Make a quick and easy sawhorse for firewood
By Robin Overall
Photographs: Robin Overall
I created this little project because I needed to cut firewood easily without someone to assist in holding the wood. Although not my own invention, it is an interpretation of pictures gleaned from the web and adapted to materials that you can buy easily in New Zealand timber yards. The whole project cost me $40 and took about an hour and a half to make. In anybody’s book that is value for money and time well spent.
It is essentially four crosses of timber braced to form a cradle for cutting your firewood. You lay the length of wood to be sawn in the cradle and then chainsaw it between the crosses. A sacrificial fence batten stops the chainsaw from cutting the cradle to bits. This is periodically replaced. You can fill a wheelbarrow with firewood in no time.
To make this sawhorse, cut two 4.8 metre lengths of rough-sawn tanalised 75 mm x 50 mm into eight 1200 mm pieces. They each need an angle of 60° cut on them. Each pair is made into an “X” that is pivoted 500mm from the top. Use a 100 mm nail to join them. Two pairs are assembled with the left piece towards the front and two with the right piece towards the front.
Two lengths of 75 mm x 50 mm are used as spacing bars. The length of these pieces is dependent on the required length of your firewood. I maintained my sawhorse at a length of 1200 mm as this meant that my cut-lengths of firewood suited my woodstove.
Two lengths of fence paling are nailed to the legs to act as bracing. With the addition of a couple of lengths of rope as stays the whole structure is a very stable platform for cutting firewood. When not being used it can be folded up and stored in the shed.
This has to be the ultimate in easy projects and will earn its keep many times over.
