She's a lumberjill - a world-champion lumberjill

Slim, hyper-focused Martha King stood on top of a log in a clearing on her family's wooded Chadds Ford property, raised a razor-sharp ax high above her head, and, with a two-handed grip, slammed it down into the wood inches from her feet.

Then she did it again, and again, sending chips flying everywhere, until she split the log cleanly - and grinned.

At 26, King is one of a small group of lumberjills who chop, saw, and chain-saw at rural, male-dominated lumberjack competitions.

"It's not much of a girls' sport," she said. "So I put pressure on myself. I'm a woman, I'm strong, and I'm doing something that I love. I want to see if I can be a world champion. I want to see if I can set world records."

A few years after her days on Penn State's Woodsmen team, King is on her way. In 2013, she placed second at the Women's Stihl Series in Germany, and last year she won her first world championship in the underhand chop at the New York State Woodsmen's Field Days.

Last week, she flew to Sydney, Australia, where she will compete with the USA Women's Team in the lumberjack/lumberjill championships. The Aussies call the event the "Wimbledon of Woodchopping."

King will throw a double-bladed ax at a target 20 feet away. Racing against the clock, the 5-foot, 8-inch lumberjill will try to single-handedly cut through a tree trunk with a crosscut saw that is nearly six feet long and will vie for a world championship in her signature event: the toe-threatening underhand chop.

"That's a seven-pound razor blade that I'm swinging between my feet," she said. "I noticed in college that a lot of girls shied away from the underhand chop because it was so intimidating. I saw that as an opportunity to put myself out there and maybe shine. I'm a very competitive person. I thought, 'This is my thing.' "

King has chosen a sport that is rare among men, rarer among women, and pays too little in prize money to buy her eight New Zealand-made $600 Tuatahi Racing Axes with hand-forged steel blades, her two $1,800 crosscut saws, and her specialized safety equipment like chain-mail socks.

But she is committed to the lumberjill life, one that comes naturally to an arborist's daughter who spent her childhood climbing and cutting down trees.

"Martha kind of grew up playing with axes," quipped her father, Rob King, standing between mountainous piles of gigantic logs cut down by his company, Chadds Ford Tree Service.

During an interview on their 33 wooded acres, Rob King walked past his neatly stacked piles of logs and hundreds of cords of firewood, then continued into the trees until he reached the massive trunk of a fallen oak. It was scarred by dozens of deep, surgically cut wedges.

Much as he loves and admires his daughter, he said, "I don't want Martha practicing in the yard. There would be wood chips all over the place."

Back in the clearing, Martha King smiled and blamed her father for her obsession with becoming a world-class lumberjill. "I love him to death," she said. "I always admired him so much growing up."

After she saw photos of her father lumberjacking on the Penn State Woodsmen team, she followed in his footsteps.

Rob King said that when he competed, he wore aluminum shields over his legs and feet. "I looked like the Tin Man," he said.

But he dropped the sport after college.

"Dad said he liked his feet too much," Martha King said. "He didn't want to lose a toe."

She wears metallic mesh socks under her sneakers. "So I may not chop my toes off," she said, "but I could certainly crush them."

The weightlifter's strength in her slim arms comes not from gym workouts but from her life in rural Delaware County.

"I hate the gym," she said. "I got my strength from dragging brush, running the stump grinder, delivering firewood, and carrying feed bags and hay bales to my horse."

King funds her sport by working in sales at Hearne Hardwoods in Oxford, Chester County, a sawmill that hones exotic woods into high-end guitar parts.

"You might expect a lumberjill to be somewhat of a redneck, but Martha is a highly refined lumberjill," said owner Rick Hearne. "When Martha and I go on a road trip, we drive other people in the car crazy because instead of listening to rock and roll or a country station, we put on classical music - piano concertos and operas like The Magic Flute."

Hearne said he always lets King take time off for competitions like the one in Australia.

"I was a lumberjack for 15 years," he said. "And my son is a lumberjack. So we can judge a good lumberjack or lumberjill, and I'm telling you, Martha is a good one."

The Australia championships run from March 18 to 28, but King left early to get used to the Southern Hemisphere, early fall mid-80s, and the harder Aussie wood.

Hearne said he was rooting for her.

"I'm bold," King said, "and I'm pursuing something that a lot of people have said: 'Hey, that's weird. You should find something else.' "

She laughed. "Something else? What do they mean? Sewing?"

dgeringer@phillynews.com

610-313-8109@DanGeringer