i just bought the book bushcraft by Morris kahan ski and I decided that instead of just putting it on the shelf I would read it and try to practice the skills inside in order to motivate myself to do so i'm starting a little outdoors book club on my channel the purpose of these videos is to share information practice i'm hoping to learn a lot in the process and hopefully you will too one other thing i'm not an expert if I was an expert I wouldn't need to buy a book you'll get to see what an average guy from Iowa does trying to practice these skills you don't have to be a Superman to go outside welcome to episode 13 in this episode I'm going to trap chop down a tree and try to get done some other acts work we'll see how much we can get done today I know I've said it before but do not take any of this information as coming from an expert I am NOT trying to instruct you in safe acts use if you want to learn how to use an axe find an experienced teacher finally felling trees is one of the most dangerous things you can do in the woods do not attempt this we're clearing the rubbish away from the base of this tree here now you can see it's leaning but it's a actually a damaged tree the top of it is is split and this this tree doesn't probably had a lot of useful life left in it and there are at least two healthy trees around it so this is a pretty good candidate to come down the wind is coming directly from my back and the tree is leaning that way and I think it will fall that way now the couple things that might screw us up our that the top branch there is in contact with that other tree and as its falling it may catch and spin this tree into that one if that happens it's not the end of the world the other thing I'm looking for here and i'll take my axe and hit the trunk of the tree but i don't i don't want to get chopping on that and have a branch fall down and crack me in the head another thing I'm looking for is when that starts to fall where do I go and I'm going right here there's a nice safe spot to sit here away from the tree and another thing I'm looking at is I'm going to clear all of this debris out from the base here so that nothing gets in my way when I'm chopping and so that we have a nice unobstructed and hassle-free experience here I'm just gonna hit this and see what if anything falls and nothing seems to be falling so theoretically I should be safe from that now there's a couple rules that he talks about in the book and that's that this is a you want to stand an ax length away from the tree and you don't want to start your cuts any higher than one foot off the ground now I know there's a lot of people that say you should swing up higher because you know it's easier on your back and this and that but mainly what I'm concerned with is trying to chop low enough that if I miss with the axe it goes into the ground and not into my foot and so I'm going to follow along with the book on that so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to make a a cut this is called the undercut to cut on this side of the tree the direction that it wants to fall and we're going to make it no more than you know about a foot off the ground there I'm just kind of marking where I want to go and it's going to be angled at forty five degrees and what I'll do is I'll make one series of chops across the bottom and then come a little bit on top of it a couple other safety things he talks about the last bit of your distance your hands should should be parallel with the axe and the Act should be parallel with the ground now I saw a US Forestry Service video on how accidents happen when you're doing this and they say that all of the accidents that they've ever seen the axe it never happens if the axe is above parallel to the ground it always happens if it's lower and so their rule is they never let the ax come past parallel and so I'm going to I'm going to try to honor that and we'll see what happens a final thing he talks about and this tree doesn't quite make the grade so you'd want to chop something down smaller than this but if you don't have experience felling trees you should start with a tree that you can wrap your arm around and touch your left shoulder and this is almost there but it's a little bit bigger than probably what you would want to do so I think that's all I'm supposed to talk about and I'll get started so here goes you're supposed to aim with the heel of the axe this is the toe that's the heel so you're supposed to aim with the heel of the axe I'm standing 1 x length away from it and I'm going to swing in at 45 degrees and see what happens here I'm going to back up a little bit and take another chunk out and what i'm doing here is i'm swinging for accuracy I'm not swinging hard I you you want the axe to go where you're you're swinging it now I'm going to take one more chip a little closer that way again I'm going to try my best swing accurately and not let that go too much beyond parallel now the next cut i'm going to do is up just a little bit come come across a little ways here a little bit more and this brings me to a point I'm swinging down he says in the book not to try to swing up and make a V if you do that the axe is liable to slip and hit you in the forehead so I'm going to keep my 45 degree angle make one more cut there and now we'll go up a little bit you can clear the chips up just by chopping in a little bit if you need to going