
DATE: Sunday, July 13, 1997                 TAG: 9707130090

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  106 lines

THEY CAME, THEY SAWED WITH BIG MACHINES AND SHEER MUSCLE, LUMBERJACKS TAKE ON SOME BIG TIMBERS.

The Stihl Timbersports series is the lumberjack's Super Bowl, an event where 12-inch-thick timbers are halved in 15 strokes by men whose arms are as strong as their wills.

Running counter to this sheer athleticism are the hot saws, high-powered and often dangerous machines that cut wood like butter.

They can be any size, any shape, any power. As long as they can be lifted, they can be used. And during Saturday's national Stihl Timbersports competition at the Norfolk Naval Air Station, they filled the air with noise louder than the nearby hydroplanes, making the most obnoxious leaf blower sound like a bird's sweet chirp.

``All the time, anytime you cut with one, it feels like the first time,'' said Gaston Duperre, the world hot saw champion from (appropriately enough) Shipsaw, Quebec.

With a hot saw roaring in your hand, ``you're thinking nothing,'' he said. ``It's so fast. So crazy. No time to think. You feel like the king of the world. You're all alone. It's hard to describe.''

It was a small but loud part of Saturday's event, the first in a series of national contests sponsored by Stihl, whose North American headquarters is in Virginia Beach. ESPN was on hand to tape the contest for broadcast later this year.

A highlight of the event was to be the return of Melvin Lentz, considered by many to be the Michael Jordan of woodchopping.

Lentz was seriously injured in May while logging alone. As he worked in a cherry picker on the back of a logging truck, the basket holding him gave way and Lentz fell atop a steel spike.

The spike went through his upper left leg, and Lentz hung upside-down, impaled, for about 1 1/2 hours before his brother found him. Rescuers got him off the spike and out of the woods about four hours later.

On the advice of doctors, Lentz and his hot saw stayed home in Diana, W.Va., on Saturday.

People began to soup up chainsaws for lumberjack competitions back in the 1970s, replacing standard engines with those scavenged from dirt bikes or snowmobiles. Some burn high-test fuel, some alcohol, some jet fuel. They cost upward of $5,000.

Sven Johnson, ``the grandfather of hot-sawing,'' once made a hot saw from a Chevy V-8 engine. Two people were needed to lift it.

In competition, hot saw handlers lug the machines up to an 18- to 20-inch block of white pine, warm up the engine for 45 seconds, place their hands on the wood, and wait for the countdown.

At ``Go!,'' the woodsmen lean down, pull their starters and hope for the best. These are not the most reliable machines. And because they can make three 6-inch cuts in about five seconds, a bad start is just that.

``On the first pull, if the hot saw won't start, you lose,'' said Duperre.

In Disney World several years ago, picking the winner of the Timbersports grand prize of $20,000 and a new Chevy truck came down to the hot saw competition. One saw started. One did not.

Rick Halvorson, a 46-year-old logging contractor from Alma Center, Wis., has been using a Honda engine from a race bike for the past six years.

He's never taken the motor apart, a rare event in a sport where the running life of a hot saw can last less than 10 minutes at 10,000 rpm.

Hot saw competition is the only time these saws are used. And after a day watching woodsmen heroes like West Virginia's Arden Cogar Sr., 64, slice through 15-inch blocks of aspen in 13 human-powered strokes, hot saws just don't seem the same.

``All it does is show off,'' said competitor Rudy Detmer.

``Timber'' Tina Scheer, the announcer for Timbersports, said it best: ``Everything changes with this event.''

During Saturday's hot saw competition, the initial going was slow. Many were disqualified after their engines failed or made too thin a cut.

The object is to make three 6-inch cuts. But with this much power in one's hands, half the task is pointing the saw in the right direction.

As the day went on, the times got better and better.

In some cases, the saws pushed their operators, not the other way around. It took four heats before both competitors' saws started at the same time.

Penny Halvorson, the only female hot saw contestant, had a good time with 9.7 seconds, but lost to Carson Bosworth and his 8.8 seconds.

And after Jim Taylor of Redding, Calif., got it down to 7.2 seconds, last year's Stihl Timbersports champion, Harry Burnsworth, took it to 6.45. Then the two champions - Duperre and Rick Halvorson - took the stage.

At ``Go!'' Duperre's engine started. Halvorson's did not. And as Burnsworth's time was announced as the best, Penny Halvorson could be heard telling her husband to get rid of the Honda. ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN color photos/The Virginian-Pilot

In the springboard event Saturday at the Stihl Timbersports

competition at Norfolk Naval Air Station, lumberjacks cut notches,

into which they'll prop the planks that help them climb a tall pole.

Once they reach the top, they must lop off a 12-inch block.

Penny Halvorson helps her husband, Rick, by spraying lubricant on

his saw blade during the single bucksaw competition.

BILL TIERNAN photos/The Virginian-Pilot

Rudy Detmer rests after winning his heat in the springboard event

during the Stihl Timbersports competition. At right, first-year

competitor Paul Pfenninger makes his final cuts. Saturday's

lumberjack competition, the first in a series of national contests,

will be broadcast later this year on ESPN.