balsawoodsh

Then there are the logs with branches in them. As one can imagine, when a huge tree has a huge branch growing off it, there must be some unusual situation that exists where branch joins the trunk. There is. There is a gnarly, twisted, dense configuration that nature has evolved and designed to keep that heavy branch from falling off the tree lijfxliy. That can really be a challenge. Say there is a tree three or 4 feet diameter and, about 40 feet up there are three or four branches all coming out from the same part of the tree trunk. When that tree is cut down, this section of the trunk where those branches are coming out, can take me an hour or so to work over and 10 or 15 wedges. A wedge may be pounded into part of the balsa wood right up to the end, and with no effect. So it takes another wedge and then another, and one more and then another. I have 20 wedges of various sizes and shapes (all of them pretty much wedge-shaped) and sometimes, in a huge log with several branches, I will get almost all of them in there before it yields to my entreaties, and pounding. It is, of course, a great satisfaction to "conquer" a log like that. There is an art and a science to it. Knowing where to place the wedges, which kind of wedge to use (there are some variations among wedges, thin ones and fatter ones, for example) and finding the fault lines and natural splitting directions of a complicated log.

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