Byron turned up this morning without warning and did 30 mins more firewood splitting before cajoling me to lend him my chainsaw yet again. You’d think I’d learn , but no. At least I got it sharpened for free and he did return it before 1:30pm as promised.
Henare arrived as planned at 10:00am and we worked for most of the day on the fence near the wooden gate and lime tree. Henare finished seating the strainer and stay posts and put in five running posts before dark. I continued putting up the wires, sorting out suitable lengths from the used wires I have a plenty, trying to find ones that had not begun to corrode.
Karola took charge of the bonfire which had almost completely demolished the big pile of thinnings, prunings, twigs, branches, and leaves. She heaped up the bits left round the fringe and got them to bun up as well. Ngaio being poisonous to sheep it was probably a good idea to get rid of the mainly Ngaio tree trash before putting the ewes in there again. In the afternoon Karola returned to her making of tree guards, this time for selected red beech saplings, the ones most in danger of being damaged by vehicles.
Henare is having problems with the old chainsaw I gave him. The new bar is fine but replacing the sprocket is not easy or obvious. I did some Googling and eventually found a YouTube explanation of how to do it for the two most popular types of chainsaw sprocket. The procedure was unexpected but not too complicated. It began with stuffing some cord into the piston to jam it and then you used a screwdriver and hammer to bang on the clutch plate to loosen it in a clockwise direction – the opposite of what one expects. The rest of it was dead easy except for the ten tiny bearings – looking like ten tiny short (10mm) wires which fell out while I was taking off the clutch. Henare patiently got them back together and to my delight I hadn’t lost any of them. We put it all back together and it started straight away.
Henare was happy to have borrowed my old chainsaw leggings on Saturday, they fit him, and so I’ve given them to him and will get myself a new pair – they’re over a decade old.
Oak Avenue Weather:-3℃—15℃ 0.2mm rain [72.4]
