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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> Chainsaw is my first choice. Backup is bow saw, crosscut saws, antique  
> pruning saw, axes, hatchet.
> 


My approach to tools is 90 degrees divergent from Gene's.  Not in the 
opposite direction, really, since we both are using tools to get a job done, 
but more 
like right angles.

For me, it's hand tools first and then power tools only when it simply can't 
be done by hand.  So for me it's cross-cut saw, bow saw, and axe first.  Then 
if there is a job I just can't do with those tools, it's the chain saw.  
Following that protocol, the chainsaw hasn't been fired up in more than seven 
years.  Yet all our heating and cooking is done with wood.

Someone had mentioned post hole diggers and spud.  My 'Doughnut of Death' 
project has required 40 post holes.  By eschewing a tractor or gas powered 
digger, of course, I wasn't keen on doing them all in a day.  But every time 
I was 
in the garden, I dug two or three an soon the job's done without the 
encumberance and expense of a seldom used expensive tool.

There are a few times when I need something done massively or in a hurry.  
Then I generally barter or rent some equipment for a while.  But most of the 
time the orientation toward hand tools just makes the homesteader look for a 
better way.

For example, we could hire (God forbid, buy) a dump truck and loader to get 
shale on the road, or buy the limestone gravel.  But two miles from the farm 
and on the way to town there is a large highway cut through the mountain 
where 
loose shale screes down in great piles.   When I had reason a few years ago 
to 
go to town several times a week, I put a dozen 5 gallon buckets in the back 
of 
the truck and a shovel.  On the way back home, I'd stop and fill the buckets. 
 It took about 15 minutes.  Then back on my road, I'd put the shale exactly 
where it was needed the most.

A whole dump truck of shale would have been put on the road grossly, piled up 
where it wasn't really needed and sparse where it was needed.  But with my 
bucket brigade the shale went exactly where it was needed.   Over the course 
of 
a few months, every place that really needed it was resurfaced with shale.

The myth is that using hand tools is slow and laborous but in reality it's a 
matter of foresight and planning.  If you have let a taske creep up on you 
and 
you have to "get 'er done,"  then machinery may be the only recourse.  But 
working in such a modern panic mode is a false medium in which to compare 
power 
tools and hand tools.

James   </HTML>