Huricaine Irene left me with two large trees down - one Norway maple and one black locust. Free firewood being what it is, I am planning to buck these trees into 20" rounds and store them outside. Now I am sure that the wood would season faster if split and stacked, but I already have this year's wood and 85% of next year's wood already split and stacked. So, my question is, do these rounds dry significantly without being split over a full year, or would I be wiser to find more space to stack split firewood and more time to do it? Optimally, I already know your answer. But practically, am I really delaying the availability of this green wood by letting it sit a year before I split it?
Yes, they dry, and will be dry next year, however, I want a movie of you splitting that black locust. ;D
TR -
I know that there's a controversy as to whether it's easier to split wood when it's green or seasoned, but, in my experience, the locust that I have split in the past has done so easily. I can not recall splitting it after it sits for a year in a round before. Will it be significantly more difficult? I've got some elm here as well, if you want to make that movie. I am dreading that and am planning to let it sit for a year or two and just roll it into the stove, rather than split it. ;D
i have had 12 in and bigger rounds, sit for over a year, and were still not dry in the inside. but 6 to 8 months of the the year its winter.
On the maple you'd be better off to split it in a timely manner .Maple if left in the rounds tends to try and grow mushrooms and rot internally .
Black locust in my experiance splits easily ,honey locust does not .
You're still better off to split it up and stack it rather that pile up the rounds .Two trees wouldn't take that long nor do you have to do it all in one day .What if it takes a few days or weeks .
I'll echo what Al wrote about the Maple: get it split now or it will get "punky" on the inside. I cut quite a few of these trees down for customers around here and the time to split it is sooner rather than later. I don't know about that Locust, but if you'll be splitting the Maple, you may as well do them both. Don't stress that hip too much, though :)
After the elm has set outside a year it will split a lot easier. When I was,splitting with iron wedges,my Father would just leave the elm out by the wood shed in stove length. Than a year later we would split it.I can still hear him say,to get the life out of it.It would split very easy than.
The 20 yrs I split by hand (splitting maul), I would leave the blocks stand on end (that were not split fresh sawn). The exposed end would dry out some, while the end on the ground would not.
Then come splitting time, I found it much easier to split by turning the wet end up. Didn't absorb the maul impact nor let the maul bounce back when swinging. That was with red and white oak, and elm.
One way around the issue of split now or later is to employ a log splitter. Ever since we purchased a 26 ton log splitter there was no more worry about splitability. It will shear through crotches large knots and I have not had any wood stand up to it. With older body joints now, it has been a God send and well worth the cost over the years. :)
I would split it now, but I'm saying that from the stand point that I have a basement furnace. I like slabbed sugar maple and beech. Nice and heavy, you can feel the BTU's permeating from each piece. ;D :D :D ;)
I also have a wood splitter, but mine is delivered all slabbed. ;D
Yeah with a hydraulic spliiter there's not much need to even be concerned how easily it splits .For that matter if you pound steel weedges you can split anything too it just takes more effort .
I've got a splitter and will do so. The question now becomes where to put it. If that's my biggest problem, I don't have one. :D. Thanks.
Always a reason to add on isn't there. ;D
Do not leave either sitting on the ground. The maple will tend to rot and the black locust will sprout and grow. Black Locust is as bad as willow. Nice rot resistant wood but it sprouts awfull. Farmer say that if you use it for fence posts you need to be sure to put it in the ground upside down or you will have a tree.
Its already September. That wood won't deteriorate much going into winter. I would split the maple till you run out of room, then let the rest lay. Split the rest when you use up enough wood to make room.
Just for the record the black locust I know about was once used for fence posts .It isn't as rot resistant as osage orange but it holds up very well . Fact during pioneer days the wood was used for door jambs and widow framing because once dry it's pretty stable and holds up to weather .They also used green black locust pegs to pin together post and beam barns and such .
There's a vast difference between black locust and honey locust .The later grows thorns that look like small elk antlers .Poke a hole in a tractor tire as easy as saying Jack Robinson whoever he is .
I would prefer to use Osage Orange for my fence posts but the supply here is Maine is extremely limited (it does not grow here ;D) so we use cedar and black locust.
