Firewood ...(for next 2 years)

[aghead 72]

I prefer my oak seasoned for two years, for my house. (I'll burn anything in my shop.) All I cut & split this year is for 2021 yr.

This white oak log is 30" x 40" at the double butt, about 20' long. I got 2 cords out of the entire double tree. Each 20" long of the dbl butt took 30 mins to split with splitter. 

I'll cut one more of my trees this year to process. Many logs I haul in from clearing jobs that I do.

My Stihl 046 magnum (pictured) has a 25" bar, my 036 has a 20", I have a little 18" on a farmboss.

I burn a cord/yr in my house. (probably 2 cords in my shop, a lot of green wood) I burn Red, white, post and pin oak mostly in the house.

My shop has a straight vertical 8" schedule 40 stove pipe. I had to make an expansion joint on it because when it cooled off it would lift my stove off the floor.

How much do you burn?

How long do you season it?

 

Edited February 7, 2019 by aghead
spelling

[ebinmaine 67,271]

Trina and I have been together for three winter seasons now.

When she was a young girl she lived in a house that had wood as its primary source of heat.

 

Both of us ABSOLUTELY LOVE to go out in the forest and harvest the firewood.

 

Time spent outside.

Time spent running equipment.

Time spent preparing for the future.

Time spent keeping us warm.

 

All great stuff.

 

We've been burning about 1.5 cord the last two seasons but this one we had closer to 2 cord and we will run out before the end of this month.

As soon as the snow clears, probably April, we will get back out into the forest to begin pulling in the trees that we have had laying down for a few months already.

We are thinking next year we will probably burn about three cord.

This year we want to get 2 years of harvesting done plus a friend of ours wants to help and take some of the wood for himself.

 

Until this year we have been able to harvest Only the dead falls or sick trees and I think that Trend will continue for at least two more years.

We have a Maine Forest Ranger coming on Saturday to tour the property and make recommendations.

 

We will be trying to cut split and stack about 7 - 9 cord of wood this spring and summer.

 

My Forest is approximately 70% Beech trees.

The rest is a relatively equal mix of sugar maple, rock or swamp maple, hemlock, red oak, a few white oaks, four different colors of birch trees, poplar, some long needle white pine.

 

We burn no evergreen trees. This season we tried poplar and discovered why some people do not like it. There's just no BTUs in it.

In the coming seasons we will be harvesting poplar for use as kindling because it is amazing for starting fires which we have to do about every 24 hours. We don't leave the stove burning while we're gone because there's nobody to maintain it.

 

In this area the beech trees have a nearly 100% rate of the cankerous bark. We watch to see which trees look the worst and harvest those. Around here the beach trees grow pretty quickly in comparison to the other hardwoods and there are many more of them so that will be our focus for firewood.

 

[WVHillbilly520H 10,373]

I cut a couple big ones down before I had a little mishap... 20" bar on that saw.

[ebinmaine 67,271]

The chainsaws we use are an Echo CS 490 with an 18 inch bar and a Stihl MS180c with a 16 inch bar. 

The splitter we have is probably 20 or 30 years old at the beginning of its life.

It was rebuilt with a new ram and the splitting wedges were built up and added on to sometime before 2012 by a local commercial logger for use splitting the big butt ends of trees he brought home for his own firewood.

6.5 horse Briggs motor. Quite powerful.

We added tires from a camper and it rolls through the woods very very nicely on those.

[Pullstart 62,787]

I need about 7-10 cord to heat the house, shop and water heater, but I rarely get that much.  I supplement with hardwood skids from a local stamping shop, and the wood boiler is set up for dual fuel, so I plan to put together an oil burner to help with heat as well.  Being outdoor, I don’t have to worry about how seasoned it is as much as if I were indoors.  Along with fixing up the boiler, I’d like to make our home and eventually the shop more efficient, to reduce the heat required.  

[The Tuul Crib 7,336]

Hey I gotta chime in here gents. I'm all for wood heat but when I see a nice strait log I see Furniture. Just my 

[Ed Kennell 38,022]

When the temp drops to 40F , I light the wood burner  and use 2-3 cord/year.   I get most of my wood for free from tree trimmers and home owners that are happy to get rid of the wood.

I burn mostly   locust, hickory, oak, maple that I age for 2-3 years.    I'm burning a maple now that I worked up last summer that had been laying for 4 years.

This week I took two maples down for a neighbor.  They will dry for 3 years before using.  I don't like to stock pile too far ahead.....at my age, I'm even reluctant to buy green bananas.

 

[ztnoo 2,298]

I burned wood for 2-3 years 35+ years ago in a small Reginald 101 stove hooked up to a more modern fireplace with an triple wall metal flue..

