Dead Wood Renaissance: Starting Over - Part 2: Slabbing With a Chainsaw (I still suck at it)

It was inevitable, I guess. Being sans a sawmill and not having it in the budget to take the logs for the replacement tabletop to Scott so he could mill them, I had to face the task of slabbing those logs with my chainsaw....something I ain't all that good at....never have been and probably never will be!

By now it should be a snap given all the experience I've had, but nooooo! I'm not even going to show the slabbing work in progress! No sirree! Suffice to say, my sorry attempt resulted in two usable logs becoming totally unusable logs! Oh, well.

The three slabs you see in the two photos below, while not exactly what I'd hoped for in cutting the center out of the log, were at least not going on the scrap pile.

The little Homelite chainsaw I started the job with might not be so lucky, though. I thought this littler saw might be easier on my back and easier to handle. It was. I also thought this job might be an overreach of its capability. It was.

Reality is the Homelite may not be cut out for this kind of work....ripping instead of crosscutting logs. It got so hot, it died out and wouldn't restart, and I haven't tried to coax it back to life since then.

When it came to slabbing the two outer edges for the table, the perfect log just happened to be an old Douglas Fir that would provide both side slabs if it was cut right down the center of the log....that is, if the chainsaw worked the way it was supposed to! That's a joke...ha, ha...get it? If, and that's a very big if, the chainsaw worked the way it was supposed to? That's right! Put the responsibility right square where it belongs.....on the CHAINSAW!

That log toward the back of the photo? That's the one referenced above. It's about 12-13" in diameter, so should yield two nice slabs if I do this right.