Big score (for me, at least)!

Hello,
I have a friend who checks Facebook Marketplace for various reasons, and forwards me any regarding wood. For six months or more, I've been busy, or it's been too far, or already gone before I see it. Well, she hit the jackpot on this one. I saw two black locust trees in the ad's photo, contacted the guy and told him I'd take it all.

Well, I get there, and I see hackberry, mulberry, sumac and four black locusts! Cuts are all pretty decent (not many angles) Lengths are pretty consistent.

"We're gonna' need a bigger boat"...

I get my first load on Friday. I make three trips on Sunday. I borrow a 4x6 trailer and get my brother in law for Mon/Tue. I decide I'm burned out for the last load on Thursday. Seven trips. Rationalize that I cherry-picked the BL but ought to leave some for the next guy. ;-)



Here's what I brought home.


I think there's three or more cords here. Since life is ridiculous if nothing else, I realized I should have taken the stuff from the wood row to the two storage places by the house *before* I brought the new stuff home. But, I didn't, and that's the way it goes most of the time. I'll get it figured out, and then I'll start to split. This stuff will be for 19/20, so all is well there.

Alright, since you're expecting something funny, here it is. After I unloaded the last trip on Thursday, working in direct sunlight, etc, 8:30 pm, the wife tells me her friend called. I saw her last year and she said she was going to take down some oak trees. They're planning on taking them down very soon. Feast or freakin' famine, eh? So I told her, of course, I'd take them...

Are there any internet courses on speed-splitting?? Evelyn Wood?

Thanks,
Greg

Ah, full disclosure. Forgot to mention I already had perhaps a cord of oak and sugar maple in that pile. But that was completely eclipsed by what I brought home.

My little 5-ton electric splitter is looking somewhat inadequate right now...

WiscWoody said:

Yeah that’s a real nice find...I bet there was some heavy lifting huh?

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I'll tell you what's crazy, I didn't even start my saw until the 4th truck and trailer load! My brother in law helped on the 5th trip, and we moved a bunch of those rounds together. The deader BL wasn't bad, but the healthy live cut stuff really had some heft. We decided to draw the line at 24".

On loads 6 and 7, I was smart enough to bring a hand truck and then life got pretty good. The 4x6 trailer had a ramp, so we'd get a big round on the hand truck, roll it up on the trailer and place it where we wanted. We put the monsters in the trailer, and the smaller guys in the truck beds.

I split 2-3 big rounds onsite with a saw cut to start the wedges, and a maul to drive them. The heat index was around 95 for a bunch of the work, so we'd do something for a bit, and then take a few minutes in the shade if we could find it. I was certainly running my AC on the way there and back!!

ZZ Tom said:

Nice score!! I really don't know where I'd put it all if I scored big like that.

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Love the handle!! I almost saw them in 72(-ish?). Edgar Winter was playing Gibson's Skating Arena in Indianapolis, and some unknown band was opening for them... But at 14, Indy was too far away for the folks to leave a 14 YO unsupervised for an evening. I sure caught them in 74 and many times since.

I "only" have an acre, but some days, it's the biggest damn acre I've ever been on. ;-)

FarmerDan said:

I recently got a good pile of mixed hardwood from a local tree trimming company. I was excited to start bucking and splitting the wood (because it was dumped in an inconvenient spot on the driveway! ) and ran into a problem...

Question for you all: if the wood's fresh, how long do you wait before you start handsplitting? I realized now that my experience has been with dryer wood than this new stuff. The few bucked chunks of wood I tried to split didn't "pop" apart, even though they were only 10-20" wide. They cracked, but a lot of fibers and strands of wood kept the logs from really splitting apart. I figure I need to wait until it's below freezing or until the logs dry up a little bit more? What do you folks think?

Cheers, Dan

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An awful lot depends on the species. Hackberry is very stringy and that might improve with age a little when it's drier. OTOH, Bur Oak is a joy to hand split, and the bigger the round, the better.

Aaaaaaand right after the wife's friend called about some trees, the young men that live next door told me that somebody's Mom was taking down six ash trees. I just had to say no.

Went to the wife's friend's place yesterday to see what they have, and it's two ash trees and one good looking oak. I told them I'd take the oak. It's standing dead. I couldn't identify the bark. Definitely not red or bur. Certainly more to come in the following weeks.

blades said:

You said NO? that is three demerit points per tree on your man card.

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Hang on, I have to ask my wife what I think about this...

gerry100 said:

just get the wife another 6lb maul for the other hand

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I'm not sure if I ever want her to be more heavily armed than I am...