I imagine so .Osage orange which is commonly called hedge apple is native to the plain states .As near as I can tell it became popular in the mid to late 1800's as a living fence in the more easternly or great lakes staes .You don't find much in these parts now of days .
Catalpa however was planted in tight groves to serve the same purpose which might sound very strange .Those planted groves are all but gone now also .Fact the fences themselves are all but non existant .What at one time was 20 to 40 acre fields are now a couple hundred .The only way to tell the property lines are by markers in the fields in some places .Just the changing methods of agriculture .
Not much to do with splitting firewood ,just fence post trivia .
I have found a good many white cedar rail fence lines put there over 100 years ago, still in tact to mark the property lines. :) Around here, they are only gone from the farms because my father and other farmers removed them all for kindling wood in stoves. And many farms where accumulated and the fence rows removed for more field acreage. Several farms dad had were 2 to 4 farms wide. Settlement in the area and original grants gave 100 acres for every 10 acres of farm cleared. ;)
No sense in handling it twice. Finish out your 2012 wood with it and let the rest lay until next spring when you have some shed space...it'll be fine....
Why would you have to put it in a shed ? A shed is where you put the shovels and rakes,chainsaws and lawn mowers .
Stack it and cover the top.
Save some straight 4" limbs to put the stack on.
Local lumber store has used lumber covers free.
By next fall it will be nearly dry as split.
Just for one winter you don't even have to cover it if you didn't want to .It might not be a bad idea to cover that maple though .Actually that maple would probabley burn about Feb if it were covered during the fall rains .
Al-
My OWB is also in the shed. Open on 2 sides with windows and a sliding door on the other 2. I put it in the shed so my wood stays dry, and so do I, when I am loading all winter. As i have a 2300, i also have lights, including a spotlight into the firebox, so i can see what i am doing. I have space for about 16 cords there, when stacked up to 6-7 feet high. I move it in after it's been stacked and split outdoors uncovered for a season. It continues to dry in the shed, but I have not yet determined if it dries there as well as when it's exposed to more sun and wind. I think most of us OWB guys have developed some routine to make the process as efficient as possible.
Well since you mention OWB and 16 cords I think I get the big picture now . :D Nice set up but they really like wood .I know a guy on the other side of Ohio that used to use 22 cords a year .Oh about 4 or 5 times my consumption .
Bust the rounds in half, stack em loose finish splitting and stacking in the spring...will keep the maple from gettig punky...stack em bark side up...
Al, I think Doc is heating more than just his house. If not, then I guess he's helping keep the firewood guy. ;)
Doc if there is any heat radiating off that stove in the shed with the wood it will have a drying affect. In my instance with wood in the basement and my furnace in there to, you would be amazed at how that wood pulls apart from drying.
Nope. Just heating my house, but my house is a little difficult to heat. 2 basements, each with its own oil fired furnace, i.e. 2 separate heating systems for portions of the house built a separate times. Part 150 y.o. Log cabin, part old addition, part new addition. So I have one house that's like 2 smaller houses joined in the middle. My wood requirmennts are up because i have,therefore, 2 heat exchangers with DHW (not one) to keep hot? If I had a standard basement with a single heating plant, I am sure my wood consumption would decrease by 30-40%. I use around 13 cord a winter. Saves me a ton in fuel costs.
SD-
Newer OWB's are very well insulated and don't throw off much heat at all. You can lay your hand on the outside wall and not feel warmth. Even the chimney stack is much cooler than you would anticipate.
Well, what kind of stove is that, that won't throw heat? ::)
I'm just jab'n ya. :D
Well if it's in the same shed if nothing else the combustion air flow itself would have a drying effect on the stored wood .
I have no experiance with an outside burner but they tell me they'll burn just about anything but submerged wood from a swamp if you can get it stuffed through the door .
Going back to the question, will it dry; as explained to me somewhere along the way, wood is like a big pack of straws all held together. The moisture will leave through the ends that are open faster than working its way out through the sides. Spilitting allows some of the moisture to leave out through the sides, but it is minimal in comparison to what is drawn out through the ends.
