Making a Three Log Bench

Back at it again with a long form BB post!
This time, I want to take you along on my tree felling, log peeling, saddle jointing adventure while I made my three log bench!

Part 1: downing the trees

This started almost 2 months back, in September, with felling the trees.
These elms were afflicted by bacteria wetwood (aka: slime flux) giving them a rather foul odor and dark discoloration on the bark where the fermented alcoholic sap oozed out from cracks in the tree.
More irritatingly, they were blocking several hours of afternoon sun from my garden, causing production to come to a virtual standstill…
They had to go.

After learning to fell trees at Wheaton Labs this year, I felt confident enough to give it a shot myself.
The first several went swimmingly. The notch and the weight distribution played to my advantage.
The last however, as you’ll see below, made me wish I had a timber jack.

I cut the notch and started the back cut, but problems soon arose.
It was slightly leaning over my fence and the wind kicked up in the wrong direction… it pinched the bar of the chainsaw and I couldn’t break it free
The tree was not at all going where I wanted.

I had to act quickly first getting some ratchet straps to provide some tension, then a hi lift jack and a square tube.
I jammed the tube into the bark and, after a few false starts, got it to catch enough to prevent slipping.
I cranked the jack and the tube embedded itself into the sap wood.

I kept cranking until my saw came free. After checking to make sure it was out of the path, I continued extending the jack until the tree started to fall.

Archimedes was right, leverage makes all the difference.

After it came down, I called it quits. I still have one tree that could use felled, but I have a better gauge for weight distribution now and am leaving that to the professionals.

I let these sit for over a month, thinking I’d probably use them in a Hugelkultur, yet found a more interesting purpose.

To be continued…

Part 2: The Bench

Looking at the BBs I still have to complete, I started wishing for a log of the correct dimensions for a bench… I looked on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and several other sources. But they were either too expensive or too small…

Then a voice in my head said “why don’t you go measure what you’ve got in the field there. Can’t hurt”
Lo and behold, the easy tree was just wide enough! And long to boot.

Score! Now to process.

After seeing EdibleAcres’ YouTube video on riving green logs I knew I needed to buy wedges (Harbor Freight $9.99 specials)
I’d never done this, nor even seen it done in person, but how hard could it be?

I should have watched more videos.

I wanted to maximize the log based off its geometry, by removing as little wood as I could.
The angle I chose had me splitting right through a knot.
Knot good…

I also have since learned that often folks will choose to peel slightly, then use an axe and mallet to score the outer sapwood to better define the split.

I did neither of these things and instead suffered.
I had to go back over the split from a different angle, right through the knot itself, to come up with anything useful.

In the end though, this wasn’t all bad, I got what I needed and proceeded to move the log to a better processing area.

I thought splitting first would be advantageous in terms of weight and less peeling. In the end, I don’t think it made any real difference.

Unbelievably heavy, there was no way I could lift it. Yet being the stubborn mule I am, I refused to ask for help.
However, I did have some cut-off round fence posts; I made like an Egyptian and rolled the future bench to where I wanted it.

Then began the task of peeling, sharpening the spud, peeling a lot more, getting the cool spud I bought from Mike, using that and the flat one, to finally remove all the bark.

Once off, I started scraping the bench top with the flat spud, hacking away with my splitting axe, and hoping a hewing axe would magically show up on my doorstep instead.
No such luck.

Eventually I gave up on that and brought out the trusty hand plane.
This took time but the results were far nicer, as was the job itself.

Once done, I turned to the task of hauling the logs from the more challenging tree I felled.
These were even farther than the first, with many obstacles in between, so rolling was out of the question. I had to cut first.

This meant that peeling was way less fun as they kept rocking up on edge.
In fact, I was so irritated at this process, I realize now that I took zero pictures. (Come on if I could snap pics with a leaning tree trying to crush me, couldn’t I have taken any of peeling the feet? Sheesh)

After those were prepped, I tried a method I read about to scribe the saddles. I moved the bench onto the feet, placed a marker on top of a 2x4 cutoff, and drew the rough outline where my joints would be made.
This method worked well enough, but definitely did not account for the subtle variations in the feet.
If I do this again, I’ll probably invest in an actual scribe.

Once scribed, I cut slices down to the depth of the scribe line, as Mike details in the full length video of the round wood stair build in Low Tech Lab 2 movie.

I then tried something else, which I’m not sure was needed. I turned the bar horizontally and sliced the remaining wedges down to a minimum.
I bet a hammer would have been as good but running the saw is fun. Call it a break even.

Once there, I busted out the mallet I made at WL (for the club mallet BB) and my chisel, and hammered away until I was satisfied with my saddles.

Finally I rolled the bench top into place on the feet, checked overall size, snapped some pics, then came inside to make this thread (hey it was getting dark and cold).

Thanks for reading!
I hope you got something out of it and maybe are inspired to build one of your own :)

Just make sure you have a timber jack and be safe out there!

Nice work, especially the hand tools, and nice result!