Axemen's Carnival!

The weekend finally arrived in January for my first competition in New Zealand woodsmens! Held during the Rotorua Agricultural & Pastoral (A&P) Show, this Axemen’s Carnival was one of the larger ones of the year, with several national or world championships and a few thousand dollars (NZ) of prize money to be distributed. I was lucky enough to be able to sign up to participate, the annual membership waved due to the brevity of my stay and only the modest entry fees and handicap booklets to purchase. I was all prepped the Friday before, when I realized I hadn’t assembled my outfit yet. It is the official dress code for New Zealand Axemen to wear white shoes and pants. This is probably to match with the posh uniforms of cricket and polo, but I suspect it is also to make it more obvious if you cut yourself on a razor-honed axe. White shoes were easy enough to find, if ill-fitting, but I could not find any long white pants for love or money after a long time searching. Eventually I wandered through the women’s section, and found the closest thing available, an extra-large pair of stretchy white skinny jeans. And I was to wear them chopping alongside some of the world-class legends of the sport; joy. Mercifully, no photos exist of me in these.

Some world-class axemen

Pants aside, Saturday I bounced out of bed bright and excited. I set off to bike the 13 kilometres around the lake to get to the fairgrounds, and rolled in alongside throngs of other fairgoers in the morning sun. I had a bit of time to stretch and warm up, but it turned out that I was in not only the first event of the day, a 19” single-buck, but also in the first heat of that event. To top it off, I was on the stanchion next to Jason Wynyard!!! (Jason is a legend of woodchopping, has won the STIHL Timbersports Individual World Championship 13 times, and holds the world records for 12” V-chop (12.11 seconds) and 19” single buck (9.395 seconds)). Bevin was kind enough to let me carefully use his peg-and-raker, but rusty in practice skills as I was I did not have a very impressive time, especially next to Jason. Watching later heats, I noticed that kiwi woodsmen single buck at a much more aggressive angle than I am used to seeing in the US, with saws drawn back up to shoulder height for additional weight to be thrown behind the push. The stanchions we used were infinitesimally adjustable for height, being of the design of two sunk steel posts welded to a steel pegboard to which the rounds were screwed, and each sawyer would have their wedger help then adjust the round height to the centimetre before sawing.

Setting up the saw I'll use, on some of the blocks lined up for chopping

This meet was just as packed with activities as Spring Meet, with more than two dozen events over two days, and dozens of competitors with their families. Although there were only six disciplines (H-chop, V-chop, springboard, single buck, crosscut, and team relay), for most disciplines there were multiple events on different sizes of wood, for different classes of competitors, and many events had multiple heats feeding into a bracket to place winners. Like at North Haverhill, competitors entered each event individually (excepting the relay and crosscut) and paid a participation fee that funded the given prize pot. Most competitor entered many events each day, carefully calculating how much energy they could expend in any given chop. The participation fees ranged from free for the little kids, 5 or 10 NZD for the smaller events, to around 50 NZD for entering an (inter)national title. Additionally, for the non-title events kiwi woodsmen use a handicap system (handicaps are written down after each meet in the little books you purchase and hold on to). This makes events more interesting to watch by closing the range of finish times, and gives slower choppers a bit more of a chance. Usually handicaps are under 30 or 45 seconds, but for some of the really fast choppers I saw handicaps past a minute or two (the chap who won the NZ title in springboard had a full 3 minute handicap when he later participated in a normal springboard event).

My next event was an H-chop, and this time I drew the stand furthest away from the announcer’s booth. Bevin again loaned me an axe and a pair of chainmail socks, and away I went. The rounds had been randomly assigned, and I found one with ‘N. Friday’ pinned onto it on a green card (next to the round labeled J. Wynyard). An elderly axeman volunteering as a timer helped me chip out my footholds on the round timber as I put on the protective socks. I enthusiastically started chopping when I heard my handicap, and in my excitement soon lost track of my pattern. Bevin called out tips as I went, which I filed away to apply the next day. Unlike many of the axemen the sides of my V were not plane smooth, but I had loads of fun.

A block of wood with my name on it!