to go up a bit then when the axe goes down it's not going into my foot it's going into the ground instead so it is frozen wood and I'm getting some hits that are not perfect but i'm not getting injured and that was the whole idea of setting it up this way come up just a bit and what you want to see is a lot of big chunks not a whole bunch of little tiny chunks you want nice big ones and I'm going to keep doing this and the idea is I want to give it out of this that goes for this tree a third to a half of the way across the trunk here so now you can see it's just one big 45 degree cut into the base of the stump stump is real kind of ugly looking but that's okay and I'm between a third and a half of the way through the diameter of the trunk now at the request of the landowner I decided to make the notch more on this side of the tree trying to cheat as much as we can away from it falling into that tree I don't know if it'll work but at least we tried and now the next step will be going around to the back of the tree so now on this side what you don't want to do is chop it off at exactly the same level you want to come up just a little bit from where you were before and what that does is it'll make it'll make a little lever or I'll get the technical term for it put it in as a title but it'll make a little ledge here so that when the tree starts to fall it won't be as likely to fall back because there'll be a little bit more elevation on this side so and I've got my escape plan right to there as soon as it starts to go I'm ready and I my friendly landowner and cameraman is also aware of the plan and we're going to try to do it safely here so here goes I got the same thing 45-degree cuts going all the way across best I can I'm going up from the first cuts a little bit and get a little bit of a space cleared out clean some chips off so it looks sexier and we're getting close here just when you get winded stop catch your breath because when you're tired is when you're going to make mistakes and I'm just reminding myself of the proper forum here one handle width away from the tree and I'm going to try to make it I know the video is going to show that I was not perfect but i'm going to try to make it so that it doesn't break parallel on me if that means i have to bend my knees a little bit too and I'll he'll work on that here so aiming with the heel so you can see what we're down to here big piles of chips everywhere it's a little bit left holding this sucker up few more chops alright this sucker has to come down I'm getting hot I can hear it wanted to go it's right there timber exactly what we thought would happen did happen it hung on the tree up there I'm keeping a sharp eye on it but it hung up there and then went down that way missed our standing tree so that's felling a tree so now I've switched access to what the axe book describes as the perfect living acts and in the book Moore's talks about you want to swing up words except for one kind of I think he said black spruce you don't want to do it that way but when you're living you want to swing upwards and you want to make your cut so that it is as close to the trunk as possible so that you don't have skips and things like that and then if you have a bigger limb that you're cutting off he shows four cuts one straight down one like this one like this and then another one straight down to get that way wedge out of there and I'm just going to try this the old that way because this this is ash in it it looks a little this is pretty dang sturdy wood he must have different trees up there I don't think I can get through that with one swing so here goes again though all the methods he shows in the books are chopping like this on like this branch so the log is between you and the branch well this is really the only thing that needs to be limbed is this and that and i'm lazy right now so I'm just going to limb this off and same rules apply I'm going to try my best to make sure that the axe doesn't go more than parallel to the ground and if you have to bend your knees that's fine see I no way I would have gotten through that with one swing so I took it off nice and and even with the with the trunk there and then the book he says the most efficient way to section these is to make two opposing V cuts one here and then switch to the other side and make it here notice when you swing your axe you want the log between you and the axe and I'm going to show like a real ancient and super technique that probably even more doesn't know and this is called the Iowa farmer technique section o'clock and hopefully we get this to work come on so we'll just do a little after action report of the acts here this is the Grand sports Brooks American felling axe 35 inch handle went right through this 18 inch ash without much difficulty and I don't there were at least three times where the axe glanced off the tree and went into the ground but I don't I don't see any major damage it's still pretty sharp I wonder how that works you know you get an axe and it's like fire water air and dirt magnets how do they work but anyway that you know how does it stay sharp like that I don't know but I'm going to go home and maintain it back to its shaving sharp edge same thing with this bad boy it did a little lemming and a little executive work on the tree there and it's still razor sharp no problems with the edge so happy with the way the axis