Last week I had to have a big white oak taken down. I love my oak trees, but this one had nary a spark of life in it and was close to the house. Now I've got more wood than I can stand to look at. I've already got the next four winters' worth of wood stacked and ready to go. This will get me another year or maybe two. By the time I burn all that I'll be 68 or 69. Will I really feel like messing around with firewood then? Maybe not.
By the standards of this area and my experience, this tree was a magnificent specimen. I counted 135 annual rings in one of the biggest rounds and these are almost four feet in diameter. I've never been keen on hydraulic splitting or even noodling, but I may have to rearrange my thinking on all that. I have made some progress using the chainsaw and wedges, but I've got a long way to go. I actually like the idea that this tree, which has given me so much pleasure to contemplate when it was alive, may be the last one that I will disassemble and put to my own use. Here are some pix.
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By the standards of this area and my experience, this tree was a magnificent specimen. I counted 135 annual rings in one of the biggest rounds and these are almost four feet in diameter. I've never been keen on hydraulic splitting or even noodling, but I may have to rearrange my thinking on all that. I have made some progress using the chainsaw and wedges, but I've got a long way to go. I actually like the idea that this tree, which has given me so much pleasure to contemplate when it was alive, may be the last one that I will disassemble and put to my own use. Here are some pix.
View attachment 131712 
