Busy Saturday, more truck logging. Pics

Finally had a nice day and a chance to get 3 of the 4 maples left from the stump I started a few weeks ago. They went down ok and came out of the hole without too much trouble. Our big leaf maple commonly grows up in a clump of 3-10. If you're lucky and they grow up under shade, they grow fairly clean and tall reaching for the sun. Otherwise in full sun, they are a disaster.
I pulled these 3 out a bit differently than the last two. Rather than a single line to the truck, I looped it around my block attached to the truck to shorten my distance and even out the pull. I put some logs down to keep the wire rope from cutting the angle into the bank and help the log stay off the ground after it came up.
Hope the pictures make it clear.



The 2 ends of the haywire attached.


My truck attachment


The first tug


Up to the bank.


Over the bank. At this point I should have put down a roller log to keep it off the ground.



Had to straighten it out a bit so it wouldn't take out my sign.


Skipped ahead and pulled the other 2 up so they would rest on the first.

112 rounds bucked and split. A few more days like this and I might be just get ahead.

Thanks guys.

weatherguy said:

Nice wood you got, Im looking at the moss thinking why is there so much moss on those trees, then I saw your from Oregon, you guys are probably used to that.

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It would be nice if I could find a good use for all that moss. It's one of the reasons I prefer D. Fir to maple, it's less of a mess, smells better and I like the way it burns over maple. But I won't cut a healthy fir down for firewood unless it needs to come down for some reason. That and the maple doesn't die when you cut it, it just starts over.

zap said:

Nice work Skyline, how much wood do you think it will come out to?

zap

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I'm hoping at least 1.5 cords. It's never as much as you want but they are all 18" rounds and I'm hoping a 3' high row for 42'. Probably won't quite make that. I'll let you know. It's just nice to get this down and split this early in the season for me. Based on my weighing experiments and last year's weather, no matter how wet the spring is, it will lose a majority of moisture by June and be ready for the summer to dry it out the rest of the way and will be ready for next winter. I have all these great "Wood Shed" examples / pressure of getting ahead and it seems to be working

Backwoods Savage said:

Good work Skyline. Looks like you have it figured out how to get those trees up the hills.

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Backwoods and Tfdchief, Thanks, I learn something new every time.

Oregon Bigfoot said:

Nice work! Big Leaf Maple is good burning wood, and splits easy (disclaimer: for the most part). I saw your post a while back about alder, thanks. I think I am good for the time being, but will keep that in the back of my head for the future, if the wood dries up here in the valley. You in the West Hills or maybe near Scappoose area?

I'm curious about the wood experiment you did. Do you have a link for that? I think I saw something last year about the time I found hearth.com, but can't seem to locate it. With this year being a wetter spring than last year, I'm hoping we get some good seasoning weather.

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Oregon Bigfoot said:

I see a Fiskars in your pic. How do you like the Fiskars compared to our 8 LB mauls here in Oregon? I've never used one myself. I saw one at Sears, but the handle looked too short for my liking.

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Bigfoot,

Disclaimer about maple understood completely! West, West hills towards Scappoose.

I have done / am doing a bunch of wood drying experiments, many of which I have posted. You can search posts by Skyline with "experiment" in the title and it should get you to most of my posts. PM me any time and I can send along whatever data you might want. I'll try to update my lastest ones soon. I think we all have slightly different ways of getting to "seasoned wood" depending on circumstances but I know my data would apply for you considering your location. It's all about the gradient between wood moisture and surrounding conditions. The last 2 days have been great!

I think the Fiskars work great and deserves the hype, but it bothers me they don't make a 32". All of my mauls and other axes are 32" and it seems the perfect length and they have managed to miss the target either side with the X25 (28") and X27 (36"). It seems a huge miss in a good line up of very well designed tools. I don't know why I haven't seen this aspect discussed before. I think the X25 = my 32" 8lb maul and swings a lot easier but on those "disclaimer Maple" tough ones they are equal. The problem comes with easy to split wood where half swings make the X25 dangerous because it is too short. I just got the X27 last week and used it for all this maple and it was nice but a 32" would have been better.

Bigfoot,

This post has a lot of the relavant discussion.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads...nth-ago…drying-experiment-cont.75940/page-2

I think I told you to shout if you ever need a hand with firewood. But just whisper is you need a hand fishing I'll provide the apple wood for smoking!