At Home In The Woods

   / At Home In The Woods #3,441  
Yes, a loose screw on the terminal can cause the odor too.
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I was an electrician for 10 yrs. Three problems I would encounter, staples being two tight on the wire, loose terminal screw, using the push in connection on the back of the switches and receptacles. The last one I mentioned pisses me off to no end when I find it. I seen that burn up a lot of receptacles and switches because the pinch points to hold the wire never hold it tight.

OBED, the wife and I love the pics of the property and house. Keep up the good work.
 
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   / At Home In The Woods
  • Thread Starter
#3,442  
I waited all week long to try out my new toy. Although I wanted to cut and split some wood first thing Saturday, I postponed my gratification while I moved the dirt pile and moved the trailer. Then I got to do the stuff I was really looking forward to doing.

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I hooked the log splitter onto the tractor and pulled it to the spot I would be cutting and splitting. Near the house we had a small maple and a dead oak on the ground that needed cleaning up. I also had a stack of hickory that needed splitting.

I had decided that I wanted to mix the types of wood on the pallet so I cut up into 3 pieces a pine log that was sitting beside our driveway close to the property entrance. I used my new log roller tool to roll the knotty pine log over without much effort at all. There was also a smaller log of unknown species, might be chestnut oak but I'm not sure, lying beside the pine tree that I cut in pieces. I stacked the logs on the forks and brought them home.

At the splitter I cut the logs into 18" pieces. I made a 4 1/2 foot measuring stick for cutting the logs. I've found that irregular length firewood pieces can make stacking difficult, especially if you have pieces that are fairly short. I'm not very good yet at eyeballing the lengths; that's why I made the measuring stick. The firewood veterans out there are probably rolling their eyes reading this. That's fine; my log pieces are all the same length.

After cutting up the maple, oak, pine, and other misc dead wood, I was ready to start splitting. Darkness was approaching; I really wanted to get all the newly cut logs split plus some of the existing hickory. The splitter was empty of gas so I filled it up using my government required "spill proof" gas can nozzle on the gas can. As I tried to use the nozzle which requires continuously pulling on an outside sheath with one hand while pouring gas, I succeeded in spilling gas all over the splitter and the ground. The "spill proof" nozzle is so awkward to use, it has increased 10 fold the likelyhood that I will spill gasoline. That's what you get when you have beaurocrats in an office mandating rules and regulations for equipment the beaurocrats have no personal experience using themselves.

The 27 ton Troy-Bilt splitter with a Briggs and Stratton gas engine started on the first pull. My wife took pictures as I split the first log. The splitter worked great without any issues. The splitter was easy to operate and everything was laid out in a fairly ergonomic fashion. The primary thing I would like would be a bigger cradle for catching the log pieces. When I split a log in half, one of the two pieces was very likely to fall off the cradle onto the ground. So after splitting up the first half, I would have to lift the second half off the ground onto the splitter to split it into smaller pieces.

I stacked the pallet as I split the wood. As darkness fell, I finished splitting all my new log pieces and a few pieces of the hickory. I was able to split a pallet of wood much faster and easier than I did last week when splitting by hand. Also, I was much less tired out using the log splitter. However, at the end of the day, my back still knew I was cutting and splitting wood.
 

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   / At Home In The Woods #3,443  
Looking good! :thumbsup:

A couple tips to help you out.

There is only one good gas can on the market: No Spill LLC I am a believer after fighting with the same crappy CARB cans you must have. You can buy them online, and I think ACE hardware stores carry some.

You may want to consider segregating your woods by species when you split, rather than mixing them. Species all have different BTU values, and you can use that to your advantage. Oak is great for the coldest part of the winter, but something light like pine or poplar would be a good choice for the "shoulder" seasons where you only need perhaps a morning fire to take the chill off. At the least you should consider dividing into piles of "Better" and "Good." Soft Maple and cherry are similar to each other, for example.

This is a useful chart for firewood:
Firewood Information

Yes a splitter work table or cradle is a big help. I think Speeco sells something, or you could have a shop fab something up for you. Use it a while first to get familiar with it.
 
   / At Home In The Woods
  • Thread Starter
#3,444  
dstig1 said:
There is only one good gas can on the market: No Spill LLC I am a believer after fighting with the same crappy CARB cans you must have. You can buy them online, and I think ACE hardware stores carry some.
That looks like it will work much better than my gas can. However,a 5 gallon plastic gas can costs $28!!! Ouch!
 
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   / At Home In The Woods #3,446  
One common sense trick I learned to "eyeball" logs before cutting them is to use the bar of your chainsaw as a measuring stick. For example, if your bar is 18", turn your saw along the length of the log, and then pivot your saw at the point where the bar meets the powerhead. I can get quite accurate cuts over time with this method without slowing down operation very much

Another neat guide is to mount a dowel perpendicular to your chainsaw bar at the length you want to cut. This will give you an exact visual reference for length and works great for getting consistant cuts!:thumbsup:
 
   / At Home In The Woods #3,447  
That looks like it will work much better than my gas can. However,a 5 gallon plastic gas can costs $28!!! Ouch!
Well, when you look at the cost of the crappy ones, the No-Spill ones are one a few bucks more and they are waaayy better built than any other gas can I have found. The walls are thick and they sit stable on the ground, plus they are very easy to handle. They were around before the regulations appeared (pretty sure) and they met those regs so they could keep on selling.

As for the government regs.... well... <sigh>
 
   / At Home In The Woods #3,448  
A nice pile of wood-----now let`s see how the fire place works , and how much you burn a week :) Tony
 
   / At Home In The Woods
  • Thread Starter
#3,449  
One common sense trick I learned to "eyeball" logs before cutting them is to use the bar of your chainsaw as a measuring stick. For example, if your bar is 18", turn your saw along the length of the log, and then pivot your saw at the point where the bar meets the powerhead. I can get quite accurate cuts over time with this method without slowing down operation very much
Yes, that's how I was cutting the firewood pieces before I made the measuring stick. I know where 18" is from the tip of my chain bar to a certain spot on my chainsaw. That works fairly well but is a little slower than using the measuring stick.
Obed
 
   / At Home In The Woods
  • Thread Starter
#3,450  
A nice pile of wood-----now let`s see how the fire place works , and how much you burn a week :) Tony
Tony,
Basically, I'm observing the same behavior burning fires in our Quadrafire fireplace that I observed last winter. When the FP doors are closed with the air control on high, the fire burns significantly lower than if the doors are cracked. The difference isn't as noticable when burning small pieces or very dry Ashe. However, when burning larger pieces of oak, the fire gets choked down quite a bit when the doors are closed even though the fire burns great with the doors cracked open. I suppose it is possible that the fireplace is designed to choke down the combusion air that much on the high setting but I still don't like the way it burns. I would think that semi-dry wood should burn fine with the setting on high if the same wood burns great with the doors open.
Obed
 
 
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