walmart rocks...

[JohnRoberts]

I sold my walmart stock (at a profit) a while back but i still shop there every week.

Today I bought a great 3.5# axe... the perfect tool for cutting up roots still attached to the trunk of my dead pecan tree... If I was really smart I would invent a chainsaw blade that dirt doesn't make dull, but I am not that smart so i bought an "git er dun" axe,,,  and it's a new form of exercise for me (I'm already a little sore)... My favorite part  only $15.  8)  For several months all they had was a $40 axe and I didn't need an axe that bad... I did need one for $15.
===
I guess I bought my TV too soon, I saw 55" TVs in the aisle at wally world for like $378 or something crazy like that,,, I guess they are blowing them out in anticipation of OLEDs shipping in volume this christmas (or not). 

JR

 

[Gold]

I know Walmart is responsible for the downfall of Western Civilization but they have a very wide selection of goods and the staff is always nice and helpful. Despite my best efforts I like the place.

 

[gevermil]

I go there for the ladies

 

[JohnRoberts]

Nice when you can find the right thing for the right price... and bonus when you get exercise out of it.

Is it small/lightweight enough to throw in a backpack for camping?

3.5# axe head, and proper handle is not a compact axe...  I have a smaller hatchet that might make more sense for camping. (but I pretty much got camping out of my system in the US army).

I was tempted to revisit my simple machines thread.  The 3.5# axe head with a serious handle is using multiple forms of basic physic theory leverage. The sharp blade edge, and kinetic  energy from swinging 3.5# from the end of a few feet lever generates some serious cutting force and it tore up some roots I needed to cut.  ;D

I remember going to Woolworth's with my mother as a child.. snow falling down past the parking lot lights..just like a movie or tv ad might depict.  Just imagine, we probably got a home stereo there at some point, as we didn't have much money, and it might have been designed by one of you guys... and guess what.. I was totally fascinated by sitting between speakers hearing the music.. and playing with the little tone controls at times.  There's a heart in these things.

I just sat between speakers for 30 minutes in pure fascination.. so it's lasting too.

Kudos to the ones who can problem solve and make a good product available for the ones who can't afford much.

A

I recall woolworths as a teen... IIRC they had a lunch counter (I never ate at). It was an iconic cheap chatchis store.

JR

 

[Tubetec]

I see you must have tried fire to destroy the stump , theres a few interesting youtube vids on guys burning out tree stumps ,guys using trucks and tractors to try pull them up ,with varying degrees of sucess or failure .
Pickaxe is my old reliable for that job ,you get great leverage and once your hooked in  under the root chances of the tool slipping are small . My pickaxe has a wide flat at the back end ,give it a little edge with a grinder and you'll chop right through the smaller roots in one go .

One of my favourite garden tools is what you see below ,a guillotine loppers , very little force is required to cut branches upto 40 mm or so , and you wont even need to break a sweat like with an axe. I think its a German design . Id take one of them over an axe for cutting smaller fire wood anyday ,much safer and less effort required .

 

[JohnRoberts]

I see you must have tried fire to destroy the stump ,

no I used fire to destroy all the wood***... ants pretty much destroyed the stump (that's why it fell).

theres a few interesting youtube vids on guys burning out tree stumps ,guys using trucks and tractors to try pull them up ,with varying degrees of sucess or failure .
Pickaxe is my old reliable for that job ,you get great leverage and once your hooked in  under the root chances of the tool slipping are small . My pickaxe has a wide flat at the back end ,give it a little edge with a grinder and you'll chop right through the smaller roots in one go .

One of my favourite garden tools is what you see below ,a guillotine loppers , very little force is required to cut branches upto 40 mm or so , and you wont even need to break a sweat like with an axe. I think its a German design . Id take one of them over an axe for cutting smaller fire wood anyday ,much safer and less effort required .

I have a compound lopper that I used for most of the small limbs, and chainsaw for the larger limbs/trunk. My bar was marginal length for the trunk near the base but I got it done. 

The axe already got up most of the roots in one session ( a sharp axe is a wonderful thing), but I still have some work to do. It was actually a little easier than I thought it would be, but not really easy. 

I used a backhoe about a decade ago to get the trunk and big roots up from my 100' tall cottonwood that Katrina almost dropped on my house, but I don't have any machinery available this time.

No problem, this one is almost done.

