You've seen the caber toss, but what does it take to make a caber?

[Alan H]

Well, first of all, it takes a tree.

Though some guys make a practice stick from gluing and screwing together some 2 x 6's from Home Depot or Lowe's. You get reasonably dry lumber and then smear the sides with a polyurethane glue like PL100 or Liquid Nails. Then you get a box of deck screws and drive a zillion screws in there, from different angles, avoiding the corners. Once that's done, you go after it with a circular saw and turn the whole thing into an octagon, in cross-section, rather than a square. THEN you use power tools and hand tools to taper the bottom 5-6 feet until it's small enough to get your hands around, and round on the bottom so there are no edges to dig in. You might paint it, if you need to keep it outside...it'll last longer.

It's about 4-5 hours of work to make a 12, 16, or 20 foot long practice caber like this. These are tough to turn because they're heavy and they don't have much taper to them. The top of the stick isn't that much heavier than the bottom.

Trees are really much better.

Some guys just find something between 14-20 feet long that's vaguely straight and strip the bark off the bottom 5 feet...round off the bottom and call it good. I see a lot of womens cabers in the NorthEast that are like this. Here in California we go for something a bit more sophisticated

You want a tree trunk that's between 12-20 feet long, depending on the Class of athlete that you're making the stick for.

Womens lightweight (<130 pounds), C (C = "beginner") or Masters class... 12-14 feet, 35-40 pounds
Womens B class (B = "intermediate") or a tough lightweight/Masters class ... 13-14 feet, 40-45 pounds
Womens A class (A = "advanced)... 14-15 feet, 55 - 70 pounds

Mens Masters 40-49 ... 15-18 feet, 75-105 pounds
Mens Masters 50-59... 15 -18 feet, 65-100 pounds (we have a 15 foot, 105 pounder in Nor Cal, that's HEAVY but short.)
Mens Masters 60+ ... 15-17 feet, 50-75 pounds

Mens C ... 14-16 feet, 60-75 pounds
Mens B ... 16-17 feet, 75-90 pounds
Mens A ... 17-18 feet, 85-105 pounds

Mens Pro ... 17-20 feet, 100 to 140 pounds

NOTE: a heavier stick is usually shorter. Within those ranges I just gave, "short and light" is too easy whilst "long and heavy" is too hard. so for example, the Pro caber that I'm prepping for the SAAA in southern California is 17' 4" and 126 pounds.

Different woods weigh different amounts, yes? So for example, cedar and redwood are light, compared to douglas fir and pine. A redwood stick impresses the heck out of an audience because it's HUGE for the weight!

OK, so you have to find tree trunks that are going to be around the right size, when dried. Then you have to cut the tree. Well, where I live, you can't just go out and cut down trees. You get arrested for that kind of thing. So that means you have to either purchase a federal or state permit to harvest wood from parks and National Forest land, or you have to wheedle access out of someone who owns some private property. Sometimes you can get good trunks from arborists and tree-trimming companies. Recently I've found a guy who has a wood company located about 4 hours from me, who owns property in the lower Sierra Nevada, where our BAD California drought is killing cedars by the hundreds. It's really sad. However, it does mean that there's a supply of logs.

OK, now you've got your log(s). Now what? Well, you have to strip all the bark off of it. This can be anywhere from a half hour project to about 4-5 hours or hard physical labor with a drawknife, depending on the species of tree, how wet/dry the wood is, and how big of a log you have. While you do this, you cut down the limb-stumps and use a power saw and surform plane to get them reasonably flush with the main body of the trunk. You REALLY smooth down the bottom 5-6 feet of the caber so no athlete gets hurt on the knots. Finally, you round off the bottom of the caber so that it sits nicely in the cupped hands of the athlete without digging in . All this is another hour, maybe two of labor.

Now...clear-coat with two coats of outdoor polyurethane finish...or paint. I prefer to clear-coat and then add some colored painted stripes at the top of the caber so that the crowd can tell that the Womens C class caber is not the same stick as the Pro Caber...the stripes are different colors.

All in all, it's a major headache to find tree trunks, and it's anywhere from 4-10 hours of work to prep a caber. So the next time a nice caber breaks at the Games, don't cheer. Somewhere, the poor guy who finished that stick is drowning his sorrows in whisky and beer, SWEARING that he'll never do this again.