Firewood Harvesting Safety

🔥 Firewood Harvesting Safety & Skills (Ages 13+) 🪓

This 6-week, hands-on Firewood Harvesting Safety course is all about learning to work safely and confidently with wood and fire — from cutting a tree to maintaining your home stove. Meeting for two hours each week, students will gain real-world experience while emphasizing safety, responsibility, and skill.

We’ll begin with an overview of safety practices when working with firewood — including chainsaws, wood splitters, and axes — and discuss common dangers such as hanging limbs, rolling logs, and unstable footing. From there, we’ll move into chainsaw safety, covering gear, inspection, and proper cutting technique. Students will practice cutting under close supervision before watching a live tree felling demonstration, followed by guided practice cutting up that same tree.

Next, we’ll focus on wood splitter safety and operation, giving students the chance to safely handle and split logs using hydraulic splitters. After that, the attention turns to axe work, where students will learn how to safely use axes, mauls, wedges, and sledgehammers to split wood by hand — building strength, coordination, and respect for traditional tools.  We will then discuss and practice different stacking techniques, storage and aging of firewood, for good dry wood for burning.

In later sessions, we’ll dive into chainsaw maintenance, including cleaning, sharpening, and basic troubleshooting to keep equipment running safely and efficiently. The final class will bring everything full circle with fire-building and stove safety — learning to start fires outdoors and in wood stoves, as well as how to properly maintain stoves and chimneys to prevent creosote buildup and house fires.

By the end of this course, students will have a strong foundation in wood handling, cutting, and fire safety — with the confidence to safely process firewood and care for their tools and heating systems. 🌲 Perfect for teens and adults ready to build practical, lifelong homesteading skills! 🔥

Our six-week course runs on Saturdays from 9-11 AM.
Dates: January 10, 17, 24, February 7, 14, 21 (No class January 31)
Location: 2414 Patapsco Rd, Finksburg

Pre-requisites:
Students must be mature enough to take this class seriously.  We will have fun, but every aspect of harvesting firewood is dangerous.
Students must come with Eye protection, Ear protection, gloves, boots (safety toe prefered), and clothes for getting dirty.
All students or guardians must sign the waiver form on the first day of class.
If a student is not capable or not prepared to take the class, they will not be allowed to attend and the registration cost will be forfeited.

To make it easier for families, we’re offering discounts!

Friend discount – $25 per extra friend

Chainsaw discount – $100 if you provide your own chainsaw with gas and bar oil, you’ll save!  Its expensive to buy and maintain all those chainsaws, so bringing your own is appreciated.  It must be in GOOD WORKING ORDER with a sharp blade and a spare. We want you to get the most from this class and having a poorly operating chainsaw will certainly limit what you can learn.

Full Class discount – $50 if we get a full class of 10 students, we’ll give everyone a discount on their registration fee, so tell your friends to sign up!

With all these discounts you can pay as little as $225 for this class!!!

This is a chance to acquire practical skills, build confidence, and know how to safely harvest firewood.  Start a side business, or just keep yourself and family warm all winter.