Some Nice Red Oak Delivered

[scroungerjeff]

Just the other day a friend of mine began working part-time for an excavator and said he had some oak he had to pay to dump. I told him I'd save him some money if he'd "dump" it on my neighbor's farm. No room at my place. He did just that yesterday. Today my neighbor and I bucked the logs and split the load. Looks like we each get a little better than half a cord of nice northern red oak. Plus one sassafras log for start up.

Top left image is what was delivered on a flat bed truck that had a hard time dumping the logs since they were a bit crossed up.

The middle image is some of the bigger rounds my saw had to tackle. My bar is 24".

The far right image is what we started to load into the bed of the pickup. Too bad my house is a couple hundred feet away from the farm.

Bottom image is my truck and my neighbor's loaded with oak and ready to be transported home. There are still some rounds on the ground we can get tomorrow.

 

[Gark]

Very nice catch of oak, Jeff. Ya just can't beat delivered. Through trial & error, we've learned that r.oak takes 3 years of being C/S/S to be really ready here for great burning. YMMV.

 

[scroungerjeff]

Three years can seem like an eternity when you're pressed for space. We only have a half acre and lots of gardens. I had to split some bigger rounds to be able to pick them up and man the water just puddled around the wedge when I hit it with the sledge hammer. Red oak will punk if you don't split and stack quickly, right?

 

[Woody Stover]

Red oak will punk if you don't split and stack quickly, right?

Split and stack it quick! The sapwood doesn't last long. I just went through some Pin Oak rounds from a live tree, that were piled since last Summer. I had to split off a bunch of punked sapwood, and even toss a few rounds. I lost maybe a third of the wood. It might have helped to stack the whole rounds on pallets instead of piling, but I think splitting them at least in half would have been the way to get rid of more moisture quickly. From now on I'll split any live Red Oak rounds ASAP. I usually get dead standing wood so I never had much problem with the sapwood rot. I think that the combination of this live wood being bucked and then piled really accelerated the rot.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Three years can seem like an eternity when you're pressed for space. We only have a half acre and lots of gardens. I had to split some bigger rounds to be able to pick them up and man the water just puddled around the wedge when I hit it with the sledge hammer. Red oak will punk if you don't split and stack quickly, right?

Typically, oak will punk just on the outside inch or two. Don't worry a minute about it though as it will burn just fine.

 

[PapaDave]

I had a couple log loads that I couldn't get finished for about 2 years. The last 5 cord or so was just barely starting to punk a bit when I got to 'em.
I also put down some of the smaller logs as sleepers that have been sitting on the ground for over 2 years that just got emptied, and those are still solid.
Must be all the sand we have. Those will be c/s/s soon, and poplar used as sleepers instead.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Dave, you are right about all the sand helping. Many times we have stacked the wood right on the ground and will do more in the future too. You can get away with it on yellow sand and I know there is a good amount of it in your area.