JR 

*** I let one passer by cut up and carry off two pickup truck loads of wood (pecan) for his heater.

 

[gevermil]

jokes aside  :

any value to pecan wood ?

can it be used for anything beyond burn ?

 

[PRR]

> If I was really smart I would invent a chainsaw blade that dirt doesn't make dull

Reciprocating saw (Sawzall). Battery, unless the stump is convenient to electricity. 12" Carbide tip blade. Cuts wood while fully in dirt, does not dull quick, blades are $5-10 for several small stumps not $25 for one kiss of dirt.
9 in. 5tpi AX

FWIW- there is Carbide Chain for concrete or car-rescue but way over $100 a chain.

 

[Tubetec]

Just did a quick search on pecan wood ,mixed reports but mostly saying if its properly dried it is good . Very hard wood ,related to hickory ,the char grill enthusiast's seem to like it for flavour . The Missouri varieties seem to be best quality ,but thats probably related to better quality dirt . Hardwood is awesome in the fireplace ,but so slow growing its hard to justify plumeing it up into the atmosphere. Seems to be a favourite with wood turners as well . Seems to be a question as to the cost/value of getting it sawn up . I lost a mature apple tree to a storm a few years ago ,most of the smaller bits went on the grill ,and that was worthwhile ,I saved the trunk but still havent figured out what to do with it. .

 

[JohnRoberts]

jokes aside  :

any value to pecan wood ?

can it be used for anything beyond burn ?

Pecan is desirable wood for use in smokers (and apparently heaters).  I have no desire to smell more pecan burning after I dispose of the roots I dug up.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

> If I was really smart I would invent a chainsaw blade that dirt doesn't make dull

Reciprocating saw (Sawzall). Battery, unless the stump is convenient to electricity. 12" Carbide tip blade. Cuts wood while fully in dirt, does not dull quick, blades are $5-10 for several small stumps not $25 for one kiss of dirt.
9 in. 5tpi AX

FWIW- there is Carbide Chain for concrete or car-rescue but way over $100 a chain.

I think my carpenter has one of those carbide wheels he used to cut the roof panels to size with. Not a typical blade but more like an abrasion disc. With use the disc diameter gets smaller.

I have a carbide tipped saw blade I use for cutting aluminum extrusion.

For now my $15 axe and some elbow grease will get it done.

JR

 

[Gold]

I think my carpenter has one of those carbide wheels he used to cut the roof panels to size with. Not a typical blade but more like an abrasion disc. With use the disc diameter gets smaller.

Those are called abrasive cut off wheels in the good ol USA.  They make the cut off wells out of different material depending on what you are cutting. I have a 14" cutoff wheel chop saw. I have wheels for aluminum and steel. I'd like to move to a saw blade for aluminum for a cleaner cut.  The saws are supposed to spin at a lower RPM so I can't just substitute the blade. The big cutoff wheels saws you can pick up for a little over $100. The saws are more like $400. I can't really justify that at the moment.

 

[scott2000]

I always hated when I had to use my wet tile saw to cut some aluminum pieces in a pinch.... Works pretty good but wears out the diamond blade quick I imagine.......

 

[Tubetec]

Not much use for tree surgery , but the diamond discs for grinders come cheap as chips here,theres an accesory a bit like a small drill press that you can mount the grinder on and get very precise clean cuts in for instance extruded aluminium or lighter gauges of steel ,only a four inch blade so not much in the way of depth of cut  ,still great for small jobs

https://mooseindustrialtools.com.au/product/angle-grinder-press-stand/

I see a similar thing in Lidl here from time to time ,I'm tempted to try one.

Mother nature does her thing what ever , but Im always a bit sad in my heart when I see a mature tree down ,ripped up out of the ground like a weed . Then you have the likes of the local 'Mens Shed' brutally cutting down a rare  species reputed to have been around since the time of high king of Ireland Brian Boru , I smoked cigs with my friends under that tree ,got my first kiss ,copped my first feel under etc ,  and that bunch of old farts masachered it . I feel like thrashing their cabbage patch some nights when Im passing on the way home from the pub ,but im not a punk teenrager anymore.  ;D

Theres some interesting backround here at the expense of maybe a slight bit of 'away with the fairyism'
Its still quite nicely written and researched though.

https://www.druidry.org/library/trees/tree-lore-yew

 

[PRR]

> Im always a bit sad in my heart when I see a mature tree down ,ripped up out of the ground like a weed .

