A BIG white oak came down on Thursday at my dad's in Hollidaysburg PA. My parents went out to dinner and when they came back it was down. No wind or storms. The base of the double trunk had a lot of rot and carpenter ant damage but the rest of the tree is rock solid. (This is one that Scotty Overkill looked at with me last summer and we decided since it was alive and too close to my dad's garage it might be best to leave it be.) There's gotta be several cords of wood here. In the first photo, where the trunk splits into two branches at my 16 year old son's feet, the trunk is about 48 inches wide. That point was about 12-14 feet up the tree before it came down.
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Looks like a few years of firewood in it.
Both you & your Dad need wood?
Looks like a fun project
Both you & your Dad need wood?
Looks like a fun project
Dad used to heat with a Buderus wood boiler but that was years ago when I was a teen. My younger brother has the Buderus now but never installed it. Dad builds a fire in the foreplace a couple times a year now so he's giving this one to me. He's even going to hire a guy up the street to buck it up for me. I'll need to bring my splitter and do a good bit of splitting then haul it home 45 miles away. We visit every Sunday so its just a matter of bringing along the trailer for a couple Sundays. Plus he has a bunch of red oak that came down last summer that needs cut up and split. So this is as good a scrounge as it gets ;-)
A home town/family scrounge.
Will work out great getting a load of premium white oak every Sunday
To bad he's having someone else to the fun part, bucking it !
Looks like a few years of firewood in it.
Both you & your Dad need wood?
Looks like a fun project
Certainly. Any way to figure out how many cords are in a tree like this one?
paul bunion
Minister of Fire
Cut, split and stack it. Said with sarcasm.
![[Hearth.com] BIG white oak came down this week](/talk/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lawandenvironment.com%2Fuploads%2Fimage%2Fdoh%25281%2529.jpg&hash=d5b162177c1671f3e42ab43b25a3d9b1 "[Hearth.com] BIG white oak came down this week")
wishlist
Minister of Fire
Season that oak Brian and you'll be happy! Love the smell of my saw cutting oak. 
Season that oak Brian and you'll be happy! Love the smell of my saw cutting oak.
Thanks! I have the 2013/2014 wood CSS and the 2014/2015 is in logs that still need spilt as well as a stack of trunks that have been down over four years now that will be CSS this summer. That load of logs might even last through 2015/2016. This white oak and the red oaks that came down last summer at my dad's are for the rest of 2015/2016 and probably well into 2016/2017. Maybe longer. It's nice to be able to finally plan our firewood that far forward.
Jon1270
Minister of Fire
If you assume that stacked wood is about 20% air space, then a cylindrical solid 4' in diameter and 13 feet long is about 1.8 cords. Of course it's not a cylinder; it will be wider at the bottom, so you'd need to treat it as a truncated cone instead of a cylinder, but that's totally doable. The crown, however, is a little harder to figure.
Hills Hoard
Minister of Fire
You can use some formulas for figuring but why? I just figure it after stacking it. You can do the same since you have a good supply and it is good that you don't need that wood this next winter. You'll get some great benefits from this tree and those red oaks too.
Just curious. And...Bragging rights around the Sunday dinner table with my brothers?
:0)
Paulywalnut
Minister of Fire
Brian you probably wont appreciate my saying this but I wouldnt let a tree company cut that. I know its a bunch of young bucks going at it with all that testosterone but.....
I had a tree company cut down a huge elm that was growing on a building. I did it for the sake of having someone who had insurance. Bucking was included in the price. They were told to cut 16"lengths and I got everything from 12"-25". On wood as nice as this and its on the ground. If theres any way you can I would do it yourself.
I just got done doing a similar project. It takes a while but its doable. And in this case the wood is SO worth it.
I had storm damaged oak trees that had come down with a bunch of other trees.
Your tree managed to come down clean without hangups or snags. You just have some really heavy wood. Looks like the tree was gonna leaf out so she has some water in her.
You could even leave it till the fall when there wont be heat and bugs.
I had a tree company cut down a huge elm that was growing on a building. I did it for the sake of having someone who had insurance. Bucking was included in the price. They were told to cut 16"lengths and I got everything from 12"-25". On wood as nice as this and its on the ground. If theres any way you can I would do it yourself.
I just got done doing a similar project. It takes a while but its doable. And in this case the wood is SO worth it.
I had storm damaged oak trees that had come down with a bunch of other trees.
Your tree managed to come down clean without hangups or snags. You just have some really heavy wood. Looks like the tree was gonna leaf out so she has some water in her.
You could even leave it till the fall when there wont be heat and bugs.
My 16 year old son and I were able to get started on it this afternoon. We got all the small leafy stuff cut up and hauled to my dad's refuse pile in the woods and got started cutting up the smaller branches for firewood:
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But I've got some real concerns about cutting up the main trunks on this thing:
![[Hearth.com] BIG white oak came down this week](/talk/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-B841bx2eqDs%2FUY74rS15bhI%2FAAAAAAAAB3U%2FWkk0oymSSYM%2Fs1600%2Foak4.jpg&hash=548bbdbbc0ce0be35c53d7a43f2b67bb "[Hearth.com] BIG white oak came down this week")
The big branch on the left is buried in the ground (you can see where its buried in the first photo in this post) and under immense tension, having been bent almost 90degrees but not completely broken. The huge branch at the top is about 6 or 7 feet off the ground and is being supported by the big branch on the ground to the right, which is also under a lot of strain. The trunk on the far left is 4 feet off the ground and suspended between the broken stump and the big branches coming towards me in this photo.
I don't know how to proceed with taking this monster apart.
HDRock
Minister of Fire
Blue2ndaries
Minister of Fire
That is a very nice feeling.
That's certainly going to be a lot of work getting it bucked up, split, and stacked, but will pay good dividends in a few years.Thanks Scotty. Do me a favor? Take a look at the two photos in my last post above. Any thoughts on how to take down the rest of the trunk of this beast?
HDRock
Minister of Fire
Start at the top of the tree, take all the weight off U can that has tension on the top, compression on the bottom , then go after the limbs that are compressed on the top,
but thats still kinda general , and kinda depends on the trunk end, I can't see the relation of it and the ground.
Take your time look it over and over , and be careful
but thats still kinda general , and kinda depends on the trunk end, I can't see the relation of it and the ground.
Take your time look it over and over , and be careful
Start at the top of the tree, take all the weight off U can that has tension on the top, compression on the bottom , then go after the limbs that are compressed on the top,
but thats still kinda general , and kinda depends on the trunk end, I can't see the relation of it and the ground.
Take your time look it over and over , and be careful
Don't worry, this thing has me scared enough I won't touch it without the greatest of care.
Here's the trunk end. Its several feet off the ground along its entire length. And its BIG:
And there's another huge branch coming off the trunk directly behind my son in the middle photo which is also holding up the trunk.
Its the one in this next photo running up and to the right:
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