Carving Standing Timber

[Steamboat Don]

I have a friend who asked me to carve a fir tree stump in his back yard. The stump is 10’ tall. I’ve already carved (hand tools not chainsaw) a couple things and have stopped for the season due to cold weather and snow. I finished it with spar urethane. (I tried to download photos for this post but the error message said I had already done that. To see what I'm doing go to Works in Progress and look for "Carving Standing Timber". There are 5 photos there.)

My concern is that this stump is still in the ground. At the base I can see that even though the tree was dead and needed to be cut down, there are still some green twigs at the base of the stump near the ground.

I have never carved a tree stump before and don’t know if what I am doing will last very long.

I read in another thread that totem pole carvers cut out the heart of the pole to prevent rot and checking. Since mine is still in the ground and kind of alive, should I do that? Should I cut the whole stump down?

Any suggestions or leads to how-to books would be greatly appreciated.

[Robson Valley]

Totem Poles in Western Red Cedar is about all of my TP experience.
Most totem poles only have a front & sides, bird beaks & open wings are add-ons.
The sap wood tends to rot most easily until all the bark is peeled off.
The North side usually has the fewest branches.
I score the piece with a SkilSaw, maybe 5/8" in a 2" x 4" grid and pop off all the sapwood with a regular 1" chisel, working from what was the bottom end of the log. That usually leaves the grid cuts for layout lines. Or, you can bust a gut for a week+ and take it off with an adze.

At some point in the process, cut out a big "V" in the ugly side, the knotty side, right to the center of the log. Maybe 25% of the log. This relieves the checking in drying. The hazard in doing this is that you are cutting with the grain = the wood does not come off in chips but spalls off in long saw-jamming threads. Took a whole day to pick that crud out of the saw.
Lookng forward to checking out your photos. HA! Just had a look. Well done!

[Steamboat Don]

Thanks for the reply, Robson Valley. So would you recommend that I strip off the bark and sapwood now before old man winter really sets in here? It comes off pretty easy with a drawknife. Or should I leave the remaining bark on until next summer when I do more work on it?

[Robson Valley]

No. Peel it now. The bugs and the rot get in under the bark in the sugary/live part of the tree.
Dying trees give off odor molecules that bugs tune in on. . . . . used now as bait for forest-killing bugs in traps. The quicker at least the surface dries, the less appetizing it is to bugs and fungus/rot. Of course, that leaves all the other bugs that like dry wood. . . . . . I guess WRC doesn't taste too good.

Get the big relief cut done, too. With a lot of cracks and splits, water can get in there and freeze=more cracking and splitting. You might want to shelter the thing from the WX with a tarp for the winter but no more than that. Nobody pays any attention to the fact that TP's only have a front and sides. . . . . but there are no pictures of the back as there's nothing there.

I got tired of swinging an adze. I can't get the "beat" to sync with my heart rate like the native carvers can. Stumbled on the Skilsaw method of my own doing.

Two of Charles Edenshaw's grandsons (Haida) won the proposal (of 10 submissions) for a new pole in Jasper National Park. I'm guessing but it looked like they cut 1/3 of the log away on the back. JNP is 2 hrs east of my place.

[Steamboat Don]

Okie dokie, I'll get it peeled. Then, if I'm understanding you correctly (I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed), do a relief cut down the tree to help relieve the cracking and splitting.

[Robson Valley]

Well, hell. Your log is sort of stuck in the ground, no? Pick the face that nobody can see (if there is one.) Buzz 1/4 of the log out of that part. From your pictures, look hard at the back side that is sort of uphill into the forest. If anything, it won't look like much on the approach but the viewer's response when they get around it to the "front" side ought to work for everyone.

With out a doubt the very best log/TP preservative is a good, healthy(?) spray with hydraulic fluid. We are accustomed here to seeing poles weather over the years. The pole is a mark of who you are and where you came from. The age is important, just as important as the ceremony needed to raise a new pole (never done by machine). Traditionally, when a pole falls down, you don't stand it up again. I have no clan symbols of iconographic importance. That's OK.

I had a pole no more than 10'/3m. Carving done by my brother of my D1 and D2. It was Cottonwood and lasted 20+ years, standing oputside my summer house in a lakeside resort. My kids moved away and the pole fell down. I rolled it off into the bushes and told the new homeowner that it was important that it stayed where it lay. I have not been there since.

[Frank V]

I plung cut with a chainsaw to remove a 'block' from the center 1/3 of the stump as close as possible to the ground. This leaves a well ventilated space which interupts decay working its way up from the base. With few exceptions sound, standing wood will rot from the bottom up and inside (pith) to out. I then use a single 'kerf' cut with a saw, top to bottom on the back side to relieve checking tension.
F.

[Robson Valley]

FrankV I like your advice about the base block cut. Make biological sense.

The rot in the core of a western red cedar can begin when the tree is no more than 20 years old. I haven't seen 5% of the logs coming out solid. A 36" log might be no more than a 6" thick shell. The living trees seem to do OK. I don't know if the rot would be progressive in a totem pole, everybody hogs that stuff out from the back cut anyway. One advantage, though: you can see the younger ends of branches/knots which might be overgrown from the other/face side. What I have experienced is that the white sapwood will develop punky rot-spots if the bark is left on for any length of time.

[Steamboat Don]

Thanks, Frank. I was wondering about the base of the trunk rotting away. I've shied away from chain saws because of the noise and one slip of the saw off goes part of my anatomy.

Right now the base of the trunk still has some life. There's a green sprig growing about 2' up it. I'll see what I can do about the 'kerf' cut. With the stump being 10' tall, how high of a block should I cut out from the base? Does it matter?

[Frank V]

The blocks that I remove are about 1/3 of the diameter of the stump width. The hieght is usually about 6", (the width of the saw bar). Kerf cut depth is to the centre (pith) of the stump. These are not 'standard' chainsaw cuts and require experience and a good level of 'comfort' with a saw.
As a general rule conifers will not regenerate from 'old wood' successfully. My guess is that the sprouts you are seeing will fail before they amount to much as the stump dies to the ground.

As advised I would make stripping the bark a priority to prevent insect attacks and other decay issues. Having said that, the galleries or tunnels of insect larva which spend the first part of their developement just under the bark can certainly add natural character. Trick is to time stripping the bark to interupt their feeding before they bore deeper into the wood.

F.