No X-Box for junior this evening....

my youngest son and his buddies are all into that Xbox live crap.....
Now, we don't let him do any violent games, no exceptions. Not in my house. That stuff is garbage.

Anyway, at supper I asked him if he wanted to go work some wood with me. The neighbor had a HUGE red oak come down during Sandy last fall, and the guy he got to cut it up didn't do a very good job.....he didn't have the tools to cut the big stuff (or he just didn't want to wrestle that heavy stuff) and left the big stuff there. So, I cut it up (and got around a month's worth of free heat out of the deal!)

Son ran the splitter and I did the setting up of the wood.....we got it all split up. Pics only show half of the wood, the other stuff was knots and gnarlies, didn't get pics of the splitting as it started to pour rain (and I mean friggin POUR).

I'll try and get some pics of the piles of splits tomorrow.....I'm guessing almost a cord of oak trunkwood.....

The oak was around 40" diameter. Used my ported Stihl 051AV with the 48" roller tip bar and .404-.63 full chisel chain to tear it up. Hit some dirt inside the stump (it was hollow, chippies had a roost in there at one point) so I had to stop, go back to my barn, and sharpen the chain one time........



Ended up with 8 big rounds, probably 25 to 30 medium splits from each round. and there were a pile of crotches and uglies, probably close to a half pickup load of them. Three years from now we'll be enjoying the heat from these puppies!!

zap said:

Nice work S.O., but did you get the room done?

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Weeeeell....sort-of...
I've been letting the floor polyurethane harden up for a couple days. The instructions for that Varathane said three days til normal traffic use.....I told the wife it needed 6 or more days!!

So she let me sneak out and play with the saw and splitter this evening!!

bogydave said:

Would that one have made a good milling log?
Looks pretty straight.
Primo wood!

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Dave, it had some damage inside at the very bottom. The building it was growing beside was my grandparents' picnic pavilion that was built around 1979, and they must have scraped that tree and broke some roots with the backhoe as the heart of the tree at the bottom had some core damage. It had some ant damage in the upper part (the pile of crotches and uglies I didn't take pics of yesterday). I wish some of it was good for milling but it will serve me better as firewood. When splitting the wood, the whole woods in that area smelled like a fine aged whiskey with a hint of cherry.......some people hate the smell of red oak.....I love it!

On a sad note, I think I threw a clutch spring on the ol' 051AV while cutting yesterday........thankfully I have around 3 051 parts saws.......I'll have to tear the clutch out sometime next week.

Applesister said:

How much does that saw weigh with that bar on it? It looks really heavy like the wood. And what does AV stand for?
Was the tree uprooted next to the house foundation? That looks like it was a close one. Did you split at the location?
The pictures you took of the wood looks clean( alot of nice clean splits) Sandy was last year so you are not counting that year as part of the seasoning?
I have a million other questions but...
okay...what is Xbox?
Do you seperate the carpenter ant colony wood from the clean? do you toss it or still process it?

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Yes, that saw is heavy with that 4' bar on it, that's not my everyday saw though.....I just break her out for special occasions......

That tree was right up against a pavilion, that my grandparents built back in the late 70's. They've passed on and the property now belongs to one of the laziest people I've ever met in my natural life.....I could go on and on there, but I won't....

As for the wood, we split it right the spot. Each round probably weighed 3-400 pounds.

When I encounter ants, I pitch that pile of splits to the side for a couple days. Usually, more often than not, the ants will grab their eggs and vacate the wood........it burns just as good as the other stuff..

I season all of my wood for a minimum of three years from the time I split it........I'm almost 4 years ahead!!

Xbox is this stupid video game system.......I have no interest in video games but you know how kids are these days!

Joful said:

Why do I imagine a little Scotty Yet-to-kill sitting on the rust red shag carpet in front of an Atari or Coleco Vision, ca. 1980?

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Damm, you're GOOD!!