…a blinding flash of insight, informing me I don’t need to do one chore I’d planned for this morning, because that chore has been rendered obsolete.
This is my wood cutting table. All summer it’s been at the Lair to help with construction, but I was going to move it to Ian’s this morning. I normally keep it there because he’s never there and has lots of electricity. In the autumn I mount a chop saw on it and cut up pieces of pallet to stove length and toss them in the Jeep trailer. So here’s the way the process works…
I take the Jeep trailer to the place where I store my pallets. Load as many as will fit in the trailer.
I unload the trailer at Ian’s place, where I have the table and a chop saw.
I cut the pallets apart with a Sawzall, then (careful of nails) feed the bits into the chop saw and cut them to stove lengths.
I toss the stovewood into the trailer, drive it to the Lair, unload the wood into a wheelbarrow and stack it in the woodshed.
I throw my back out at least once during this annual process, losing a good week’s work. Through a mix-up at the factory I was issued a 63-year-old spine, and during wood-cutting season it shows.
Now here’s the part about the epiphany: I have a cordless reciprocating saw that, apparently now that it’s broken in, runs for useful lengths of time on a battery charge. So I can cut up the pallets right where they’re stored. I already knew that. But now, or when that Honda generator gets here, I can either do the whole process at that remote site – inconvenient but it means I only move wood once – Or I can leave the wood cutting table at the Lair, haul the cut-up pallets to the Lair and cut them up right next to the woodshed.
Either way I’m only moving wood once and never big heavy pallets.
Oh, I’d definitely vote for doing the whole think at the storage site, then hauling home the finished lengths. Saves all that handling twice.
Neat.
**
I came to the same conclusion, feralfae, for a reason that slipped my mind yesterday: cutting up the pallets inevitably shakes out nails all over the place. I have a pick-up magnet I use on the site after the job is complete, but you can be pretty sure you haven’t got everything and they become a tire hazard. Better to do the whole job where I store the pallets, because nobody ever wants to drive there.
It’s a good thing to be working smarter as one gets older which is something I have yet to fully grasp.
The nails/tires issue hits home. It seems that almost every time I do a dump run I’m having to deal with a nail or screw in a tire. On the plus side, I have taken heed of your sage words about tire repair so it’s not as big an issue as it once was.