One of the most common questions, if not the most common question on my axe related content is some combination of what do you do with the chips, aren't they wasteful compared to a saw and wouldn't it be better to just use a saw. The video below is about that and what we can do with the chips which are quite useful for anyone with a garden or who burns wood. Below that are some further thoughts not really covered in this video.

What I covered in that video was, in short, yes there are a lot of wood chips produced when processing wood with an axe. This tree was probably 9 inches in diameter and I estimated about two good firewood logs worth of chips were produced. It takes under 5 minutes to pick up 80% or more, in this case 3.5 minutes. I talked about what you can use them for, like biochar, mushroom growing and fuel, and how whether it is viewed as wasteful or not is a matter of context. What I didn't really talk about is why some of us use axes and not saws for hand processing firewood.

I didn't talk about that, because I more or less just forgot to! I think that in my head it would be self evident that not I, nor anyone else, is using an axe because it is the quickest and most efficient method of firewood production. I like saws. I like my chainsaw. I'll be using my chainsaw a lot for processing wood this year, not because I need the wood, but because I need to deal with a lot of sick trees that will soon be a fire hazard and which represent a short term opportunity to gather some resources that will soon be unavailable.

But, when I set out to do the cordwood challenge myself the previous season, challenging myself to cut a cord of wood in 3 months, I was slightly wary. Before committing I think I went and cut up a small tree or two just to be sure I should be announcing to the entire internet that I was going to go for it. Aside from potential personal limitations though, I knew I could do it, because people used to do it. Dudley cook said in The Axe Book, that a good axeman could put up 2 cords a day! I knew the cord he was talking about had to be in at least 24 inch lengths, and not the 16 inch stove lengths I was cutting. More probably it was cut into between 32 and 48 inch lengths for industrial use, transportation in bulk and most probably very wide fireplaces. Charcoal makers would cut wood even longer to make large stacks of wood. Still, do the math. I'm cutting about 3 times as much to get my 16 inch logs as a guy cutting 32 inchers, but even the slowish guy could probably put that up in just 3 days of average work!

Well, that is interesting to think about, but it doesn't prove anything to me for real or gain me a lot of real insight. To gain knowledge it is required of us to take information and do more than absorb it, more than mull over it and make assumptions and inferences. For me that process looks more like taking in information, contemplating it, putting it into practice, maybe getting more information, more experience, more contemplation etc. At some point, something resembling truths begin to gel out of that process. In short, I knew that to gain real insight into the problem of axe work and what it's potentials and limitations really were, I had to put it into practice for reals. Not only that, but I actually had to improve my own skills to a certain level before I could really understand what that potential was and where an axe may be more or less useful than a saw. Give an unskilled person an axe and a hand saw and tell them to limb this same tree and they are likely to conclude that the saw is easier and faster. But no matter how good they get with that saw, I'll have the same tree limbed up more quickly, with much less physical effort and many of by knots will be trimmed more closely than theirs.

I'll also have way more fun doing it! Axe work is engaging, exciting, focusing, cultivates coordination and provides a diverse form of exercise. Sawing by comparison is dull and tedious work and the best you can do is trade off one side for the other. I like sawing up to a point. It is good honest contemplative work. It is also skilled work and a good hand with a saw will out saw a newb every time. But it is only so skilled and lacks the special combination of things that makes axe work really engaging and fun. Saws have their place as do axes. But the place an axe has in any one particular persons hands is informed by that persons skill level and understanding of it's efficient use, and that requisite skill is only gained by extended use, and not by dabbling at the thing.

All of which is to point out that, while my use of an axe on that fir tree in these last couple of videos did result in two fewer logs worth of large firewood, rather than smaller chips, such is simply part of the cost of admission into that understanding of what is and is not possible with an axe and what place it does or doesn't have in our tree work. It's a rather small price it is to pay when they are easy to pick up and decidedly very useful as fuel or for other purposes.