A back yard experiment was done (by someone even geekier than me) where a piece of round wood was weighed and calculated and left in the round. A comparative piece, that was split and blocked into a square, with all four sides exposed, but with the same face surface done the same time. Over a years time they lost nearly the same exact amount of weight (water) and dried to the same moisture level as tested with a meter.
In simpler barnyard logic terms, wood splits on the ends as it dries out and the moisture works it way out that way. You don't see it split on the sides, where it has the surface area to escape.
Wanna dry it faster, cut it shorter.
:D See ,told ya .Old Al cuts-er at 16" you folks with the outside burners toss it in a fence post lengths .Never the less it dries better split ,shortys like mine or those fence posts .
Quote from: johncinquo on September 15, 2011, 10:29:31 AM
In simpler barnyard logic terms, wood splits on the ends as it dries out and the moisture works it way out that way. You don't see it split on the sides, where it has the surface area to escape.
You better have another look, it splits along the rays which run radially toward the pith and it pulls apart more on the outside because the shrinkage from moisture loss tangentially is almost twice as much as radially in many species. But, I agree the moisture wicks quicker on the ends, as the pores and longitudinal tracheids are conducting tissues. Stands to reason water is going to move quicker where there is less resistance, like not having to pass from one cell wall to another.
Quote from: SwampDonkey on September 15, 2011, 07:41:35 PM
But, I agree the moisture wicks quicker on the ends, as the pores and longitudinal tracheids are conducting tissues.
Tracheids ??? Where in the world did that come from ? Fess up now you're really a plant bioligist masquarding as a brush saw operator . ;D
Quote from: Al_Smith on September 15, 2011, 07:52:05 PM
Tracheids ??? Where in the world did that come from ?
From the anatomy of a tree. :D
If you look at one from a micrograph, it looks like a straw with the end cut 45° like a tube of caulking. Kinda looks like a straw. ;)
I never thought about before but that does make sense .
Now on this split verses unsplit business . If you take lumber for example,of course after a couple of years of air drying oak for example is pretty dry .If however you leave in in the log or round it might retain moisture for years .Decades if in the log .
Fact I've cut into wind fallen oak that's been on the ground 20 years or more .After you get into it about 2 feet the water will run out of it .
Now maple won't last the long on the ground .Even in the round after about a year it will be spalted to a point .It will still burn but not as good as if had been split and stacked in a timely manner .
Quote from: Al_Smith on September 16, 2011, 07:24:05 AM
Now on this split verses unsplit business . If you take lumber for example,of course after a couple of years of air drying oak for example is pretty dry .If however you leave in in the log or round it might retain moisture for years .Decades if in the log .
That's the trouble with anecdotal evidence sometimes. Your lumber is probably not sitting out in the yard or woods on the ground, where as a bunch of logs has probably been left on the ground with the weeds growing over it. Two different environments, one not too favorable to the drying process. ;D ;)
A white spruce log will do the same thing, and seems to sop up water like a sponge laying in a hay field. :D
Well of course the lumber isn't out in the middle of a hay field laying in the mud .Geeze I've got too much time in it for that .
The oaks though being wind falls weren't actually in the mud either .Oaks being oaks are pretty tough if they go over as a live tree .Those tough old limbs will hold the rest of the tree off the ground for a good while before they give way .It isn't that they soak up water ,it's just in there from when the tree was still living .
Fact being you can cut into a rail road tie that might be 30-40 years old and there's still moisture .This is not the creosote it was treated with but rather moisture from the tree .
Fact one of the reason that white oak is used for barrels and cooperage is due to the fact it's nearly impervious to moisture either entering or leaving the wood .Now of course some moisture will be passed though it but very little over the course of time .If not they'd only get a partial barrel of whisky once they tapped the keg or a half keg of beer .That would cause much weeping and gnashing of teeth no doubt .
Quote from: stumper on September 11, 2011, 08:04:38 AM
Do not leave either sitting on the ground. The maple will tend to rot and the black locust will sprout and grow. Black Locust is as bad as willow. Nice rot resistant wood but it sprouts awfull. Farmer say that if you use it for fence posts you need to be sure to put it in the ground upside down or you will have a tree.
I have found soft maple don't even make land fill. I have dumped and give away I don't know how much maple soft. My customers know it and don't want it. I rented a slab of concrete from the city to dump trash wood on if some body wants it. After the bitching I won't do that no more. I got called cheap lazy not thanking about other people's need. Problem I didn't take it to there house and stack for them. Sorry about changing the subject. By the way how do you up load photos I would like to put a picture of my operation CRT
There's nothing wrong with soft maple unless you let it lay in the round and go funky .
Of course it isn't as good as oak or hickory but properly dried it burns fine .It just takes more of it .
Now I'm around tree service guys and I know how they operate .They fiddle around with the stuff and don't split it in a timely manner and then just toss it in a big pile so the chipmunks ,possums and rabbits have a place to hid .Very few of them take the time to stack it .
You can't expect to get good firewood if you split it one day and try to sell it the next now .
I don't expect the firewood guy to stack it on delivery. If I was that lazy I deserve to freeze. Who do they designate to fill the wood box and stove? ;) Next someone would be calling to clean stove ashes. :D
:D Now this is a hoot if you ever saw it . Van Wert Ohio has a community recycle center that the trimmers etc can take wood residue . They grind the stuff for mulch and give it away free .
They also get great big rounds from take downs ,most being crotch wood from silver maples .Nobody wants to fool with it .A couple Saturdays a month they let people have it for firewood .Here they come like an army of ants with their little saws .The stuff has been shoved around with a front end loader and full of gravel .
Bless their hearts they might work 3 hours just to get a pick up truck of firewood .
That said not everybody is lazy when it comes to that stuff . ;D
Quote from: doctorb on September 10, 2011, 05:49:22 PM
Huricaine Irene left me with two large trees down - one Norway maple and one black locust. Free firewood being what it is, I am planning to buck these trees into 20" rounds and store them outside. Now I am sure that the wood would season faster if split and stacked, but I already have this year's wood and 85% of next year's wood already split and stacked. So, my question is, do these rounds dry significantly without being split over a full year, or would I be wiser to find more space to stack split firewood and more time to do it? Optimally, I already know your answer. But practically, am I really delaying the availability of this green wood by letting it sit a year before I split it?
No because the bark works as a coat logs only dry out the ends
Quote from: CRThomas on October 28, 2013, 01:37:51 PM
Quote from: doctorb on September 10, 2011, 05:49:22 PM
Huricaine Irene left me with two large trees down - one Norway maple and one black locust. Free firewood being what it is, I am planning to buck these trees into 20" rounds and store them outside. Now I am sure that the wood would season faster if split and stacked, but I already have this year's wood and 85% of next year's wood already split and stacked. So, my question is, do these rounds dry significantly without being split over a full year, or would I be wiser to find more space to stack split firewood and more time to do it? Optimally, I already know your answer. But practically, am I really delaying the availability of this green wood by letting it sit a year before I split it?
No because the bark works as a coat logs only dry out the ends
???
Quote from: CRThomas on September 24, 2011, 01:34:01 PM
Quote from: stumper on September 11, 2011, 08:04:38 AM
I have found soft maple don't even make land fill. I have dumped and give away I don't know how much maple soft. My customers know it and don't want it.
Norway Maple is beyond Silver Maple as a fuel for a OWB. It is worth saving if it dropped right on his place. The rounds will dry fine and be easier to manage later. Who ever was having trouble splitting Psueodacacia Nigra or Robinia Pseudoacacia was giving up far too easily.
If you get lots of Snooooow when you split it, even if it seems dry, when you use it it will be wetter than you thought it was when you split it.
Small rounds will dry just the same as the size your busting up the larger rounds. It's just that the larger rounds need busting up to reduce the migration time of the water. Bark itself isn't the trouble, it's not like a plastic wrapper. I've got all kinds of small rounds I use like kindling to start fires in the fall and spring when it's too hot to have a fire all day. Some don't bother with the limb wood rounds, around here we don't waste noth'n. Takes generations to grow it, can't waste. Take a drive around and might here the words, 'my, the trees are small'. The big wood was cut in the last 25-40 years. Takes 60 years to get an 8" sugar maple up here, and that's if it's free to grow. ;D Told the neighbor that, who was just dabbing in the sugaring business on his farm. I pointed to a grove of maple near his house and said when I was young (pre-teens) those trees were not much smaller than now. There's not a 10" maple in the whole grove. He said he don't tap smaller than 9". I said you have some time to wait then. :)
Pretty interesting banter in this thread.....so far i can gather that wood dries very differently in Centreville NB then in OH or MD and very differently then in NJ. I have rounds stacked of maple the are not dry after a year of sitting. Forget about red or white oak. If my wood aint split it aint dryin...its dyin. Im gathering we all have different understandings of "dry" ... Kinda like OWB dry or blaze king cat dry...as far as anecdotal evidence..if it has bark on it and its not split, it will take an extra year for me to consider seasoned. And if it takes two years to season, then its probably worm food.
The thing is size matters, not the bark. My firewood stacks contain slabbed rounds that were up to 12" wide, contains small rounds not split up to 5" diameter, limb wood rounds, rounds that were split too fine. My wood is dry and burns well and only a year old. Been done that way long before my time. Up here we traditionally had attached wood sheds as big as one door garages stuffed with wood for kitchens, plus basements stuffed with furnace wood. A good many woodsheds became garages in late years. I won't freeze to death. ;D
Wood dries fast from the end grain, for the first ~6" or so anyway. So 12" long rounds will dry at a useful rate. Would be a bit faster if they where split where you had the extra surface area of the split sides. But over ~12" they will be slower drying, up to a full length log that might take years to dry.
My old neighbour didn't seem to like splitting wood. He would slice his firewood up into 6" cookies, and line them up to dry along the top of a wall. Because of all the end grain they dried pretty fast (couple of months). Must have worked as he did it every year...
Ian
Yeah, by 12" slabbed round I mean a round that was 12" wide, split in two. And yes wood dries quickest on the end grain, that's the natural flow of free water, so it's gonna. And yes also talking bound water being lost. Non-the-less it all comes down to size, not about the bark. Heck, I never had dry firewood that the bark wasn't falling off and big deep checks.Helps to stack your wood in a heated (drying) environment and not out in the rain and snow. ;D
Sh green splits Ash dry will knock the tire out of you. I can kiln dry Ash in one night if it's split.
I never expected a revitalization of this old thread, but I do enjoy the topic.
angelo c-
I think you're right, wood drys differently in different parts of the country, with the obvious variables as to how it's treated in each area. The general rule, as learned here, is that oak takes 2 years to dry. What I have found in my area is that, split and stacked in my shed, I can get oak to dry in about 16 months. My plan is usually to put up all the wood I need for the next year's winter in the fall. So, the wood I have been working on the last couple of months is planned to be used in January, 2015. I have measured the moisture content and find that even oak gets below 20% MC with this method. I don't think that would happen in Maine or Michigan, as my Spring starts earlier and my Fall runs longer than in the north. Reading this thread, you can see that everyone tries to figure it out for themselves given the individual variables of their locale, there time, their space, and how compulsive they desire to be!
Quote from: doctorb on November 03, 2013, 08:48:28 AM
I never expected a revitalization of this old thread, but I do enjoy the topic.
angelo c-
I think you're right, wood drys differently in different parts of the country, with the obvious variables as to how it's treated in each area. The general rule, as learned here, is that oak takes 2 years to dry. What I have found in my area is that, split and stacked in my shed, I can get oak to dry in about 16 months. My plan is usually to put up all the wood I need for the next year's winter in the fall. So, the wood I have been working on the last couple of months is planned to be used in January, 2015. I have measured the moisture content and find that even oak gets below 20% MC with this method. I don't think that would happen in Maine or Michigan, as my Spring starts earlier and my Fall runs longer than in the north. Reading this thread, you can see that everyone tries to figure it out for themselves given the individual variables of their locale, there time, their space, and how compulsive they desire to be!
Not really- the compulsive bit. Being an engineer, it's important (to me) that the wood be dried to where it lights readily in the stove, and evolves min. moisture. That avoids energy waste, and nasties up the stack.
[quote author=CTYank link=topic=52878.msg1052664#msg1052664 date=
Not really- the compulsive bit. Being an engineer, it's important (to me) that the wood be dried to where it lights readily in the stove, and evolves min. moisture. That avoids energy waste, and nasties up the stack.
[/quote]
I don't know, CTYank, you sound a little compulsive to me! :D. Just pullin' your leg.......
Trouble makers, eh? We're all burning the same product. Some of us found out we don't have to work as hard at it. Others, don't like to hear it. :D :D
It seems I mostly agree with Al and angelo. Buck it, split it, stack it, or lose it. I will add remove as much bark as reasonable and cover it. In the round, on the ground, not in a mound, with the bark, in the woods, and I have seen my 30" white oak decline in 3 years. Maple much faster. I'm in southern Indiana, 40" of precipitation a year and humidity 50-90 percent mostly. Location is a big factor, both by global geography and local location of your wood pile.
Holy cow I just reread and I sound like Dr. Seuss and I didn't even have green eggs and ham for breakfast.
I agree with you, Yank. I'm not going to go to all the trouble to cut, haul and stack the wood and not let it dry as much as is possible before burning to get the most heat out of my work. That is part of the dilemma, though. It is warm enough here in SC to dry oak in less than a season, but not really cold enough to need a lot of it to heat with. Up where youse guys are, you need the heat, but it takes so much longer to season the wood.
Trying to dry firewood out in the damp humid woods is about the worst method possible. Bring it in under cover with good air and save your wood and the extra work. You still need to split wood, as in split it to be usable size and to dry quicker, not because it's round. Piece size is the key, not bark or shape. ;D
Just think of a forest fire, fine fuels are most often with bark, like brush and limbs, round. Just need a lightning strike, exhaust spark or cigarette....poof.
And by the way, now that we are on about fires, it was recently concluded with some research that airborne sawdust that is green in nature in a sawmill are just as likely to ignite as dry stuff. In other words, sawdust off beetle killed spruce is no more explosive than from green logs. However, there is more of it in the air milling beetle killed logs. FPInovations, formerly FERIC of Canada.
Quote from: hardpan on November 04, 2013, 10:07:50 AM
It seems I mostly agree with Al and angelo. Buck it, split it, stack it, or lose it. I will add remove as much bark as reasonable and cover it. In the round, on the ground, not in a mound, with the bark, in the woods, and I have seen my 30" white oak decline in 3 years. Maple much faster. I'm in southern Indiana, 40" of precipitation a year and humidity 50-90 percent mostly. Location is a big factor, both by global geography and local location of your wood pile.
Holy cow I just reread and I sound like Dr. Seuss and I didn't even have green eggs and ham for breakfast.
as an added bonus getting rid of the bark cuts way down on the critter count. many times I pull the bark on a "dry" piece and there is a bug hiding in the moisture caught between the bark and the wood.
no moisture no critters no rot...I am I am said Sam
Never any trouble here with bark on firewood and bugs, no bugs at all. Spiders are about all I get and a ground beetle once in awhile, both have nothing to do with bark. Both predators not wood eaters. No free water between the bark and wood in my firewood. No bug trails or holes neither because mine don't sit for months or years out in the weather. In fact the bark falls off mid winter in a warm basement and makes good fire starter material. ;D
Quote from: stumper on September 11, 2011, 08:04:38 AM
Do not leave either sitting on the ground. The maple will tend to rot and the black locust will sprout and grow. Black Locust is as bad as willow. Nice rot resistant wood but it sprouts awfull. Farmer say that if you use it for fence posts you need to be sure to put it in the ground upside down or you will have a tree.
This farmer will tell you that black locust will not sprout and grow like willow. I haven't ever flipped a black locust fence post upside down and haven't seen one grow.
I will never use black locust again as a fence post. Replaced a bunch of them last year that didn't even last a decade, some only lasted 5 yrs. Hedge is far far superior.
I do know that balsam poplar will sprout off a cut sapling that the government places by the culverts in the fall so they can locate them in spring melt. They will leaf out and the whole nine yards. No good for posts, but sure do sprout.
Quote from: Texas Ranger on September 10, 2011, 05:52:23 PM
Yes, they dry, and will be dry next year, however, I want a movie of you splitting that black locust. ;D
Yes you are right on that I have had chunks stacked for a year they show 14 to 16 percent with my gauge I take them and split them in side they 35 to 45 percent that is only if they longer they get up to same as when I cut them close to 60 percent.