How do you do firewood?

[Ron Scott]

How you do it depends upon whether you're doing it for your personal home use or commercial volume sales as indicated by many of the above described methods and equipment used.

The basics needed are a chainsaw to cut it and a pickup truck and/or trailer to haul it.

[bigtreesinwa]

I just want to say a big thanks to everyone on here that told their stories about how they do firewood. I can't begin to tell you how informative and interesting it was to read all of your tales!

My big reason for asking is I've seen people with piles and piles of firewood and have been trying to figure out how they do it. Your information has explained to me very well the variety of equipment that a guy could have to use for firewood, and some of you look pretty darn efficient at it! I'm very impressed.

For my needs, a real simple system will work fine and I'm putting together my collection of gear to do firewood. But everything said here is good for me to reference because I now understand the range (from very simple to very complex) of methods to get firewood.

My next post I'll share how my father used to get firewood for our house.

Thanks again

Greg

[bigtreesinwa]

I grew up in a house that was heated solely by wood. We had electric baseboard heat but it was very expensive and I don't think we ever used it once during the entire time I grew up. We did end up getting a pellet stove at some point in my childhood and then finally switched over to natural gas when it was run outside our house, but my father used wood heat 100% in the winter for about 20 or 30 years. Keep in mind, this is in Northwestern Montana and our winters were cold! Our house didn't have as much insulation as it should have and it really cooled off when the wind blew and a blizzard came through.

My father worked for Plum Creek Timber Company as a timber cruiser. He had a truck that he used to get to the timber sales and evaluate how much the trees were worth and how difficult it would be to get them to the local sawmill. So when he'd be cruising timber (on Forest Service land), he'd spy a couple of dead standing snags during the day. He'd go back after work, cut down a couple trees, throw them in the back of the truck and bring them home. The snags usually didn't have any branches or bark on them, were well dried, and were right on the side of the road so it wasn't hard at all to bring them home.

At some point, he noticed that the Plum Creek mill in Columbia Falls was throwing away a lot of good mill ends. (These are foot long sections of wood that weren't usable for lumber and they scrapped them.) He talked with the operators, and they started saving them for him and he'd take home a load of softwood mill scraps and burn these. They worked nice for kindling since they were easy to chop up and they were also very clean. Eventually Plum Creek caught on that a lot of guys were doing this and started charging $50 a load but that was still a good price. Today I imagine they use them for sawdust or something worthwhile.

So for my father, he had it about as easy as it could get for firewood. By bringing home a few trees a week all summer long he'd have a nice winters supply of firewood, and since they were already dead and dried snags, there wasn't a need to season them. But he was lucky and it was a nice concidence of him keeping his eyes open and having a job that kept him in the woods.

[NYH1]

I cut mostly Black Cherry, with a little Maple and Oak.  I used to cut them into 9 foot lengths, then skid them back to my landing with my four wheeler.  Once I was at my landing I'd block the 9 footers into 18 inch logs.  Put them in the truck and/or in my 14x8 double axle trailer, bring them home and split them.  The problem with this was the 9 footers would get full of dirt and I'd have to sharpen my chains A LOT.

So I started blocking them right where I felled them.  I'd just put the 18 inch logs into my four wheeler trailer, ride back, put them in the truck and/or on my big trailer.  For me this saved time.  I didn't have to handle them as much and my chains would stay sharp for ever.  When they say "keep your chain out of the dirt", they aren't kidding!

Truth be told, if I could have brought my splitter with me, I would have split them right there too.  I just couldn't.

You have to try a few different ways and see what works for you.  I also only cut hardwoods for burning.  Of course I'm in the Northeast and hardwoods are abundant.
 



     

[WildDog]

Bigtrees we only have Aussie Hardwoods to cut and have 700 acres that has about 100 windrowed piles of timber dozed up, we don't cut commercially but enjoy family outings to cut our firewood. Last year we burn't about 3000 cubic metres of this piled up timber to get rid of rabbit and fox harbor.

I usually cut the wood and Tim my son likes to split it then we stack it on a utility or the bucket and carry-all on our tractor and take it back to the shed. This means a lot of double handling but I like the bonding time i have with the family. I don't like to come back from the paddock in the tractor empty handed so will often pick up a log in the 4 in 1 and bring it home for firewood.

