Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Bring On Winter - Wood Is Ready

I burn my wood in a Lopi fireplace insert, and short cuts work best in it. I cleaned up the remnants of a timber cut. The older wood, ends and oddball pieces are stacked around the perimeter of the pile to make them easy to use first. The main stack consists of the nice looking stuff.

We have a pretty good choice of wood around here. Oak, maple, ash, white and yellow birch are the main species I use, with an odd bit of ironwood, basswood and cherry here and there.

Somehow I think you probably work harder for your firewood where you are than I do here. Nice looking pile!

Yes, those guys out west don't get to burn oak.
I lived in Washington State for a year, right near the Idaho line. Everybody had a wood stove. I told the guys about burning oak back in Georgia, they thought I was kidding.

Nice work guys.

I have a cord or so left from last winter, I'll get to cutting and splitting soon.

This is how I git-r-done.

MontanaMarine: I suspect your pictured gear is used for just a bit more than fueling the home fires. A loader would make things a slight bit quicker as we buck stuff up before loading in the woods.

Wish we had some Osage in this country, but I don't recall ever seeing any really towering specimens when I lived back east.

On stoves- there was a Lopi in this house when we moved in. Worked fairly well, but had a shallow fire box that spilled a lot of ash out the front. Went to a catalytic Blaze King with a lot more depth and can go the entire winter without spilling or shoveling out ash. The catalytic converter cut my wood consumption by about 20% too. It's a pain in the butt though, as one has to light his fire and wait abut 20 minutes until the box is up to temp before diverting chimney flow through the converter. With our older straight stoves one could just toss in a match and leave for the day.

At purchase I thought the converter might have a limited lifespan. It's ceramic, was purchased in 2008, and is still performing well.

Simon,

it depends on where in the west one happens to be if there's oak available.

We had some in AZ, SoCal, and over the hill from us here in NorCal oak is the preferred stuff. Over on the coast there is tree called "tanoak" as the bark was used like oak bark for tanning. Very similar firewood qualities. Goodly amount of oak in central OR and WA too.

1 minute and the rest of you guys are way ahead of me.

I've still got one layer of 14-16" splits in the shed, I used only 2 or so this year. My firewood guy dropped off a bunch of juniper logs last winter, he's coming over soon to cut the smaller ends off for fence posts and cut the but ends into rounds for me to split later.

Not sure what this coming winter will look like, but 3-4 cords will likely do it. There's a 1/2 cord of ponderosa rounds out there to split, but I mostly save that for campfires.

I'm in no hurry, we have decent fall weather when I can split it and warm myself twice.

Montana guy, bending over like that with the saw doesn't hurt your back....................yet???