Tony Bigsaw

Interesting vid but not difficult, top was tied and under tension, if you listen you can hear the tractor power up and pull as it starts to fall, that’s why it leaps forward and always falls in the right direction. You can see the tractor in the second tree he tops. I have used the same technique many times in the past when I lived on the farm using a tractor to pull the tree into our field and not over the ditch into the neighbouring field but we always cut at the bottom not half way up.

I didn't paint the pencil the customer did, i delivered a bare wood cylinder for him to work on.

I didn't know what the cylinder would be used for when I made it, it was just an order from a customer who turned out to be an artist. I had a laugh to when i found out that he had made it into a giant stubby pencil. I've made a few items for that customer over the years including some scaled artists paint brushes 1.5M long. 3 sets of darts 18 inches long, a 5ft tall artists lay model (the wooden doll normally 8 to 12 inches tall with movable arms and legs) The lathe is a Hegner VB36 master bowl turners lathe, heres the link 3.6.3 Shop@ssistant CLASSIC

Hears another item, a 24 inch diameter plate turned from an offcut from the spalted beach log used in the above pics.

Hi all, thought I would post some pics of my turnings see what you think, I'll start withe the TREE Had a customer call me asked if i do big turnings, of course I said yes, he wanted a cylinder turned 1.5M long by 0.5M diameter finished hollowed to 1M inside 1st pic, log trimmed and being loaded onto lathe 2nd pic log part turned 3rd pic me turning the log Note: beard has gone 4th pic A return pic from the customer of the finished item in an art gallery estimated weight of log when loaded was 3/4 ton on a big faceplate top turning speed was 95 rpm

I normally have a 4ft bar fitted but the one in the avatar is a 6ft bar, that’s why my arb friends refer to me as Tony Bigsaw

I’m a full time professional woodturner (TW Woodturning home page) and have struck a good relationship with some arb’s near me. One who is now a good friend first came to me for woodturning lessons and started giving me the odd piece of green wood for my demo’s he soon realised that I had a big chainsaw and asked if I would help when he had a large tree to fell, I let him use my big saw to fell the tree (as I don’t fell trees) then while he works on the smaller parts I slice and dice the main trunk then help load the truck, for this I get paid for the day and get to pick a few select pieces for me.