Custom Orders

Custom orders can be a challenge especially if a customer has a small stove door and its depth is not what you had hoped. For this situation you can use a bulk trimmer. Its purpose is to trim 1/12 of a cord of wood at one time. Other times your wood may be 16 to 24 inches to begin with and you want to trim it down to length because the majority of your customers will want 16 inches. To use the Bulk Trim sawbuck you need a minimum of an MS 390 Stihl to perform the cuts - but, if you are trimming maple, elm or another hardwood, even that can become too much for an MS 390 so I would recommend a Stihl 461 for the tougher wood. There is a bit of an art form to using this style of sawbuck. First you must stack your wood in good form. If you have smaller wood it needs to be on the bottom or in the middle of the stack so as you apply the chain to it, it won't through it all over the place. You also have to hold the saw steady, and even if you are quite strong, the saw will get heavy and want to travel its own course so it will take some practice. Once this 3D model is translated into a parametric formula, you will be able to construct your own size and then the type of saw can very based on the quantity and species. As shown in the picture, the saw buck is 8' long, where as you could size the 3D model to 6', 4', or even 2' in length depending on your needs.

Starting the Trim

The image below shows the angle that you hold the chainsaw at to reduce the length of the wood.

End Catcher

V1-0-2 Shows a slanted shelf underneath to catch the trimmed ends so you are not having to bend over constantly after every trim session to pick them up off of the ground.

Summation

There may yet be more tweaks we can do to the bulk trimmer. Its the fastest manual way I have found to trim a lot of wood. Keep in mind that when cutting hardwood in this fashion your walk with the upright chainsaw will need to be slower as it takes longer to get through the wood. As with all cutting, but especially with bulk trimming a sharp chain is extremely important due to the amount of wood you are cutting in one session.