A crosscut saw is used to cut across the grain of the wood when felling trees or cutting up large pieces of lumber. Clearing trees and making use of the surrounding timber was critical to so many aspects of daily life at Brickendon. Timber was used in the construction of many buildings on-site, to fuel fires and to make cart and wagon elements and so much more.

Convicts Dodd and Farley were often sent to the forest to fell trees, and William Archer noted a number of instances where the peppermint and gum tree ‘logs’ they brought back were around 18 to 24 feet long.