White Oak

[Flatbedford]

I met a local woman a few weeks ago at a party and we started talking about trees and wood. She said that she had a bunch of trees down on her 4 acres that she'd be happy to have take away for her. This was before hurricane Sandy. I finally got over yesterday to have a look. This White Oak is down in front of the house. Nice and close to the driveway.

It is huge!

Here's one with me in it for scale.


Here;s another one to get an idea of the size of the root ball.


I'll probably start picking away at this in a few weeks. I'm not sure how to deal with the roots. In a perfect world, they'd fall back in the hole when there's enough trunk cut off. There's lots of cutting to do before I have worry about that anyway.
More pics when I get into this.

 

[TimJ]

I'm sure she would like that one fixed Flatbedford........now don't hit and run

 

[bogydave]

Slow & easy with that one.
Some stored energy in several directions.
Close access near the driveway will reduce the effort some .
Have fun

 

[CageMaster]

ya there is a lil bit of work ahead of you there....proceed carefully and enjoy the btu's

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Steve, you have a lot of work ahead of you! Maybe you can rent some space to store the wood?

 

[oldspark]

When you get close to the root ball and yu dont have much weight left the thing might just stand up on ya, some of that "stored energy" to watch out for.

 

[lukem]

Agree be careful with that one...it is going to stand back up. Going to be more than a couple loads there.

 

[ohlongarm]

I met a local woman a few weeks ago at a party and we started talking about trees and wood. She said that she had a bunch of trees down on her 4 acres that she'd be happy to have take away for her. This was before hurricane Sandy. I finally got over yesterday to have a look. This White Oak is down in front of the house. Nice and close to the driveway.
View attachment 82686
It is huge!
View attachment 82687
Here's one with me in it for scale.
View attachment 82688

Here;s another one to get an idea of the size of the root ball.
View attachment 82689

I'll probably start picking away at this in a few weeks. I'm not sure how to deal with the roots. In a perfect world, they'd fall back in the hole when there's enough trunk cut off. There's lots of cutting to do before I have worry about that anyway.
More pics when I get into this.

That's gonna be fun cutting ,good pungent smell,and burns awesome when seasoned,I've got some white oak cut in 2000 when all I burned was a fireplace it's as hard as petrified wood,I wonder if it'l even burn. Happy cutting.

 

[Thistle]

Great stuff,smells nice either green or decades old.Can be a bit stringy to split at times,not as easy compared to Red Oak.Intense heat,starts quickly.

Looks like you have some room underneath it near the root ball.Undercut as close as you can to it,about 1/2 way up.Remove saw & make another cut from the top,a couple inches to the side about 1/2 way down.Drop a wedge in the kerf after the first few inches then continue sawing until it breaks free.That should relieve the pressure from any binding.Watch carefully & proceed with caution,you shouldnt have any problems.

 

[Flatbedford]

...it is going to stand back up.

I really hope so. This is right in front of the house, and this woman does not have the cash to have somebody haul it away.

 

[Hickorynut]

Flatbedford, good score indeed. In my humble opinion though, I don't think that one will stand back up. Appears that most of root ball is out of ground broken off. Would be nice if it did. Either way you are helping yourself and her out too.

 

[Boom Stick]

I had a bunch of locust trees that fell like that and as I cut them the closer I got to the root ball they tree would raise up nice and slow and make the perfect cutting opportunity for me....it was blissful cutting. did 9 trees like that. Nice score and good luck.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

I met a local woman a few weeks ago at a party and we started talking about trees and wood. She said that she had a bunch of trees down on her 4 acres that she'd be happy to have take away for her. This was before hurricane Sandy. I finally got over yesterday to have a look. This White Oak is down in front of the house. Nice and close to the driveway.

I'll probably start picking away at this in a few weeks. I'm not sure how to deal with the roots. In a perfect world, they'd fall back in the hole when there's enough trunk cut off. There's lots of cutting to do before I have worry about that anyway.
More pics when I get into this.

