Bark Removal

Today we cut this 40 foot long pine to make a beam  for our new room. I wanted to get all the bark off so the beautiful wood would show inside the room.   We started out using various items to remove the bark as you see below.  The plan is to hew it by hand to give our cabin that rustic look.

Here I'm using a tool for planing trees.

I soon found that this really wasn't the best thing to use.

As always, my dad was right in there working as hard as me.



Dad had a crow bar trying to remove the bark.




We soon learned that  draw knives worked much better than the other items.  The bark almost slid off the wood. 





The log after all the bark was removed and washed.




An up close view of the log.  As you can see by all the rings, this is an old tree.  If I counted right,  it was 50 years old.