We went out this morning to cut a load.

 
My 16yr old log splitter

 
Cutting some windrowed firewood before we burn the pile

 
Windrowed hardwood timber

 
straight grained stringy Bark hardwood splits fairly easy

 
seasoned cranky grained Whitebox hardwood, this stuff gives you a real workout when splitting, sometimes I rip it out with the saw

[rebocardo]

> Whitebox hardwood

That almost looks like sweetgum.

[thecfarm]

WildDog,is this your land.Why was the trees windrowed up?100 piles is alot.Glad to see you are using it.I burn a lot of dead wood.If my wife could feed the out door furnace I would burn it all winter.I brought her up in woods and showed her what mother nature does to thin out a wood lot.I have alot of dead stuff to get out.

[Engineer]

I wish I had a tried and true method, but I don't.  When I used to harvest firewood with my dad, back in my teens, he had an old '74 Jeep CJ5 that was his woods vehicle.  He drop trees, buck to length right in the woods, and load up the jeep as much as it would carry and stockpile it outside the basement doors.  Later on he got a 4x7 dump trailer and that's what's he's been using ever since.  Occasionally he will leave a couple runners and a stack of blocks in the woods, depending on where it is and how easy it is to get to. 

Myself, I've collected 4 years worth of sawmill slabs, pallets, junk wood, blowdowns, stuff off of power line cutting, highway department clearing, clean stumps and stuff I've scrounged.  I don't have a good way of dealing with any of this.  I have a small tractor with a bucket and forks, and a couple good saws, and a splitting maul and wedges.  I have piles of random wood everywhere, everything from tree-length to 4-6' long stuff to split rounds.    It is my intent, when I finally get a handle on this mess and burn through everything that's been accumulated, to build a decent woodshed that will hold 4-6 cords, make separate covered stacks for overflow (I'm figuring on 8-10 cords a year), have a Gator that I can tow a small trailer.  I like to cut small stuff, 4" and smaller, to 6-8' lengths and pile them for gang cutting later.  Anything bigger I prefer to block up in the woods and put in a big pile near the wood boiler, and I can go out and split by hand for a while until I get tired.  I think I'll need a log splitter someday, but no hurry.

[Tom]

Wives can provide those if you have the time and the money.  If not you might have to buy one. ...logsplitter, I mean. 

[SwampDonkey]

I just finished stacking 7.5 cords of hard maple, beech and yellow birch firewood for this winter. We used to cut our own on the farm with an old skidder or tractor. Since we sold the farm and the stumpage we have been purchasing it. This year the price is $200 cut, split, delivered and when you consider furnace oil would be as much (total cords) for one tank full, firewood is way cheaper and a lot warmer. 

If you have a neighbor with a work horse, maybe he can cut and yard your wood out short bolts or tree length? Just a thought.

[cuttingman423]

I just got started in the firewood  for heating and became partners with a friend in the firewood business in January this year.  We have one main location and a few others for  getting firewood  and the main location has been sitting for 2 years and is ready to burn and has no bark on it so we just cut it to length for stove or cut logs about 4-5 ft and haul them to his place and process there. As for stacking   we just stack standard cord but go 5- 6 ft tall instead of 4ft  and its stacked on wood supports i get from work for free .  As much has we wish we could afford  some other equipment for handling the wood we make due with my 1985 F150 3/4 ton and his new F150 and trailer(Some day hope to get skid loader with grapple)  as for splitting he has a splitter thats over 20 yrs old and  it still splits like the day it was new  i think its a 5 or 6 HP Briggs  and the only  thing its required is oil changes and filling the gas.

[WildDog]

WildDog,is this your land.Why was the trees windrowed up?100 piles is alot

Cfarm we bought the place nearly 5 yrs back, the timber piles are from when it was cleared many years ago, the old guys ring barked the trees with axes then years later they were bulldozed into piles. The 1st couple of years we had fires going in the paddocks most of the winter wasting the usefull firewood, now I'm taking things slower and picking through it.

Tom I managed to find some more time, my new up and coming log splitter turned 2yrs old on the weekend, we called him Angus.

[Tom]

I like that name.  Angus!   It has a ring to it.  I have a friend named Angus.

You'll have to show us some pictures of Angus as he grows.   Sounds like a might log splitter to me.