22/05/26 The chopping and sawing continues. With the help of some buddies we finished a 7m long, hollowed-out larch wood trough and filled it with water. Not so easy to move the log and adjust the log by hand. The tree was slightly bent, so the chainsaw cut had to be made in a slightly curved line in some places as well.
I would have chopped out the trough a little deeper to completely remove the core heartwood along its entire length.
But since it’s not my trough and I wasn't in charge the work was finished rather hastily.

#larch #tree #wood #water #trough #traditional #woodwork #hardwork

Damn Wy'east was looking great from Larch Mt. today. #hood #wyeast #pnw #larch

The larch trees are blooming

#BloomScrolling #TreeBlossom #Flower #Spring #SpringBlossom #Nature #Larch #Bloom #NaturePhotography

25/04 The whole fence from October 2025 still looking fresh, with an added last section from April 2026.
3 larch section, 3 arollapine sections in total. A lot of hand work involved.
The neighbor removed the wire fence in the back, so I had a little more room to extend the fence this time.

#handmade #fence #handsplit #woodfence #hardwork #woodwork #art #larch #arollapine #natural #wood #sustainability

25/04 Finished the last section (ca. 2,5m) with handsplint arolla pine 1,7m to 1,9m. I’d left my freshly sharpened chisel and my pica pencil at home.
But I had a second, not-so-good chisel as a backup. Next time, I’ll make sure to wear a belt again for my hanging my morakniv knife and the Pica Dry pencil for better workflow. I only had 90mm nails with me, but I also needed 70mm nails. Luckily, the owner who arrived later had some.

#handmade #fence #handsplit #heartwood #hardwork #woodwork #larch #arollapine #wood #sustainability

24/04 Set and fixed the last round fence post with stones only. Digging the last whole was not easy due to a lot of treeroots and stones. I stopped on 70cm (instead of 80cm) because there was a bigger stone on the bottom, that was diffcult to remove.

#handmade #fence #handsplit #heartwood #hardwork #woodwork #larch #arollapine #wood #sustainability

24/04: Today I cut down the last extension (40cm) of my existing fence to extend it by one more 2,2m arolla pine section (one additonal round charred larch post). I dug a 70-centimeter-deep hole and secured the post firmly in place with stones. The neighbor was kind enough to get me an oscillating multi-tool so I could cut the end of fence cleanly and trim it to the middle of the post.
It worked really well.
Here’s the front view of my fence.

#handmade #fence #handsplit #heartwood #hardwork #woodwork #larch #arollapine #wood #art #sustainability

09/04/26: Not only the splitting continues, but so does the chopping. Over the last two days I removed the sapwood and bark with an axe of a single larch log, yielding another 5 colums in 2,6-3m for a new fence . I'll probably leave all the columns as they are round and blunt on both sides, since only 1 or 2 would be thick enough to be cut into two pieces. The thickest column (the bottom one, yes it is only one piece) is badly bent, so I'll probably leave it whole and use it as a special corner column. Even if there are only five columns, it still takes some work to get them into this shape.
Luckily this time the sapwood of this log was already pretty rotten, so I saved myself a few calories and some additional hours of chopping.

#larch #wood #handchopped #traditional #woodworking #craft #handcrafted #hardwork #fencepost

09/04/26: The wood splitting continues. Over the last weeks and month, I've splitted further wooden spelts from arolla pine (ca. 3/4) and larch wood (1/4). I didn't count it but overall I have now about 100 handsplitted additional spelt in the sizes 1,5m, 1,7m and 2m ready for another new fence project.
But I'll need at least twice as many spelts for renewing and increasing our garden fence.
On average, it takes me 15 minutes to split a single fence spelt (from the log to the finished spelt with removed sapwood and heartwood). This doesn't include the final adjustments carving to the fence. The spelts with lots of branches and twists take longer to work out than the straight, knot-free wood which sometimes only take a few minutes. It's always a bit frustrating when a spelt gets too thin or breaks unexpectedly, especially when you've already spent several minutes on it.

#arollapine #larch #wood #handsplit #spelts #traditional #woodworking #craft #handcrafted #hardwork