With my events over for the day, I alternated my afternoon between watching others chop and saw, and exploring the rest of the fair. There were several acres of fairgrounds packed with everything you’d expect to see at a 4H show. Stock were paraded around and judged on their appearances, from alpacas and sheep to cows and pigs and horses. 

I did not expect quite so many alpacas

Strong men lifted and flung and carried many heavy objects, and children ran around hitting each other with inflatable hammers. There were waterslides and carnival games, carriage rides and parades of antique cars. I followed a cool bagpipe and drum band around for a while, who were decked out in full kilted regalia. A whole tent was set up with woodcarvers selling their wares, with some of them carving knick-knacks with portable tools right there. I bought a beautiful kauri (Agathis australis) pen, turned not from a protected standing tree, but from wood that had sunk into a swamp many decades ago and been preserved. An adjacent exhibit showed artifacts of the history of logging, from old saws to a coal-powered small train engine that had been used to pull trees out of the forest along narrow tracks. The saws included several two-man chainsaws with a handle on the end of the bar, and even a coal powered engine that turned an arm that pushed and pulled a crosscut saw blade! 

A coal-powered crosscut saw

I wandered through the food tent zone and purchased a cone of ice cream freshly blended with berries of my choosing, and circled back around toward the woodchopping. The stage around the corner from the woodsmen’s field hosted a variety of events. On that first day there were competitions of Scottish and Irish dancing, performed by very serious young girls in plaid skirts and sailor suits respectively. The bagpipes of the musical accompaniment at 9 in the morning were a fun soundtrack for the first few chopping events, but after a few repeats of the song over the radio (I suppose it is most fair to have everyone compete on the same song and dance) it got a bit old.

The afternoon chopping events I came back to included springboard, which I had only seen live before in Tokoroa. Here they added another board level, and the blocks 12 feet in the air seemed to touch the sky on top of their poles. I was yet again amazed by how solid the wedges of the boards could be set into the notches only a handful of blows made in the poles, the speed at which axemen could swarm up and down, and the composure they could maintain doing a V-chop while balanced on a board 10 feet in the air. The way that day’s springboards went, every competitor had to set a trio of springboards curving up the side of the pole, chop one face of a V-chop at the top, then descend and repeat for the other side. One of the springboard events was the New Zealand title, and it was a nail-biter, coming down to only a few blows and a few seconds.

Spectacular springboard

Another set of events I made a point of catching were the specific women’s divisions. Most of the lumberjills competing were on the New Zealand national women’s team, the Axeferns. Recently I was shown an article, https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/female-competitive-woodchoppers-are-axing-gender-stereotypes, which took a lot of pictures and interviews at this meet. It was three of these Axeferns in Tokoroa who invited me to sit with them to watch the chopping and gave me the contact info of the Club to follow up on which led to me competing at the Rotorua meet. As with the broad field of axemen, there were competitors ranging from Mikhayla’s rising star at 21 to Sheree’s decorated experience at past 60, all serious competitors but free with the congratulations and advice once everyone’s block was chopped. Their finishing time order changed with each event, and most of them also entered and placed well in the gender-inclusive events as well.

Women's single buck: From left: Sheree, Darcell (newly married to Charles, her wedge-man), Alma, Mikhayla, and Kylea.

Yet another set of events of interest were the U-16 H-chops. Competitors ranged from ages 8 to 15, but all were serious and practiced. Smaller lumberjacks wielded shorter, but no less sharp, axes, and as exaggerated handicaps got to start with a bit of their 10” blocks already chopped out. One family had four kids in the group, all third-generation choppers, and the sibling rivalry meant that no quarter was given between the youngest son and daughter, ages 10 and 11 or so, golden ponytail vs. honey buzzcut as their axe-heads flashed in the sunshine.

U-16 H-chop, ages (from L) 8, 10, 9,  11, 13, 15

It was also hugely educational to watch all the axemen, especially those who made the finals in each event. Five out of the six members of the STIHL national team were there, as well as international competitors from Australia, England, and Wales (and, as the announcer delighted in announcing once I introduced myself, America!) No one is perfect, but these guys and gals came pretty close, with few a misplaced stroke and smooth rhythms born of grueling years of practice. There were axemen still competing in their 70’s, slow and steady, and I heard many stories from a man in his 80’s who had only retired from chopping the year before (and who lived along my way home from work). At some point in the afternoon I went and got a few autographs of Jason's to send to friends back in the States along with some Tuatahi stickers. I brought my Dartmouth lumberjacket to rep my woodchopping origins, but it was such a fine summer day that the wool was excessive.

