Woodchopping

In woodchopping competitions, skilled contestants attempt to be the first to cut or saw through a log or other block of wood.

The modern sport of woodchopping is said to have had its genesis in 1870 in Ulverstone, Tasmania, as the result of a £25 ($50) bet between two axemen as to who could first fell a tree.

[1] An alternative origin story comes from 16th century Basque Country, in which a man ran a marathon and chopped ten logs to be allowed to propose to his future wife.

[3] This event was celebrated and commemorated with the selection of the site to be the home of the Australian Axemen's Hall of Fame and Timberworks.

[4] In this event the axeman cuts a small pocket in the side of a pole and jams a wooden jigger board with a metal shoe on the end of it into the hole.

[1] In this event the axemen use identically tuned and sharpened chainsaws to cut through a log, once downwards and once upwards, within a 3-inch space of wood.

The saws used by top competitors are typically snowmobile engines cut in half and are far heavier than regular chainsaws.

The start for this event is exactly the same as the stock saw except the log is bigger and the axeman has to do three cuts: the first in a downwards motion, the second upwards, and the third down.

Common woods used in competition in Australia are gum, mountain ash, woolley butt and poplar.

New Zealand is a leading country in the sport of woodchopping, having had the world's top two competitors, Jason Wynyard and David Bolstad, who between them won 19 of the 21 Stihl Timbersport Series titles between 1997 and 2017.

[4] Organisations arranging woodchopping competitions in the United Kingdom include British Lumberjack Sports Association (BLSA)[11] and UK Loggers (UKL).