Had a good friend that bought a Jotul 118 during that same time frame and is still using it some for heat supplementation. It just been an amazing piece of equipment for him. A real quality product.

I enjoyed the whole outside process of cutting and gathering it, but I worked in the very physically tiring home building industry, and eventually just didn't have time to mess with it any longer because of the hours which I often worked sometimes 6 and 7 days a week year round, if there was work.

 

A couple of weeks ago long before this thread popped up I saw first saw the device below listed in a CL ad and went the their website to investigate.

If you were running a commercial firewood/logging business, you'd likely have some of the other ancillary machinery already, thus making it a really high production process.

With the machinery and the right personnel, you could churn out hundreds of cords of firewood per year.

A pretty amazing device and a testament to mechanical innovation.

Thought you guys might get a kick out of watching some the videos at their site.

 

https://www.dyna-products.com/

 

 

[ebinmaine 67,271]

25 minutes ago, ztnoo said:

Thought you guys might get a kick out of watching some the videos

Thanks for posting that Steve.

I've seen a few videos of these type of machines although never witnessed one up close.

They are absolutely fascinating but not something we would ever justify here.

There is a commercial firewood processor up the road from me a bit and he uses a very large version of one of these.

 

[WHGuy413 2,683]

Between my parents house and mine we burn 8 to 10 cords a year. My parents have 12 acres of woods attached to both our house lots but the hill is pretty steep. We select harvest off their land and take any hardwood people want to get rid of. I work for a big private school and am able to get a lot of hard wood for free when we do tree jobs. We also will buy it in log length which is the best way for dad's home made wood processor "Buster". Buster certainly saves my back. We can cut about a cord an hour. Dad's always revamping something tho. He has a new wood splitter that he has been working on. Last spring we had 4 log truck loads of logs on the ground here. We have probably 2 left that need to get cut still.

[ebinmaine 67,271]

@WHGuy413

Do you have trailers for your kids to tow behind their Horses moving wood?

 

[WHGuy413 2,683]

1 hour ago, ebinmaine said:

@WHGuy413

Do you have trailers for your kids to tow behind their Horses moving wood?

 

I have a few trailers here but when we are cutting with buster we dump it on dad's car trailer and tow it up to the wood shed with his tractor or one of our trucks.

[ebinmaine 67,271]

24 minutes ago, WHGuy413 said:

I have a few trailers here but when we are cutting with buster we dump it on dad's car trailer and tow it up to the wood shed with his tractor or one of our trucks.

Maybe you could throw a few sticks in a horse trailer so the little 'uns can "help"...

[WHGuy413 2,683]

30 minutes ago, ebinmaine said:

Maybe you could throw a few sticks in a horse trailer so the little 'uns can "help"...

Oh they get their share of helpin. When we are not using buster they get trailers loaded with wood. I did try to take the ice fishing this morning and got blown off the lake before we even started. It kinda worked out in my favor since I had to bring in wood.  Aiden and Alex were finishing breakfast with my wife while I did it. Tomorrow they will bring in a full trailer. Today's was only a partial. If I stack it up nice I can get enough wood to last over a week in 1 load. I'm did a quick load cause I'm gonna venture out and go work at my fire station with some other firefighters. We have been building our own turn out gear drying rack and we are almost done. 

[Ed Kennell 38,022]

Kool tub cart.

[WHGuy413 2,683]

33 minutes ago, Ed Kennell said:

Kool tub cart.

Half of a old oil tank. My grandfather built it. 

[pfrederi 17,664]

My L-107 is a multi fuel tractor...she hauls wood or coal.

 

The coal wagon hauls about 12-14 days worth of coal. 

[Mows4three 826]

My firewood cutting at camp is the reason I have Wheel Horse tractors.  Needed a good solid pulling rig to tow my log splitter and our firewood cart.   I was literally smoking the belts and transmission on our old Craftsman garden tractor.  

 

We burn mostly locust, red oak, white oak and black oak.   Since the Emerald Ash Borer wiped out our ash trees, we burned a good bit of green and white ash over the last three years. 

 

Here are a few few pictures of the purpose built 312-8 and wood piles at camp.   We had a source for short rolls of EPDM roofing that works great to shed water and snow while keeping the sides of the woodpiles open for drying.

 

I am also a woodworker, so any sizable trees that come down at camp or in our back lot at home get hauled to a buddy's band mill for conversion into dimensional lumber.   Looking forward to retirement when I hope to have enough free time to make some things out of my stockpile of hardwoods. 

 

Cheers!

 

Dave