Cord - stacked vs loose?

[beenthere]

Is 42 square feet a 1/3 of a cord or not stacked tight

Square feet is a measure of area, not a measure of volume. So the fraction of a cord is not comparable.

[John Mc]

42 cubic feet stacked neatly is very close to 1/3 of a cord.

[36 coupe]

A full cord of wood on an 8 foot pickup body would be a gross over load.I used to stop a a sawmill to buy oak edgings.At times they had them in pipe frames 4x4x4.That would fill my C 20 Chevy 8 foot box level.My son was low on fire wood so I sawed a load to stove length for him with my cord wood saw at my place.Throwing the sawed wood back in the pickup made a heaped up load.Any time I went by the sawmill I bought a load.There were some hills on the road home that made the old chevy grunt with a half cord on.A load cost 15 bucks.Nice wood for a cook stove.I saw my wood in the woods with a pto cord wood saw now.I use my trailer that holds 1/2 cord of sawed and stacked to bring wood out of the woods.Ive sold firewood to neighbors using the trailer.Not much though because after Ive got my wood out thats plenty.I remember bring a load of sawed wood to a neighbor.Stacked it in the shed for her.When I finished she came out to pay me.I told her I had another trailer load to make a full cord.She said she had bought a cord last year from a local fellow who said it was a cord.He had an 8 foot pickup with. the wood thrown in loose and level.I told her she got less than half a cord.128 cubic feet of 4 foot wood will stack to about 100 cubic feet.Try it if you think otherwise.

[turnkey]

We sell all our wood loose thrown according to state of Maine standards. We also have printed on our invoices that "All cordage is a loose thrown measure". If you take the time old standard of a cord. 4X4X8 ROUND. You take that same stack of wood, split and restack, you should more or less end up with around 115 c.f.

Sorry but no.  128 cu ft of wood in the round, when split will come to well _over_ 128 cu ft tightly stacked.  It is a common belief that split would stacks tighter than in the round - it doesn't. 

You can prove it yourself by slicing rounds off something (carrot will do), arranging them tightly in a boxtop then dumping, splitting in half and trying to fit them back in - can't be done without fitting them carefully back into the rounds as they were originally. Rule of thumb is a pile will grow at least 10% after splitting.

Harry K