How to get firewood - 2) Equipment

You don't need loads of expensive tools to get firewood. But it's worth buying a decent chainsaw and axe as you'll use both of these a lot.

Chainsaws
We've got two chainsaws - a larger and a smaller one. Our large one is a Stihl 290 which is good where you need a more powerful saw but it's a bit on the heavy side for my wife to use and even for me after a while. However, it's extremely reliable and starts even in the coldest weather. It's the saw we use for larger trees and for cutting up or 'bucking' larger logs (anything more than 12-14" diameter). Many people have even larger, more powerful saws but it's a big one for us.

Most of the time we use our smaller Stihl 170 which is our all-round saw. It's a more manageable weight to carry and manipulate when you're cutting but it can struggle with larger logs and trees.

Louise using our Stihl 170 with workgloves and ear defenders

Safety gear
If you see professional loggers working they often wear special hard hats with a visor, safety goggles, Kevlar chaps etc. Of course, it's much safer to wear this protective equipment. But if you're out in the bush in the middle of winter it's just not practical. It's too cold to wear a hard hat and it won't fit over your own hat, the safety gear is cumbersome and you're already wearing a ton of clothing.

The main thing is to be careful. You're often a very, very long way from a doctor or hospital. It's good to be confident and competent with your chainsaw - practice and watch what other people do.

We wear a pair of thick, insulated work gloves with fingers rather than mitts so we have some dexterity when we're sawing. It's tricky to start a saw with mitts on.

Chainsaws are loud. We've also bought ear defenders as we found our ears were really ringing after a session with the saw.

If it's bright enough we wear sunglasses as they give your eyes some protection from sawdust and wood chips that the saw can kick out. But in the winter we don't see the sun for months and there's just not enough light. We don't wear safety goggles as it's usually just too cold to have them on your face.

Axe, wedges, ratchet straps
We have a Fiskars hand axe that we use for removing the side branches of trees (limbing, see the following how to) and for clearing brush away.

The same as ours - 23.5" long and weighs about 3.5 lbs

And we always have ratchet straps with us. We use them to tie lengths of firewood to our snowmachine sled but you can also use them to drag wood out and to tie around a tree to help steer the direction it goes in as you're felling it. In fact, they are useful for so many things that you just have to have ratchet straps whatever you're doing in the bush.

Logs secured to our sled with ratchet straps

That's really all you need but we've also got some felling wedges that you can use to help direct the way a tree falls. You hammer them into the felling cut you make in the tree and they can steer the tree in the direction you want it to go.

See the next ‘how to’ for details on cutting a tree down.