Nice find! I just split some green White Oak recently. It's heavy and a little stringy, but split OK. Good stove chow in 3 years. It's pretty slow seasoning. Red Oak is a lot easier to split, but OTOH I managed to get through this stuff with my new electric splitter, so it wasn't that tough.

 

[Flatbedford]

I'll be splitting by hand. I am spoiled by the ease of Red Oak.

 

[Flatbedford]

I guess it was more than a few weeks but a friend of mine and I finally got back to this last week. There is a huge amount of wood there and yes, there was lots of potential energy stored in it it too! Not just thermal, but kinetic too! We picked away at it slowly and carefully. The trunks practically blew apart during some cuts, but we moved very slowly and carefully so that we could get the hell out of the way if need be. All we really did was take the tops off. There is lots of cleanup to go yet.
This was so splintered that as we cut it, all the pieces were moving around and jammed up the saw a few times.


Lots of wood to get out of the woods. Luckily, the driveway is only 10'-20' from the tree, but sometimes, up hill from it. I'm hoping I can skid logs out either with my Garden tractor or F250.


Here's an idea of the scale of this thing.

 

[Flatbedford]

We didn't get close enough to the root ball to see any movement. I have no idea what direction it will go.


I have this idea of using my big old 4 ton come a long, a couple snatch blocks, and a bunch of wire rope to encourage it to roll back into the hole when we cut through the trunk.
It will be quite a bit of cutting though.
My buddy's 3120 and 38" bar will have no problem with the cut. We are just worried about what will happen after the cut. In a perfect world, the root ball will roll back into the hole. In a less than perfect world, it will stay there and look like crap for 50 years. In a lousy world it will roll into the little stream and dam it up. In a tragic world, it will roll down the hill, through about 50' of woods and end up in the street!
There's lots of cutting and stacking to do before I have to deal with this anyway. The good news is that she said I can stack the wood on her property until I have room at my place. That should be after a month or so of burning next season. Ultimately, this will be 2016-17 wood.

 

[osagebow]

wow - good luck with that flatbed, nice score!

 

[Woody Stover]

The White is jackpot wood, but you are earning it this time!

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Steve, I've never seen one miss the hole yet. They just seem to always go back where they were before.

 

[thinktwicez71]

very nice score ! good job

 

[Flatbedford]

I finally got back to do some more work on this. Between, working more than usual, a bunch of family stuff, and the hot weather, it has been hard to get anything done this summer.
I brought the old Cub Cadet on my new trailer so I could start hauling the wood out of the woods and to where I'll stack it until this winter.
I used the tractor to skid the logs up to the driveway.

No action shots, but this is the hill I have to climb to the driveway.

This little old tractor always amazes me with what it can do.

After I got the logs on the driveway, I cut and loaded the rounds into my little trailer and hauled 'em to the stacking area.


I'll probably have to use the F250 to drag the big stuff up. Too bad gravity isn't on my side this time. I'm thinking that this will be nearly three cords of 2016-17 wood by the time I get it all home.

 

[Paulywalnut]

With all our ingenuity we still have to revert back to what is the best way
to get a tough job done. You're doing a good job at that for sure.

 

[Flatbedford]

I've been back a couple more times. Starting to make some progress now. 2 days of skidding smaller >12" logs up the hill, made a nice enough path that I could bring my cart over and haul rounds up. This has cut some of the work out of the process and sped things up a bit. Now I can cut to length in the woods, quarter the rounds, and load them right into the cart to hau them to the stacking area. My little old IH Cub Cadet has been a super hero on this project. No way I could do this without it
Some of the rounds.
.
Here's what I have cut and stacked so far. I'm only splitting to make the rounds more manageable. I'll split them when I bring them home this winter. I want keep it in as big chunks as possible while I double handle it.

This is probably about 1/3 the wood that I'm gonna get out of this after I leave the smaller stuff for the property owner. I'm guessing at least three cords.

 

[Woody Stover]

Some of the rounds

Great pic! It's nice to be sitting on a big stash of White. I'll be adding to mine this fall....

 

[Flatbedford]

More progress last week.


This is for MasterMechanic.

This little JD lives at her house.