My red oak privacy fence

Hey all,

I posted back in February with pictures of a big red oak tree that I scored from a freecycle posting. Well, I finally finished splitting and stacking that monster last weekend and thought I'd post a couple of pics of the results.

Here's the thread: https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/6788/

I ended up with a pile of 14" to 16" splits that is 64 feet long and 5 feet tall (right at 3 cords), and the best place for me to stack it was along the back fence. Viola! An oak privacy fence! My little Ryobi splitter did the lion's share of the splitting, but it just couldn't get through some of the twisted grain lower trunk cuts and crotches so I had to rent a gas splitter for a day to finish it off. I did manage to stall that thing a couple of times, too :gulp: I thought 25 tons would go through anything! Guess I was wrong.

Thanks to all for the advice!

Jason

I guess the pics were a bit too big to fit on the same post...

That would mean I would have to find another fence to line! We've got great neighbors, and have torn down the fences on each side of the yard. The only exception is the guy behind me. I walled him off for good reason, he likes to dump all his yard waste along that fence. It's not very attractive and he doesn't care 'cause he can't see it from his house. 3 cords is more than I burned this past winter, and the wife is just now able to park in the garage again %-P she would flip if I brought any more home!

Yeah, it was big. I have no idea how tall it was, because it was already down and had been taken down in sections, but it was every bit of 36" diameter.

I took all of it home in "liftable chunks" (about 100lbs each) in the back of my Chevy Astro. I lost count of how many trips I made, but I think it was about 10 or 12. Some of the chunks were basically cubes of wood, cause I got tired of sledgin' and wedgin' and started ripping them with the saw. There was no busting them with a maul, cause I think the tree twisted about 4 complete revolutions as it grew. There weren't many straight grained pieces from the main stem.

I think it was Henry Ford who said that if you cut your own firewood, it warms you twice. I think he lied...I sweat my a$$ off for about a month!

Well, that's going to be my ongoing worry through the summer....the pile seems fairly sturdy now, but we get alot of wind in the early summer and then again about mid fall. All I did was buy up all the culled lumber at Home Depot as they put it out, and laid it along the ground. Some of it is landscape timber, some of it is 2x3, and some 2x4. I did stack it in between some monsoon rains, so maybe it settled all it needed to already.

It's kind of hard to see, but it is in four sections, each roughly 16 feet long, separated by heavy duty fenceposts (the green U-posts). That should help some as well.