Wood Processing for burning..

[dodge man]

I split the wood where I fall the tree. I put the bucket of my end loader with in a foot or two of the splitter and throw it in the bucket. I store mine on an old foundation so I just dump the endloader bucket full of wood on the foundation and stack it latter. When I am ready to burn the wood I throw it in the end loader bucket and haul it to the house. I only burn about a cord of wood a year, or maybe a little less. Stacking on pallet sound like the way to do it as you handle the wood less than I do.

 

[Ductape]

Unfortunately, we don't have enough trees or property to heat our house every year, so I have to drive to the free wood. Pack up the saws, tools.... hook up the trailer. Get my helper and off we go......

 

[Ductape]

I usually drop off my haul at my in-laws, where I split and stack everything to season. I also do a couple cord for my inlaws, and if I have enough I've been known to selll a cord or two. I don't mind working with the big stuff, since my late FIL was always looking for an excuse to fire up his Bobcat and set the big rounds on the splitter for me. One small mod I made on the splitter...... a shelf to hold the rounds while I'm splitting. Saves the back from having to bend over and pick up the same chunk over and over again.

 

[forgeblast]

I am doing some release cuttings on our property. I cut all the beech out and leave the maple, oak, and cherry. I use the limbs to basically fence in small seedlings so that the deer will not eat them, leaving me with what i have-- a beech lot. I am trying to give the higher quality hardwoods a boost, and to have my forest regenerate as a mixed hardwood not just a beech forest. My methoud is to drop the trees in the woods, limb them, and then slice and dice them to the right size. I then load them into my tractors cart and take them to our house and split and stack them. My time line is to cut the trees down in may early june, split them. and then leave them split until august when i stack them. This year with all the rain I tarped them early otherwise they would be drenched. Nice streaches of weather i take the tarps out to let the wood dry out.

 

[Ductape]

I keep about ten cord or so at home....... eight outside, and a couple cord in the barn so we don't have to go outside to shag wood in the dead of January. I definitely handle my wood too much..... I need to figure out a way to minimize the handling. Strangely, I still enjoy working up firewood every year.

 

[ToadHill]

One tip, when you get to the thinning out part, I wouldn't worry about getting rid of the brush piles. I drop the trees in such a way that I can push the limbs into a pile and leave it to decay. I've found that it helps in regeneration of species like Maple.

By the time the brush pile had decomposed, the maple seedlings are tall enough that the deer won't do much damage eating them as they seem to like the younger ones most.

 

[hr3]

Highbeam.. How do you unload the rounds when you get back to the house.. I see your useing you flatbed for this... I'v hauled 14' rounds on my flatbed and pull them off with a wench in a tree,," a real pain".. Once and a while I get free wood from someone and this is how i handle it,, but then I have to go back for my tractor...

 

[jimmyj]

Our family woodlot is about 50 miles away and we try to leave all the mess in the forest. We cut, buck and split the wood in the bush and then haul it home in loads with the truck and trailer. I hate having the mess at home.

We tend to do it when it's still cool out and also when it's not muddy. late winter or late fall are our most productive times. I also pile all of the brush/slash and then "mince" it with the saw. It makes it decompose very quickly. When we cut we try really hard not to damage the woods.

That said, I got lazy last year and ordered in a truckload of logs and just did all the work here on the driveway in front of the shop. I was able to clean up the mess but the gravel drive still has a lot of sawdust mixed in. In the long run, even though I paid for the logs last year I think I'm still getting a good deal because when we cut we split the wood ourselves I end up working a whole day, spending $ on fuel etc and only bringing home about 1 cord.

 

[jas67]

JimmyJ,

I did the same thing, bought a truckload of lots, and cut & split them in my driveway. I have the same issue with the sawdust.

Like many others here, my time is limited, and I'm not getting any younger, so I try to minimize handling.

My solution is racks made from pallets. I have a Kubota B7610, which is limited to just over 1000 lbs rear lift (my B7100 before that was only good for about 600), so I cut pallets in half, and build sides with 2x4's and lumber scraps to 42" high ( SWMBO's dictated dimension, as she doesn't want them higher than our fence). By my estimate, these weight about 700lbs loaded with green oak splits, as I needed to cheat with the hydraulic top link to lift them; the B7610 does fine.

Here are pictures of my racks (at the risk of being like LB and posting the same pictures that I've posted before.

I put one of these racks right beside the splitter, and stack the splits directly on them as I split. I then use the rear carry-all, and drive 'em with the tractor to my fence line for seasoning.

This is actually only my second season with a wood stove (last year, I bought already cut/split/seasoned wood). My plan is to cover the tops of these pallets around October. This cover will probably be some kind of plastic sheeting stapled to the top of the rack frame with a stick or piece of PVC pipe bowed to "tent" the middle up so that they don't hold water.

I have a pallet fork for my FEL, so this winter, the plan is to use the FEL fork to lift a pallet as needed to the deck (which is only a few steps of of the ground), and use a pallet jack to position it by the back door for easy access.

Using this method, I only handle the splits once until I bring them in and put 'em in the stove.

As others have stated, you definitely want to stay at least a season ahead, so that your wood can dry for more than a year. Not only is the wood burn more cleanly (less chimney cleanout, and less chimney fire risk), but you get more heat out of it. If the wood isn't fully seasoned, you waste a good bit of heat to boil the water out of it.

 

[bpattie]

It has always seemed to me that what makes cutting, splitting and stacking more labor intensive is how many times you handle each piece. This year I changed things up and was surprised at how quickly it went. First, I built a set of forks for the front bucket. What this allowed was that I could basically haul back an entire de-limbed tree or more if a smaller tree, cut to maybe 12-15 foot lengths. in one load (maybe a 1/3 cord). Then I cut to splitting length, very close to the splitter which is right next to where I stack. Cutting the logs off the forks works well and saves the chain from going into the ground and it does not get dull nearly as quickly and cutting at a height of 3 feet is a lot easier on the back. I used to cut it to length where the tree was cut, but then I had to load the cut to length logs in the bucket and could not haul nearly as much as I can with the forks and had to make a lot more trips.