Got some fir logs to split....

Earlier this week a friend of mine unloaded 15 rounds of Douglas fir in front of my shed.

They arrived in halves and quarters. I wrap my 9 ft chain and a bungee cord around ¾ of a round (chain is too short for a full round)
Average diameter ot the original rounds was pretty exact 28" with a ±1" variation.
Rounds average 13¼" thickness.
You guys can calculate the volume of solid wood, but how much air will it be (or should be) between the logs in a properly stacked "rick"?
After splitting and stacked 5 rounds, did I get a "full rick" or a ⅓ of a " full cord" in my wood shed?

I will post the size numbers of my "rick-stack" later...well I already gave you the 13¼", and my Fiskars axe is 28½" end to end...

Ps. The short 13¼" logs is because of the design of my wood stove....

Applesister said:

Those rounds wernt cut with a chainsaw. Nobody is that good. Did they use one of those feller buncher thingys?

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Stihl with a "40inch" bar...

Applesister said:

No Way!!

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Yes way!

Applesister said:

Okay..so you probably dont really have a question. So..uh...nice wood.

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Yes, I posted two questions...

You guys can calculate the volume of solid wood, but how much air will it be (or should be) between the logs in a properly stacked "rick"?
After splitting and stacked 5 rounds, did I get a "full rick" or a ⅓ of a " full cord" in my wood shed?

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Applesister said:

Those rounds wernt cut with a chainsaw. Nobody is that good. Did they use one of those feller buncher thingys?

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So please tell me whats so "amazing" with how these logs are cut, so you can't believe they are cut manually?

No "feller-buncher", or any other heavy equipment, with a .404" chain pitch or larger, can make this smooth cut.

This guy is not a logger, he is a truck shop mechanic. But he for sure knows how to sharpen his tools. It just shows that it pays off the have both left and right side cutter teeth exactly identical, in all angles, tooth length and cut gauge.

Applesister said:

I have your shepherd's twin sister. Shes my "branch manager." She's the farm overseer. If you want to come visit you have to check in with her. Lol

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His name is Kaiser, 6.5 years old. he loves swimming with sea otters...

Applesister said:

Hahaha...okay I looked it up...
Check out Averys forest measurements
Between 80 and 90 cubic feet of solid wood in a cord.
Your stacking is tight due to straight splits large dia rounds and square splits.
You might get 110 cubic ft of solid.

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I NEED 110cubic ft of solid, to make a cord?

This guy wrote an interesting article, and he found out that it takes 85 solid cubft, to make a 128cubft cord. That makes a 66.4% solid wood and 33.6% air...
or approx 1/3 air and 2/3 wood. If logs are 16", 1/3 of a 4x4x8 cord is a "rick", right. So we can say it a consensus definition of a cord, approx contains a rick of air...
http://northernwoodlands.org/knots_and_bolts/solid-cord-wood
That current stack in my shed is 13.25"x89.25"x53"= 36.27 cub ft
My 5 of 28"x13.25" logs = 23.61 cub ft solid wood
That makes approx 65% wood and 35% air in my stack. Obvioulsy I could have stacked it much better, but then it won't dry as well as it will do now.

Thank you Applesister! Just needed some "solid" confirmation. The "cord unit" was very unusual for me when I moved to US 15 years ago. I am used to it now, but it is the air part of it that bugs me a little. I am sure you can split and stack so you have less than 20% air, but that takes a combination of large, medium and small-sized log, so every air pocket can be filled with solid wood....
In my Swedish past, I used to perform log stack scaling on logging sites and trucks, it works the same way with firewood stacks, just metric units...

I wish I could get Birch here in the Pacific Northwest of US.
Not so much for the firewood as for the bark. The bark is amazing in so many ways. Roofing material, handcraft material, firestarter etc etc...

I know there is some birch up western Washington in the Bellingham Lynden area. But it is another kind, have grey bark, not white...but of course still good birch. I live near the rainforests on the Olympic Peninsula. Not really the natural Birch environment...
you know you can harvest the bark of a birch in the spring when the trees are full of sap, and it won't kill the tree if inner bark stays intact....This is very common in Finland and Russia. Finland has a lot of birch tree farms, and the Fins are the most knowledgeable in the world when it comes to farming birch.