Ooops!!

[AlbergSteve]

Chatting with the neighbour yesterday and he said he was going to take down a couple of dead cherry trees. I often give him a hand with wood cutting and said let me know when you do. So I go back to gardening and 20 minutes later I hear the saw start up and one minute later this ungodly crash.


Yep, dropped it on the shed! Damaged the gutter on the shop but the roofing wasn't damaged. It's amazing how loud those plastic sheds are when they explode.

The good news is I got a load of cherry out of it.

 

[Woodsplitter67]

sweet.. love cherry... that's not your shed.. correct

 

[Diabel]

At least your weather is nice!

 

[AlbergSteve]

Nope, not my shed and the weather's been outstanding.

sweet.. love cherry... that's not your shed.. correct

I tried splitting a couple of the larger 12'' rounds, any tips? Let it dry a bit? They were a b!tch to split by hand, really tough to pop open and really stringy.

 

[RockCastile]

Same here with black cherry. IME, some sections of any given tree may be fairly straight grained and crack without excessive effort, others not so much, and often the difference will be visually deceiving: gnarlier parts sometimes pop easily while the clean lumber grade straight looking parts can be the hardest to get through. And I haven't found that the tougher rounds get any easier to split after they've sat a while. Cherry seems to have a turn-on-a-dime ability to change directions in order to grow away from nearby obstructions and/or toward a sunnier spot, makes me wonder if that partly explains how unpredictably straight vs not straight grained it often is.

 

[Sawset]

Reminds me of the joke about nacho cheese.
Can I have some, no, that's nacho cheese. Or nacho shed, but got the wood, all's good, with the wood.
Cherry seems to split better frozen solid, otherwise the maul bounces off.

 

[Simonkenton]

He made a boo boo. Yesterday I whacked a 36 inch red oak, it is tricky making a tree fall where you want.

I can't laugh much at this guy because we all make mistakes.

 

[WoodBurnerInWI]

Glad that wasn't your shed!! I've dropped lots of black cherry trees since moving out here to WI several years ago, it's become one of my favorites to burn!!

As for splitting cherry, what's already been said is true. Sometimes it'll cooperate and split, other times it thinks its elm and is a bear to get through! Those wanna be elm rounds get to meet my splitter, then they aren't so tough!

 

[Woody Stover]

It's nice to drop it near the shed so you don't have to move it too far, but that's a little too close.
That doesn't look like Black Cherry, but rather a landscape variety, so that may not split as easily, I'm not sure. Also, if it got a lot of light it will have more branching and may be tougher to split than a woods tree.

I've dropped lots of black cherry trees since moving out here to WI several years ago, it's become one of my favorites to burn!!

Good med/low output wood, coals pretty well, and of course smells great when you burn it. I like to get it good and dry first, though. They say it dries fast but I give it two years in the stack. That tree looks pretty fresh..
Some of mine was top-covered where rain could blow in the sides, and seems to re-absorb a little moisture sometimes.