A new benchmark for cussed tenacity

[tigertoy]

I spent several hours this afternoon on some long-ignored home maintenance.  Specifically, cutting back some vegetation that was scraping on the roof.  Several random trees weren't hard to deal with, but one of the trees is an Osage orange.  It has incredibly tough wood, it grows tangled with itself, and it has thorns.  It took me a couple of hours to get a couple of medium sized limbs cut off and actually on the ground, and it seemed like every minute I was fighting with the thing.  It would have been easy with a chainsaw, but I don't have one (I did once, but it got stolen, and I've never gotten around to replacing it.  So I was cutting what I could with long-handled pruning shears -- which is a lot less than it would be with most trees because the Osage orange is so darn tough.  So I was cutting a lot of bits with a bow saw.  But anything larger than about an inch in diameter bound the saw really badly once I got halfway through, and anything small, the last stringy bit would defy the saw.  And when I did actually cut a piece free, it wouldn't move, because it would still be tangled with the rest of the tree.

At least I managed to not fall off the ladder or otherwise injure myself.  So I won eventually, but I think my arms are going to be sore for a couple of days.

Comments

[quasiskunk.livejournal.com]

Make a "V" cut on the bottom of the branch, then a finishing cut from above. Also, a little 3 in 1 oil on the blade helps too ^.^