Every place is different. You down-under have a lovely house sheathing board totally unknown to the US branch of Hardy; I'd love to use it around my foundation.

OTOH, here on the coast of Maine, trees (some of them) ARE weeds. Except when a dandelion falls down, nobody cries; when an 80 foot (say 30m) spruce falls in the driveway, on the power line, or on the garage, it's real unfortunate. And I have such weeds growing so close together that they fall like dominoes. The place was cut-over about 70 years back, they are all the same age, and they are all too big for our very thin soil (lost two growing in 6 inches of peat over bedrock).

Although maybe someone sometime copped a feel under these weeds, last year I ruthlessly cut down a couple dozen. Another bunch on the other side of the drive (and closer to the power line) are doomed, but not this year.

 

[JohnRoberts]

> Im always a bit sad in my heart when I see a mature tree down ,ripped up out of the ground like a weed .

Every place is different. You down-under have a lovely house sheathing board totally unknown to the US branch of Hardy; I'd love to use it around my foundation.

OTOH, here on the coast of Maine, trees (some of them) ARE weeds. Except when a dandelion falls down, nobody cries; when an 80 foot (say 30m) spruce falls in the driveway, on the power line, or on the garage, it's real unfortunate. And I have such weeds growing so close together that they fall like dominoes. The place was cut-over about 70 years back, they are all the same age, and they are all too big for our very thin soil (lost two growing in 6 inches of peat over bedrock).

Although maybe someone sometime copped a feel under these weeds, last year I ruthlessly cut down a couple dozen. Another bunch on the other side of the drive (and closer to the power line) are doomed, but not this year.

We have trees that grow like weeds down here too... My neighbor informs me they are called hedges, but they look like trees, and grow during the winter too, so if you leave them alone until spring, you have 10-15' tall trees (hedges?) to cut... and if you don't pull up the roots they grow back even faster.

The real weirdness is in the boston to DC region, where they love their trees so much they outlaw cutting them down, even when they need killin...  :

I just noticed today that I have a 50'-60' tall dead un... looks like it might have been hit by lightning (all the bark has flaked off) but it seems there are taller trees nearby. Maybe black ants had a party, but odd to see a tree so dead, in the midst of other very live ones.  I will need to effect a controlled drop sooner or later, but nothing very dangerous looking nearby to complicate matters.

JR

 

[Tubetec]

Im lucky enough in one way to be sourunded by trees where I live ,
I count more than 40 very tall  spruce trees in my garden ,all along the front of the property , they were planted as litte as 3-4 feet appart by the previous owner . They do present a danger if one falls ,both to power lines and other properties,but the shelter they give from the south westerlys is really great . I have 12kv running over head in the lower part of my garden ,right in the danger zone of the big tree's too . The electric company take care of some of the tree's if they start to interfere with the powerlines , if a big one fell ,it would most likely fall right across the HV and into my front garden ,They wouldnt quite hit my house , they certainly are in range of several other properties. 

Thats interesting about the geography where you are Prr , 6 inches of dirt over bedrock ,sounds like formidable territory ,must have really been a struggle to for the locals work the land  back in the old day,although of course the sea provides and endless bounty . Its all limestone around me ,theres a good depth of soil though ,to the south is a rocky promontory/cliff about 120 feet high which sweeps down to sea level and the eastury, no chance of flooding ever ,either from rain or sea level rise .
Im completely seperated from my neighbours on three sides by 'weed' species of tree/hedge ,the whitethorn has needles 2 inches long and eats my mower tires alive , theres elderflower everywhere ,it can be a bit of a nuisance ,but you can prune it hard and it behaves itself , One interesting thing about the elderflower bush/tree is, once I hacked down one that was in a spot where I needed to access with the mower ,there was a trunk coming up out of the ground and leaning over 90 degrees sideways , after I cut the upper sections off  it started to drip ,before long there was a steady drip you could actually collect ,over the course of days liters and liters poured out of the tree trunk still left in the ground ,I collected some ,and sure enough crystal clean and very palatable water, slightly sweet tasting with unique flavour. Bushcraft is rarely needed in the modern age ,but still a common 'weed' or nuisance species could be your best friend in a survival situation , Ive often thought about adding some of the elderflower sap to drop of whiskey to see what happens. 
Anyway I wouldnt loose one bit of the natural cover the from my mostly great neighbours ,the irony is the angle that is fenced is the same person I have a land dispute with  :