Jason winning a chop

The second day of the Carnival was much like the first day. I again competed in a single-buck and an H-chop. Bevin was also competing in the latter, so I borrowed chainmail socks from Kyle Lemon, of the NZ national team, who came over to watch me, and as well as giving me tips invited me to come over to train with him. Instead of dancing next door there were sheep-shearing contests, with a flood of wooly sheep on one side of the building pouring out the other side pink and sheared. Being the second day there was also the most hyped event, a 15” world championship H-chop with a total prize pot of NZ$2400. This attracted all the best axemen to enter, and had a bit of a dark horse winner in the 18-year old brother of a national team member, whose time of 27.31 seconds shaved a full quarter second off the previous record (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysxd73f6o8s). The day finished off with the team relay race, which comprised of a single buck, a V-chop, an H-chop, another V-chop, another H-chop, and the massive ‘butcher’s block’. The ‘butcher’s block’ is a 2-man ~16” V-chop, with one axeman chopping each face in succession.

The team relay; note the butcher's block

After an exciting weekend, it was relaxing to clean up, piling the mountains of chopped blocks into a truck to be hauled away for firewood, and hearing the thud as we pushed over the unstrapped springboard poles. I am so glad I got to participate in this amazing bit of New Zealand culture and share this bit of my experience with you, my readers.

Kyle and Brathan pushing over a springboard pole

Wood Collecting for the Axemen's Carnival

My first practice with the Rotorua Axemen’s Club was quite similar to my first practice with the Dartmouth Woodsmen’s Team, if they each could be called practice, as they both consisted of collecting rounds to be chopped later. After a short delay, rooted in the effect an accent can have on relaying street names, I was picked up by the Club president, Bevin Cavey, and we met up with half a dozen other axemen of the Club. Thus gathered, we proceeded south in a caravan of pickup trucks (called ‘utes’ down there, for ‘utility vehicles’) and trailers. Our task? To retrieve some poplar logs kindly donated for the upcoming Axemen’s Carnival at the Agricultural and Pastoral (A&P) Show. The logs came from a no longer needed farm windbreak, which another Club member had felled and bucked the week before, and lay as they fell. We started by extracting, with hooks and rolling, the rounds we wanted from their entangling brush. The rounds were each marked with their tree of origin and order within the tree, to best match up the rounds for events.

Rolling the rounds out into the field for pick up through the neighboring paddock was a maze, avoiding the deposits made by the recently vacated cows. It made little difference for the bark, however. All of the rounds were of a more than adequate size, and some were even too big to fit in the lathe. Thus, we determined the range of sizes we needed, drew rough circles a few inches larger in radius than necessary, and split off the excess sides with axes and mauls. 

Rounds were rolled out of the brush and trimmed of excess mass

This was like an inverted giant dot split; chop everything outside of the line

We had enough rounds to fill every truck and trailer to overcapacity, and half of them had to make return trips. Bevin had been driving the tractor, piling the brush away from the logs, so he tossed me his keys to drive his truck out to the road. He was off to park the tractor before I could point out my inexperience, so I carefully drove across the field for my first and only time operating a manual transmission with my left hand. Back at the fairgrounds, where the meet would be held and we collected the wood, the club had a large lathe. One by one we loaded crude-split rounds into its jaws and set the proper stop points for the blade, and then the large gas engine started spinning them. Back and forth the blade moved across the log, sending showers of wood shavings like confetti arching up into the sky. 

With showers of shavings crude rounds are spun into blocks for chopping

Occasionally the blade would dig too deep and send a larger chunk of wood rocketing a dozen metres, but luckily no one was hit. In the end we had many dozens of rounds shaved into perfect cylinders, then packed in their own sawdust to keep then fresh and wet for the next week’s chopping. It took longer than expected, and I didn’t end up getting any competitive chopping or sawing practice, but it was still a great day. 

Amassed fresh blocks assembled at the fairgrounds