Thanks, guys. I'd never used the mutt, other than to sharpen it on my HF. I ended up with and extended grip on the blade, with on finger off the rear of the handle to get effective chopping from it. It wasn't optimal (is there such a thing?), but it worked pretty well esp for its size. While I prefer the Chopweiler for tasks like this, it was interesting to see what the mutt could do. I haven't gotten around to using the SOD yet, either. It would probably be 2-3x faster, probably on the order of what the Chopweiler could do.

The tree should be easier to chop with the tree horizontal. I'll see if I can get pics today.

The terrain is my back yard. I'm an outdoorsman at heart (not my day job though) and consider myself very lucky to live here. Our house backs up to a really steep hill/bluff with mountain laurel (I love that stuff) and trees all over it - the hill, not the house. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />