Sunday, June 19, 2011

Fear: The Great Motivator

A few weeks ago during a lightning storm, we lost the top half of a huge pine tree that separates our yard from our neighbor's. It fell smack dab in the middle of her backyard—no damage. Whew.

Our other neighbor, who loves physical labor and was an ox in a former life, offered to chop it up for her with his chainsaw.

And I offered to make everyone rustic window boxes.

As you may know, I'm a wee bit terrified of lathes. But there's another tool to which I afford a wide berth: chainsaws. Maybe I watched too many slasher movies as a kid. Or maybe I'm just a big sissy, but I don't go near them.

No problem. I figured I'd slice the logs up on my bandsaw and everyone would have a window box by the end of the day.

Well. The logs were big and unwieldy, and my bandsaw blade isn't as sharp as it should be, so that plan fell flat on its face.

Now what?  I could use a handsaw but that would take forever, and I'm no masochist. My form of self-flagellation is to forgo dessert.

I could use a chainsaw, but (refer to above statement).

No, if I couldn't use a bandsaw, then I was going to cut the logs by hand somehow. That meant building a frame saw.

Fortunately, there are lots of bloggers who have chronicled the process. I'm following their lead in building my own.  Here is one link.  Here is another.  And here is one more.

I'm planning to include the handles like those found in the Roubo print and hope it doesn't add too much time to building the saw.  I need to get to those logs, which are lying in my yard, before my chainsaw-loving neighbor gets any funny ideas.