The Daily Firewood Picture Thread

[jimbarry]

I'm looking to do this but with a small machine, if that's even possible. I like chainsaw work and bucking up logs but when I am staring at a pile that is 150 cord of logs I get back spasms  Are there smaller units out there?

Firewood the easy way - YouTube

This is more like it as that's about the size of ex I have but the grapple arms seem kinda small. Looking to handle between 4" and 20" diameter. If that's even a possibility.

Naarva S23 stroke harvester in excavator - S23-sykeharvesteri kaivinkoneessa - YouTube

[beenthere]

Part of this skidsteer attachment might work for you... with or without the splitter feature.

Southside added a similar link in the other thread started on this question from JimBarry

Wood splitter C&C Equipment Bobcat T190 Skid steer attachment 812-336-2894 Processor - YouTube

[SwampDonkey]

I see one on a skidsteer mount like beenthere's post. Hahn machinery. They've got two models. Comes out of Minnesota.

https://www.hahnmachinery.com

[Al_Smith]

My dad cut firewood until he was over 80 but that McCulloch Pm 610 got a little too heavy for him .I had a couple 3 cubers I sent out for him .Like myself he had three sources of heat, gas, electric base board and the insert .He only cut about 2 cords a year by then .

[SwampDonkey]

I cut 8-10 cords here Al. I will slow down to probably 5 or 6 cords in 10 years and just use electric in fall and spring. Gas or stove oil up here isn't even an option unless you're a millionaire. $2000/month plus, in the deep cold of winter, ain't happening. Electric would run $3-400/month, like 1-1/2 cord of wood and don't have to handle it. :D By the time I am 70 or 75 I'll have wood as a backup plan for outages, 5 cords in the firewood room on standby. No power, no electric heat. With wood, at least there is convection and radiation working in your favour. :D

[Al_Smith]

The insert with the fan will heat the whole house but it's  L shaped .Without the fan about half the house . During the ice storm of several years ago I ran on a generator for 4 days .We had nearly everything ,TV,micro wave, two refrigerators , coffee maker etc .Slept in the living room so I could hear if the generator ran out of gas .It went through about 4 gallons in 8 hours and that was when gasoline was around a dollar a gallon .That would be rather costly at todays prices .

[bitternut]

My first house had a oil fired hot water heater and baseboard heat. Fuel oil was 15 cents a gallon which included free burner cleaning every fall and free insurance on the zone valves and circulator pump. Was a good system and cheap heat.

My current home was all electric heat, hot water heater, dryer, and kitchen stove. My electric bill was substantial. Got fed up with the cost and went to all propane which for a few years was pretty reasonable. Then propane got a little pricey so I bought my own tank which got me a price reduction. Along came our purchase of some wooded land and the purchase of a Lopi wood stove insert for the fireplace. The wood stove heated the house so well that my propane furnace only runs on rare occassions but I still need propane for the dryer, water heater, and kitchen stove. My propane use seems to run about 200 gallons or so a year. This year the fall tank top off was $2.60/ gallon.

Since we own 220 acres of woods and this summers timber sale was just under 1000 trees it looks like I will be cutting, splitting, stacking 3-4 full cord annualy for as long as I am able.

Maybe I should install a solar system and convert every thing back to electric. Have to keep the Lopi of course for power outages. Either that or entice the grandkids to keep me supplied with wood. :laugh:

[beenthere]

bitternut
My first home had an oil boiler furnace and also the price per gallon was 15.8 ¢. 1968. 

Job I had was around $2/hour raising four kids. The good Lord helped out a lot, I'm thinking. 

[Al_Smith]

Since it's been mentioned I also have a glass front Lopi insert ,circa early 80's .From what I can figure it's rated for 55,000 btu which is more than enough for 2100 square feet .Danged thing is built like a battle ship and heavy as lead because I have moved it .Plate steel and fire brick lined it should out last me .I have however replaced the door gaskets a few times .Wide open you could forge a horse shoe in it .

[SwampDonkey]

Mom and dad were in a 4 day outage from an ice storm around winter 2006-2007. Had to have been then because that was the only winter in recent memory we never had snow, it came as ice and rain all winter. But all they had was a propane fireplace as a back up and no generator. It was a cold 4 days with no way to push propane heat 38 feet to the opposite end of the house, let alone around the corner to the kitchen or even the basement. It wasn't frigid cold, but if it were stuff would have froze. I think it was in the 30's F and in March. All they had was heat pump and electric furnace as regular heat, so that didn't work. I've had a generator here at the new place from day one and it's wired for it. Can't run hot water tank or oven, but I can boil water, freezers and fridge, draw water from the well, lights, cook on top of a mini stove, got phone (if a tree or ice doesn't take the line down) and internet (if the towers don't come crashing down in ice). You can actually run phone off your internet now instead of a land line if you want. Of course there is cell, but we don't have good cell coverage here even though we are within 10 clicks of 3 towers, one is in the US, 2 others behind big hills. No good to us. You might get 1 bar and it fades in and out. Think of Jeff at the UP cabin. :D What gets everyone's goat around here is the cell coverage follows the 4-lane, the residences out from the 4-lane don't mean anything to them. It's been brought up several times, but the CRTC does not put regulations in place to enforce any standard of coverage or even time frame to get it back on line during a disaster. CRTC is like your FCC.

One of them posts to ramble on. :D :D :D

I looked at dryer costs for laundry running off electric, it only cost me $5 a month, run 4 times a month on average. So I said good, no need to carry clothes to a line or put in any fancy expensive $$ money savings device. $5 is cheap convenience. If I lost power for an extended period, all I need do is bring out the dry rack that will hold a week's laundry. Either outside or beside the stove. :D

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, and back then beenthere, one income was suffice to support a family and today 2 incomes is often just scraping by. For context, the price to sell pulp for the last 30 years has been around $100-120 a cord, stumpage has remained at around $30, hardly a change. Price of firewood went from $125 to $350 or more a cord. My grandfather on a pension could buy a brand new F150 every 2 years with cash.

[Al_Smith]

Well unless you live in Key West you have  heat of some kind .When this house was built,1973 radiant electric was very popular until they jacked the price of electricity .Then it was natural gas or profane, er propane .Fuel oil went out a long time ago .That stuff was a pain in the behind .
The big old farm house I grew up in had stoker fed coal to the tune of 12 tons a year and I shoveled every bit of it .Later changed to natural gas forced air and recently to 95 % condensing furnace .So things evolve as time marches on .
As I've said before I have three sources of heat ,propane ,electric or the insert .With the insert if you can get the fire started  you will have heat but you have to tend the fire to keep it going .

[SwampDonkey]

Coal was never a thing here in residences out in the country. I think places like Montreal or Toronto in 'upper Canada' had coal. I still bet most used wood because they're surrounded my millions of acres of maple woods. :D Even today, travel from Montreal to Ottawa, woods woods woods for every mile, pretty much just maple, then boom here you are in the next city. :D Around these parts, it was way more convenient to go get some firewood off the woodlot. And it was within feet or yards of a house not several miles it would be by train or something. Everyone had a horse, a bucksaw and an axe. And many had a whole family's worth a free labour. ;D

[Al_Smith]

You have to take in consideration what the location is .In Ohio , Kentucky, West Virginia .Pa  and Virginia they had both deep mines plus coal fields galore .Most of it is still there .Years ago fire wood might only be used in the country but not so much in urban areas .When and if more friendly methods such a natural gas came along they used it .
Fuel oil might have been used in the country along with "bottle gas ", propane for kitchen stoves .Water heaters in some cases .In those days I never saw the 500 gallon tanks used today .Fact my grandmother who lived to 94 and split wood until she was over 80 had bottle gas but heated that farm house with two wood and coal stoves .Firewood ,some times corn cobs and lump Ohio coal for the night .That coal, a dump truck load only cost her maybe 8 dollars a ton and might last her 3 years ,late 50's early 60's . 

 

[SwampDonkey]

NB has lots of coal, in fact one mine was used going back 400 years. Only reason it isn't now is due to the 'climate movement'. But that mine was far from here and most likely train coal when trains came along. Before that it was likely for forges and not huge amounts mined in the early times. The local steel smelter 30 miles away in the 18 hundreds was fed by wood with horse drawn wagons. And was as good as any steel at the time. Coal was a local thing back in the day, if it was 100 miles away at the far corners, it never benefited the family in the boonies. No practical way to get it. I've never heard of any horse or mule drawn coal trains. Only shipping on the river was the steamers, but that was short lived and just before the trains.

[jimbarry]

... The local steel smelter 30 miles away in the 18 hundreds was fed by wood with horse drawn wagons. ...

I don't know which question I have is more important.
You were born in the 18 hundreds?
The smelter was fed your wood ... and wagons too?
I'll stop horsing around now

[Al_Smith]

They have played this fuel stuff like a political foot ball for decades .You  had cheap fuel oil then it turned into gold .Cut rate all electric homes then jacked the price .Plenty of gas then out of the clear blue they ran out or so they said .Now they have so much it should be cheap, guess again it's not.
During the 70's and 80's came a resurgence of wood burning .Every little shop who could weld did. All kinds of wood stoves and every one was the best on the market or so they said The trees grown up in fence rows got cut up and not so much later  the fences were removed and 40 acres fields almost over night turned into 160 acres .They were trying to change NW Ohio into Kansas and nearly did .The mighty D8 Caterpillars did a number on the 10 acre woods every where .No more squirrel hunting ,gone . Fact just recently I saved 5 acres of fine big oaks from the loggers and house builders but it cost me dearly .As long as I'm above ground nobody will  cut them except me and only then if they become a hazard. On the other hand I have a life time of firewood all 500 feet from the house and never cut a live tree .More times than not the wind puts them on the ground and I cut them up .

[SwampDonkey]

Read it again Jim. My mouse has powerful clicks. :D :D

[Northern hills]

Cleaning up maples in the sugarbush downed by May's dericho, lost about 50 taps.

 

[jimbarry]

Hauling out of a mature stand.



 

[jimbarry]

 

[SwampDonkey]

Be hauling in today with the pick up to keep building the wood pile. :D

[jimbarry]

 

 

2 cord of mixed hardwood, 14" long. Moisture content start 31.4%. 5 days drying, finished at 20.2% MC.

[Big_eddy]

We did okay today. Was heading out to deliver to our last firewood customer of the year, and saw our arborist neighbour pulling into his yard with a trailer load of blocks. Waved as we passed. Dropped our load and on the way home, his trailer was out by the road with a free firewood sign on it. We had the trailer on, so stopped and transferred everything from his to ours, and arrived back home with about 1/2 cord of hard maple blocks. I don't normally seek out "free" firewood, but this was too easy and it was already blocked. 

[jimbarry]

 

 

 

 

From this to that
2 people
5 hours
256 cu ft of 14" hardwood