When do you begin gathering wood for the next burn season?

paul bunion said:

The game works out a little different here. You just about can order what you want, a la carte. My log length guy has been good to me for a long time. He has convinced me to take half loads at a time as it is a bit easier just to not be buried in it. No oversized monsters. Part of that probably goes into the fact that my 'dump' is open on Saturday and I'm only 4 miles from his yard. And I am much closer than the dumps that are not open on Saturday. I have another guy who unloads his pickup in my yard. He doesn't like giving me the crotches. 'You don't want to waste your time trying to split that, I'll give you another load of clear wood' he says.

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hey if you've got a tree guy willing to separate out what you want. And bring to you for free. that's a hard deal to beat!

yes you've got to work a bit harder on huge logs. all it takes it cutting em down to size. then it becomes normal wood. 35 ton splitter will handle 3ft rounds. but not worth effort involved. much easier to cut em down to size.

with a new Buck 91 cat stove .. wood needs has drastically dropped from 4-6 cords per season to about 2 cords. springtime when tree activity starts is when I usually chase down a load.

_CY_ said:

hey if you've got a tree guy willing to separate out what you want. And bring to you for free. that's a hard deal to beat!

yes you've got to work a bit harder on huge logs. all it takes it cutting em down to size. then it becomes normal wood. 35 ton splitter will handle 3ft rounds. but not worth effort involved. much easier to cut em down to size.

with a new Buck 91 cat stove .. wood needs has drastically dropped from 4-6 cords per season to about 2 cords. springtime when tree activity starts is when I usually chase down a load.

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A good trick that I was just taught for splitting your huge rounds, providing the round is in fact round and rollable is to put a pipe in front of your splitter. Then roll the piece over and let it fall onto the pipe. Having the pipe under will allow you to reposition the piece quite easily. A pickaroon or a pulp hook makes the final jockeying that much easier also. The hardest part is getting the natural flaw in the round that you want to split on into position before you push the round over. You can avoid the noodling entirely on wood that is willing to be split. My 16 ton went through my neighbors 37" DBH red oak without a single noodle that way. Just needed a little assist with a prybar to open it all the way up. (His tree service bucked and delivered.)

ironspider said:

i just started scrounging this summer, i used to just buy cords for the season. i split about 2 cords this past fall that Will goo in the shed this fall for this winter. I'm trying to find more wood to ready now for 2015, my problem is space. i have no more room.

how do you guys feel about stacking under trees? i have room for another cord but it's on the edge of the woods under trees and doesn't get a lot of Sun.

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Not an issue for me . . . a few of my stacks are under trees. It helps though that they are only outside for a year and then in the shed for another year before being used in Year 3.

I'm several years ahead, so it's a bit different vs. getting ready for next year. After several years of hard charging, now I do a bit of scrounging and spend a few weekends cutting off my land to just fill up the racks. Winter = too much cold and snow for me to work . . . besides it is much more fun to ride the sled then. Usually I get anxious to do some cutting in the Spring, Summer and a bit into the Fall . . . again I am many years ahead so timing is not such a big deal.

I have a very bad memory and so I typically take an old cedar shake, jot down in permanent marker the year and often month that it was cut, split and stacked (I have one cord stacks) and nail them to an end split. In the woodshed I write down on the ends of the rows the year that the wood was put into the woodshed so I know to take the oldest stuff first. A bit anal . . . yes . . . but it works for me.

paul bunion said:

A good trick that I was just taught for splitting your huge rounds, providing the round is in fact round and rollable is to put a pipe in front of your splitter. Then roll the piece over and let it fall onto the pipe. Having the pipe under will allow you to reposition the piece quite easily. A pickaroon or a pulp hook makes the final jockeying that much easier also. The hardest part is getting the natural flaw in the round that you want to split on into position before you push the round over. You can avoid the noodling entirely on wood that is willing to be split. My 16 ton went through my neighbors 37" DBH red oak without a single noodle that way. Just needed a little assist with a prybar to open it all the way up. (His tree service bucked and delivered.)

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rounds I've been getting are just too big to move even with a full size peavey. no way with a little pickaroon. for 3ft logs it's just too much effort to wrestle log into splitter, then rotate log, etc. vs Stihl 660 noodles logs down to size with little to no fuss in 2-3 minutes. I'd spent way more time muscling that 3ft log to split.

now if I wasn't setup with large pro saws .. I'd be splitting those 3ft rounds with splitter. have split many a 3ft+ round with 35 ton speeco, until I figured out it was much easier to noodle.