Northeast Woodland Training, Inc. (NEWT) is a “hands on” safety and efficiency training company dealing with all aspects of forest work. We specialize in teaching chain saw skills through Game of Logging, as well as, heavy equipment operation and timber harvest planning. We will work with you to develop a program that fits your training needs.
Our mission is to deliver the highest quality training instruction to people, companies, and organizations throughout the Northeast and nationally.
Chainsaw Chain Workshop 2021 – John Adler
Game of Logging is a world-recognized training curriculum that teaches chain saw skills. Developed in the 1960s by Soren Eriksson, a Swedish logger turned training instructor, the Game of Logging combines Scandinavian logging techniques with the latest systems for working safely around trees.
The “game” refers not only to the friendly competitive aspect of the training, but also to the necessity of having a winning plan or strategy for felling trees and working safely. The program breaks apart saw work into steps that are practiced throughout the course. A fun scoring system helps focus participants’ attention on the most important details and allows them to measure their progress each day.
Game of Logging training is provided to forest owners, students, municipal crews, military units, and many others.
Take the time to prepare them and then Use them. 86% all felling accidents occur within 12 feet of the stump. And don’t back away while a tree is falling, watching your handiwork as you go. You’ll end up lying on your back watching the show.
Did the tree fall exactly on target as you had intended? (And don’t try to convince yourself otherwise if it didn’t.)
If not, did you make an error of judgment or an error of execution. That is, did you execute your cutting plan exactly as you intended but the tree did not fall as intended? That would indicate an error in judgment: the plan was not good.
Alternatively, did you just not execute your plan well. Sometimes, of course, both the plan and execution may be faulty. Both planning and execution take time to develop, and constantly evaluating your results will help you improve both. And remember that your escape plan is as important as your felling plan.
Every manufacturer’s tech rep will tell you the same thing about freshness of fuel: Never use a fuel-oil mixture that is more than a month old. The modern saws absolutely depend on the chemistry of a fresh mixture. The days of putting a saw away in the fall, full of fuel, and then picking it up again in the spring and just running it, are gone. For most landowners, a gallon of mix at a time is adequate. That’s a lot of fuel unless one is working on a pile of firewood logs. The performance of saws is noticeably better, and therefore safer, with fresh fuel. If a saw is smoking and won’t idle properly, try fresh fuel (and a new fuel filter) before messing with tuning.
There are a lot of folks out there hacking away with little training and lousy equipment. That doesn’t mean they don’t know a lot more than you — they very likely do — but they may not have had the safety and felling training you will have. After this course, you will be appalled at some of the equipment and techniques you see some professional loggers use. The GOL system is by no means the only way to do things, but it is a system that can give you a consistent and safe approach to felling, limbing and survival.
It may be storing a great deal of the potential energy that the standing tree contained, in the form of loaded limbs or the stem still above ground. That energy can kill you coming from the side or below as quickly as it can coming from above.