Sorting your wood...

I only separate oak as it takes longer. Dry it on a separate rack and move it so its together in the the shed.

My stacks are built as they get cut split and stacked. Ive been lucky that I have mostly been processing ash, but there is oak and maple mixed in. I don't really process a wide ranged of wood types, so mixed stacking in that fashion really doesn't matter much. It will all burn very similar for me.

Jags said:

I RFID tag the splits and then inventory them in Isle, Rack, Bin fashion.

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I purchased a used Amazon warehouse and use the robots to sort and stack my wood. Then I can use my phone to order whatever species I want and it's delivered to my door.

Jags said:

I RFID tag the splits and then inventory them in Isle, Rack, Bin fashion.

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Reminds me of a (former?) regular, here. I can still picture his house, which sat mostly atop his garage. In his garage were large pallet racks of the type you see in Home Depot, and he had a fork lift for moving his racks of wood around. Anyone else remember this?

I remember the warehouse of wood guy! I was just lurking then but can still remember how green with envy I was lol. I myself have 15 cords +/- three sticks but it's all oak except for 1 cord of hickory and a little soft maple I got this year. Guess I'm odd but I separate heart vs heart sap wood and bark wood. If I get a tree that's bark and sap wood is punky I split it off and stack just the good heart wood separate. My buddy says I waste to much but my ocd doesn't like anything that resembles termite food.

I think it depends on how you come by the wood. Scrounge, buy already split, buy logs, cut your own.
Sometimes you get lucky and get a whole cord of Black birch.

95% of what i get is oak...so i just stack by the year. but the other 5% of what i call "selects" and they go on their own piles, by season. its usually a mix of cherry and holly. i do it for fun more then anything else, i could easily throw the "selects" on top of the oak for next year... i like to fill the stoves with holly and cherry on a cold snowy night though. now organizing your wood pile can bit more complicated, especially when you have leftovers and new stuff with limited stacking room. its important to keep a plan of organization for your wood pile though.

Jags said:

You talking about JP11?

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Nope, but he has one kick-ass wood shed!

I have about 95% oak also but since some of it is standing or fallen dead, I sort it by dead and "not dead yet" (with apologies to Monty Python).

white oak -1 cord good to go
red oak - 6 cord good to go - 3 needs two more years
maple - 4 cord good next year, 1/2 cord good to go
white pine - 1 good to go, 1/2 cord next year

Jags said:

I don't pay one ounce of attention to the variety I am stacking.

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I pay an ounce or two, but that's all. I don't want a big stash of cedar by itself, for example, so I make sure it's mixed in with the rest. But red oak vs. white oak vs. hickory vs. locust doesn't matter. It gets stacked and it gets burned.

legrandice said:

I purchased a used Amazon warehouse and use the robots to sort and stack my wood. Then I can use my phone to order whatever species I want and it's delivered to my door.

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By drone I assume.

I am a newbie to the wood stacking and I have to buy a fair amount of the wood I have. The stuff I buy gets stacked on pallets as is. The wife and kids help stack and they are not really sorting anything. My scrounges I have separated a little by wood type. Oak & maple on one set of pallets and the pine and poplar on another set. That is about as OCD as I am going to get at this point.

Sounds like I should learn to identify and separate oak. Currently, I have no idea what the wood is...I just cut, split, and stack.

motoguy said:

Sounds like I should learn to identify and separate oak. Currently, I have no idea what the wood is...I just cut, split, and stack.

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Usually pretty easy to ID, once someone shows you. I can ID oak with any one of several senses: smell, appearance, weight.

I don't necessarily "segregate" my wood by species, but I do stack like woods that were CSS around the same time together but keep differing woods "together" but able to differentiate between them.

IE, I have 1 long stack at the back of my property that is ~100 feet long. Prior to moving some of this winter's wood up to the porch it was 20 feet of Poplar, 20 feet of hickory, 30 feet of soft maple and 30 feet of Oak. All were CSS within 8 months of one another but the oak and hickory definitely won't be seasoned for this winter. So I pulled the Poplar and part of the maple out and moved it to the porch. The oak and hickory will stay, and I will backfill the empty spots with more wood when I CSS more.

motoguy said:

Sounds like I should learn to identify and separate oak. Currently, I have no idea what the wood is...I just cut, split, and stack.

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That could lead to some smoky hissing, bubbling splits if you're oak isn't seasoned.

Sort it? Not a chance. If I fell a variety of trees, say poplar, maple, black birch, and oak, it gets bucked into rounds on location. From there it is processed further into splits. Then tossed onto a makeshift slide which goes over a small cliff at the bottom of which I have my stacks. From there it is stacked on pallets and top covered. No sorting whatsoever. I know what kind of wood each split is and can pretty much identify which tree they came from. When I come to a particularly gnarly split, I can remember the effort I put into getting it split. That's my usual thought process on the matter.

Since I do the 3 year or 3 season turn around, I'm not concerned which species has seasoned quickest. It's all a pile of BTU's to me!

I keep misc. oak, with white and red oak in several sheds.
My locust is in a seperate shed.
Mix as needed throughout the season, saving the locust for really cold spells.
Hit 4 degress last winter.
Was 81 in Roanoke, Va (45 miles north of me) yesterday but headed to low 30's Sunday night.

And I thought my OCD was bad! I C/S/S as I scrounge it. Then have to look for the overnite stuff as needed.

70 right now.
No fire 2nite.