I
had walked through the woods beside the river on many occasions, and
although I had never seen it, it was there. Bill, a member of the
woodturning club which I started a couple of years ago, told me
about it. I went along to the caretaker of the estate and spoke
nicely to him of Merry Christmases, as that was the time of the
year. Can I take a look for it? I asked hopefully. The answer was
Lets both look for it, said old Tom and off we went. It was a
bitterly cold crisp day on the 26th December last year
(2000), and I drove the two of us along a winding path to the place
that Bill had said the big burl was hiding. After only a few minutes
we saw it, it stood out from the tree like a sore thumb and
it was huge. It went all the way round the base of the long slender
tree about 8ft up the trunk. The ground sloped down toward the river
quite steeply and as I slid down the slope toward the tree, with my
chainsaw in one hand and a bag containing my safety gear in the
other, it seemed to grow even bigger. I stood slightly above the
base of the tree on a ledge about 2ft wide and my head was level
with the top of the burl, which was about 3ft across at its widest
point.
The
fun was about to begin. I use the expression lightly; frustration
would be a better way to describe what was about to happen. I
slipped into my chainsaw gear and after checking that I had a sound
footing and that the saw chain was tensioned correctly I donned my
protective helmet with the mesh visor and fired her up (the chainsaw
I mean). I raised the saw and started cutting a wedge from one side,
as I was going to fell the top of the tree along the path. I soon
had the slice out and started the felling cut from the other side.
It was tough going and it took a while to cut into the hard trunk.
Elm is not a soft timber by any means and it felt like my arms were
on fire with the effort I had to put into the cutting of this big
ugly blemish on an other wise straight tree. Dutch Elm Disease had
taken its toll on this trees future and the saw was now nearly
through at last. Sweat was nearly blinding me, and gently the 30ft
tree began to topple. It crashed to the path with a great thump and
lay there. Not bad cutting, I thought to myself and after a couple
of minutes old Tom slid down beside me and offered me some coffee
from his Thermos.
Refreshed
and eager to get on with cutting the burl, I started up the saw
again and took a few minutes to drop the burl to the path beside the
tree. For a few seconds, every thing was looking good and then
suddenly the path gave way and the tree and the burl rolled down the
slope and with a sickening splash toppled into the river at the
bottom. Tom and I looked at each other in disbelief and without
thinking I slid down the slope after them. I grabbed the branch of
an overhanging tree and peered down the 10ft or so to the water and
saw to my relief that the burl was jammed behind a large rock while
the tree was away down stream. The burl was like an iceberg in the
water and it was jammed tightly behind the rock. I climbed back up
to Tom and on up to the van and said that I was going home for lunch
and would bring my son and his friend back with me.
By
the time I returned with the reinforcements, it was quite late and
getting cold. I had a rope and my chest waders with me. My son
Callum and his friend Chris stayed on the river bank as I slowly
slid into the almost freezing water of the river Doon. It was about
5 ft deep at the rock and I had some trouble looping the rope round
the middle of the burl and tying it with a slip noose. I hauled the
great lump of wood out into deeper water and all of a sudden it took
off down stream. Callum and Chris had taken the rope round a trunk
and as it tightened it swung round and slowed down. It took a lot of
hauling and pushing to get it downstream to a part of the bank,
which was only inches above water level where we tied it up and went
for Tom.
Soon
we had a tractor down at the river side and we tied the rope on and
hauled the burl out of the water and along about a quarter of a mile
to my van. We rolled it onto the box at the back and used the
hydraulics to lift the burl up to the level of the back doors of the
van and rolled it well in and tied it down. No way was it getting
away now. A bottle of whiskey to Tom for his help and away we went
happy as pigs in muck that we had managed to win such a prize. The
burl weighed in at 500lbs and was cut up and racked the next day to
air dry for a few years.
Oskar
