01 March 2011

Felling trees to make beds

I hired a "chainsaw-man" to fell three of my cypress trees. The two that were 20 feet tall provided enough 3" x 1" x 3' "timber" to make the mattress slats for two "double-deckers" (bunk beds) for the students at the school. The third tree (and shortest one) was unfortunately dying due to some inadvertent damage. It wasn't big enough around to be used for timber, and will instead be used for firewood.

Nathan felled two of his tall Eucalyptus trees a few days later. They made enough 3" x 3" timber to make the two double-decker bedframes. It seemed very fitting to me - as I vacated the compound - to bless the expanding school with beds for 4 students.




Slicing it into pieces of timber

The guy was very skilled with the chainsaw; he did his work carefully and quickly.

Removing the three trees really opened up the compound and made it more attractive, in my opinion. Over 30 trees still remain.


My pastor friend, Nathan, is on the left. The guy in the middle is the owner of the chainsaw. I guess the guy on the right just came along for company. A person pays to have a tree felled and cut into timber based on the size of timber requested. For the 1" x 3" pieces I wanted, the charge to me was 4-shillings per foot. Of that, the owner gets 3 shillings per foot and the guy doing all the work gets 1 shilling per foot. We ended up with 250 feet. All of the branches plus the top portion of the tree will be used for much-needed firewood.


These pieces of "off-cuts" will also be put to use.

Nathan and the owner of the chainsaw counting the timber

Some of the male students carried the timber to storage so it could properly dry

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pretty nice arrangement for the owner of the chainsaw! Impressive that he was able to do all of that work with that machine!