Sharpening the Saw

This isn’t a story about sharpening the saw. It’s actually a story about a sledgehammer.
“Sharpening the saw” is the seventh habit in Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s an important concept as sometimes you’re so involved in what you’re doing, so determined to complete your task, you forget to take a step back and see there’s a better way of doing things. The phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees” is appropriate here.

In January, deep into winter in the mountains, there was a foot of snow on the ground, temperatures struggled to climb above freezing. Beside the woodshed were two trees to split for firewood. Until now, we had been splitting the logs with a splitting maul or cutting the smaller ones with a chainsaw. With the huge logs, we needed splitting wedges to break them into pieces small enough to fit in the wood burner.

We could have carried on using the splitting maul, using the flat end to drive the wedges into the logs, but this wasn’t as safe or as efficient. This was where the sledgehammer came into the story. It was the right tool for the job, but currently it laid in two pieces in the shop. The head was in good shape, but we’d had to buy a new handle. This needed shaping to fit the head, the job would take us perhaps an hour. That was time we’d have to take out of splitting the wood, but the time we would save by using the sledgehammer instead of a splitting maul would more than make up for that hour. That’s what sharpening the saw means. You have to step back from the task and take some time to improve yourself or your tools to create a better end result.

There are plenty of examples of when people need to “sharpen the saw”, and there are just as many excuses for why they don’t.
When logging, we literally sharpen the saw as the teeth on the chainsaw get blunt. Not doing this slows down the job and wears the chain out quicker, but you might put off doing it because while you’re sharpening the chain, you can’t be using the saw to limb or buck the tree.
You might be clearing snow and realize you have the wrong shovel. It’s too small and you know the job will be quicker with a bigger shovel. But it’ll take you at least quarter of an hour to walk all the way back to the shop, get a different shovel and come back. You might save more than quarter of an hour working with a bigger shovel, but you keep going as you are because you’ve already done half the job.

Then there are the more intangible examples of why you might choose not to sharpen the saw.
As a community partner, you are instrumental in creating and maintaining the positive, supportive culture we have at the ranch. One of the ways you can do that is by sharing the philosophy with guests, students and your fellow community partners. Sharpening the saw in this context would be to keep rereading the books that describe this philosophy, our own content and finding new sources to develop from. But you’re busy. You’ve got a pack trip to guide and need to get all the food ready. You want to work on some new projects, editing videos and recording podcasts. You want to take a couple of days off and go to town. And before you know it, you’re telling everyone about an outdated philosophy that’s now evolved into something more. If you’d only taken half an hour each day to keep up to date on the developments, you would be sharing the most recent developments in our philosophy.

But, back to the sledgehammer. In the shop, we fixed the handle in a vice and took it in turns to file the end. It needed to be small enough to fit into the hole in the centre of the head. With a shoeing rasp, we shaped the end of the handle to the ovoid shape that would fit the head. As we worked, we checked our progress by pushing the head onto the end and hammering it with a wedge. When we pulled the head off, it left brown marks in the places we needed to file more. This was our guide as we shaped the handle to fit the head.

Once the shape was right, we attached the head and sawed a slit into the end of the wood as it protruded from the top of the head. We sawed that protrusion flush with the head and could then hammer in a small metal wedge. This wedge, driven all the way into the wood through the hole in the head forced the wood to expand meaning the head couldn’t slide off while we used it.
Through our teamwork, the job had taken less than the hour we’d anticipated, and we could use our fixed sledgehammer to split the wood that would heat the house.

The blocks of wood were as tall as my waist and took two of us to stand them on their ends. Kevan showed us how to use the sledgehammer to drive a wedge into the wood. He set the wedge into the edge of the block, lining it up so it pointed towards the centre of the log. The wedge was spiralled which made it easier to drive in. Kevan made a few swings with the sledgehammer, directing the head so it would land squarely on the wedge.
Now, Lea A., Fenja and I took it in turns to hammer on the wedge, driving it farther and farther into the wood. It was a tough block to split, we each took three rounds of swinging the hammer before the block finally split in two. Once we’d practiced the technique, though, we split the log into eight pieces with no more problems.

Splitting that log had taken half an hour and that was mostly learning how to work the sledgehammer. This was much faster than using a splitting maul, we’d made up that half hour we’d taken to “sharpen the saw” already.
Over the next couple of days, we split all the wood we had using the sledgehammer and splitting wedge. Our efficiency increased dramatically and, like with every new skill we learn at the ranch, we passed on our knowledge to others. We taught Lea N. how to use the sledgehammer and in a few hours of hard work, we had all the next load of wood split and stacked up in the woodshed.

Just in time as the next day the temperature plummeted to -26ºC, too cold to work outside for long periods of time.
If we hadn’t taken the time to fix the sledgehammer and learn how to use it, we wouldn’t have split all the wood in time to avoid the freezing temperatures.
We all realized the importance of sharpening the saw.

Nature facilitates all these learning opportunities for us to grow and evolve. During a Wilderness Lifestyle Experience, you can experience this learning approach in alignment with nature.

Charlie, UK