you've got them into log size you've cut your log your Timbers into sections you obviously burn them whole but they will burn better if you break them down in size for that we need some more tools okay for smaller items on a variety of axes someone once be what I call it where's the hatch it's always very very cheap to buy quite heavy in the back and they see they're very thick at the back in a variety size it's a very very old one and it's very slim through here and really comfortable it's going to kick up at the end of the handle so say you're the smaller your hand the little finger it's not going to slide off like that we hope now when you're swinging any form of an axe please do not wear anything wooden if you're in a cold country and you're wearing gloves do not do it you need you really letter a proper well a gripping glove sometimes you can look and get those neoprene rubber ones you do not want war or slipper slide better still if you can bare hands

bit of spit and that gives you the grip and you could really work into it and that grips on the edge there also use a larger size one which will chop through easier but it will also require more power because it is heavier but try not to fight and struggle with them just lift them up and let the weight of the X do the cutting for you for splitting down to make kindling wood I'll show you in a second when I broken that pallet down I use one of this you can call a cleaver you call it a hatchet whatever you want to call it there's different names of different countries got a little hook on the end as well and again it curves out here it's just standing on a lot of axes cutting tools it just stops your hands sliding off it's like a little tree I sort of trigger grip in Reverse that just goes on on your finger there you can just chop away I'll show you how to do that in a minute and my grandmother's we're doing it old-school which with small thin pieces of wood to split them down so they burn faster in an open fire to use a regular old kitchen knife but blunt not sharp I'll show you how to do that if you're making kindling wood and this is for making the kindling wood use a ball don't just chop it straight on the concrete floor Walker says the axe follow through or the cleaver follows through there's going to constantly chip chunks out the floor will do the accent good won't do you throw any good either just get a piece of scrap wood and in this case I've got a ball and that's what I'll show you in a minute how I'm going to do that but it's also sweet you're not there with much bigger axes okay to put on big sized axes here one is your spandex which as you can see there is very very narrow very slim okay but it has that same curved up almost like a salmon kite if you see a male salmon when he's running up the rows of spawn it has his hook up kind and that gives you the grip there if I'm right handed so bit of spit on the left hand and I can sweet right over like that or I can indeed come down the side this one you could use for chopping down trees let's after about 16 inches if you're out somewhere you can carry this with you and you haven't got the chainsaw I've got petrol you've got electric you can obviously carry an axe old-school it works it's hard work again we're going to sharpen the edge of this put up the grinder and I'll share the shot and they get a nice good edge or at best a cutting axe that's what I call it a cutting edge but the other one though it looks like nothing else you think it's the same oh it's not the same trust me that as you can see looks like an axe from being an actual blade end but at the other end move forward to hold it very very very thick solid steel very heavy you can actually drive spikes in with this on the reverse having to hammer down stakes if you're doing fencing with the back of that but this this one is for splitting logs down you will not split logs very well with the standard cutting out you need a locksmith so you need two axes one to chop it down and two to split it into useable sizes ok we'll show you this got a nice rubberized grip to it you see don't use wolf gloves they slide they're dangerous now this one you just let the weight of the axe do it the momentum drive through if you throw and do it too hard you go right through the wood right through the piece of safety block you've got you'll end up in Brisbane in Australia if you do it too hard there a lot of weight to that one and we're going to show you those as well first let's I'll show you how to whiz a pallet down quickly now the best size Kingdom would you mate I would say will be about six inches long because that will go through with the living knife which I will show you how to do that in a minute or better still with a cleaver or a small axe you can strip it up if you go any longer than that you'll find that your first stroke will probably jam and then you've got to keep bashing with the same one trying to get it through the wood makes hard work that's about the size that you want just six inches if you can get in without knots great

I wouldn't split the ones we've not seen much hard work just put them aside burn them as they are okay here we go I've gotta cut them down into small sections here right now when you're cutting them don't you want to avoid if you can that piece there because if you've got to put that down and then attend to chop it it's going to kick over like this so all those dead flat dead even so I'm gonna be using this one which is a like a cleaver and all through his mind your fingers and mine things like not set or do this one so just to show you I'm just going to bump it with about the first third of the cutting of the blade kiss there just to Nick it that's all it takes just there just that one bump now that's gonna be kindling wood size for starting fire you don't I don't you could wear glasses you wonder I guess I don't like wearing glass this you're not taking a great big swing you're just bumping it and you're using again you're using the weight of this steel turn it the other way and I bump it at a slight angle just a nick it you can see it holding there like that and then using the weight of it so easy doesn't bear thinking even short bits now this is not there if I can show you that look how that's angled over because that tiny little piece of wood you do not want that kicking off the blade so either doing that way would stand those you can do with your hand away you can shave it as thin as you want there maybe two mil three mil thick whatever you want govern your governed by the grain in the wood that you get from the pallets but pallet wood does make very very good King would notice as soon as I got that first take there my hands away the weight of the ax a the other way you can do it is with a knife a blunt knife like this and just put it between your knees and you're just going to rock it from side to side pushing hard there we go I heard it go look how thin that goes now that was Graham's way of doing it I know cuz I hope to do it running it down like this on a piece of wood with a blunt knife leading with your arms locked over the top pushing down pop it off again depends just rock it side to side to break the gray once that grain is being broken I can do it almost thumb and hand pressure lets straight down and it makes very very fine slivers of kindling wood for them yeah you're gonna get much finer than that

that's beautiful oh yeah a little bit on a labor-intensive go get on wet away with rye Pat you're here now look that's been 35 minutes I'm just messing around showing you the camera once you get into a rhythm of this you can get through almost a sack full of this stuff I wouldn't advise don't quite look there I would expect again from a few minutes work

- burns out of that to start store fire so there you go two ways of splitting kindling wood with a cleaver you could even use a small that you can do small that but what I find is you've got a very small area there you know to meet the piece of wood with it's a small area was look at the cleaver you've got one two three times as big the knife is one twice as big much easier to use I personally stick to these two for make my kindling wood okay so when you get to use the Bruner X the next song is up we're going up from the boys to the bed size all right you got your larger pieces like this they could be four by two three by two could be left over but pieces of timber off cut some work you've got it can be left over spars of the pallet anything if you put them on the fire that size unless you've got a huge rock burner they will burn but the more air you can put between this wood in other words splitting it down again it will burn so much better the same principle applies use one piece for the shock like that board put on other piece on top like this like so line it up so it's nice and straight and the weight of the axe is just going to fall straight on the middle there keep your legs away you don't want to be following through anywhere knees feet arms legs what you're looking to do is to follow there and go right to here in your mind you're going to follow through again no taggings here don't hold your hands on it like this make sure it's flat make sure it's this is balanced perfectly flat take a mine on it my god how easy was that I barely hit that and I could probably take it down again on the other side just that will burn really well if you can get into theory I'm just tapping it you have to take my word for it just tapping it and this is just a regular actually can get from most hardware I'm honest one portable so make sure there's no nails in it cuz if you get a Mane on any form of saw or ax it's gonna fit right so that's the kidney wood that's a block with an axe which you can do inside or outside let's get out have a go with a larger size log splitting X and I'll show you how to get those big logs splitting two for drawing out when you're using a grinding wheel of any description you're going to get sparks I do make sure that you don't have any open canisters or flammable liquids now on the axe head like this I want to cut my foot and what I call a fairly shallow cut on this I'm not steep I wanted to cut through and I wanted to split so I'm just trying to take it along the edge there put an edge on it but for the actual log splitting act which is much heavier I'm going to put a little bit of a steeper angle on it because I'm not too worried about that it's the sort of cutting action it's got so much power in the weight of that steel head it's going to carry it through and obviously you can see it's wide at the top I wanted to spread the wood and split so just do both sides it doesn't take more than a couple of minutes to do grind away there and you can do this with all your acts as your cleavers just be careful just watch what you're doing and always make sure these switch all the electrical appliances in your workshop off when you leave here you can see it's a nice sharp edge to this axe now of course if you hit stone if you hit a nail and a piece of wood or tree or fence post it's gonna mess it up but you can always grind it off again the main thing you want to do with logs is you gotta have a good shopping area a good pillar and you use a sawed off piece of another piece of timber to do that on and I've got that with a slab of concrete underneath you know a paving slab so then absorbs a lot of the shock and you'll find these splits or logs a lot better I'll show you the two axes in an action action okay now this one as I said is the cutting axe

I'm just going to take a swing at this yeah yeah and it might go through and it might not know now you can see what it does it cuts into it but it doesn't have the momentum to go right through that always twist and when you get them out and I'll show you now the big bad boy the locks the look splitting axe a lot of momentum a lot of power with this you just really fooled a follow through and absolutely leave that one go as you can see there so much momentum it's fired both bits of wood across on either side and I've gone into the other piece a lot less effort a lot less power required to cut wood you get one now you can split that down again I can't emphasize enough the fact that log splitting with a log splitting axe is really all about using the weight of the momentum of that big steel head to do the work for you all we want to do is retain your accuracy do not do it when you're tired event off obviously said it before don't use gloves try and use your bare hands if you can if not a nice rubberized grip glove test it first and you'll really enjoy doing it it's good exercise you get really you know the best wood you can get and what I also do is I'll make a range of sawing or stunts here that are used for if you like slabs just to put my locks on to split or a workhorse what we call a soaring horse now I wouldn't saw this basic just pretty there to show you but that's a sawing also investment parties in there trees I can cut them down and this is what you get at the end either three or four inches across I just store them together with the larger ones where it's a split down that drawing the log the better the burn

easy nice to remember that it would be handy if I could find one that could soar down Crees as well the other thing to do is when you finish doing all your oh you're wood cutting make sure all your cutting implements are clean and growing when you put them away make sure where that is that your heads are totally secured some are epoxy handles you know they're absolutely like a world it nylon that's inside there like the big axes here they come

totally sealed in on the end so they're rigid you miss cutting over a stump and actually hit the shaft especially the older wood ones and they come with a wedge in there that you drive in is split some wood apart and it pinches into the head always always check them finally one of those when you clean them off get something what's called a barrier shield and you spray it over the axe heads any metal covering is good inhibits rust makes it last better makes it look nicer and they'll cut well next time just cover them with this that's a barrier shield there and it really does look after anything metal and then you won't get so much rust buildup on your cutting edge there you take it straight out and use it there you go ready to put away ready for use the next time around well there you go some good tips for you for a lot cutting but we've actually gone from this which are the pallet wood over to this this is the pallet wood stripped down cut into strips and then down drag kindling wood so we can start the fire the beams the supports we haven't wasted they've gone from here we split them down with a medium axe to this side via fire and then we've gone through the logs as well the standard loads that should give you some tips for cutting your own wood but what do you do for storing it other than one is in a shed I recommend using these large o wicker baskets and you can keep all your wood in there and the wicker sides here and our all to breathe you do not want to put them in plastic bags if you put them away wet they will sweat they won't burn right so get yourself a with the basket and this would be ready for the next night's bird thanks for watching the totally awesome outdoors show hope you got some tips here don't forget if you were an outdoors person you're eventually you're going to go fishing if you want fishing tips look over at our sister channel the totally awesome fishing show thanks for watching