I buy my wood cut, split and delivered. I get it in early May, semi seasoned. Mix of oak, beech, cherry, maple, ash, locust, birch. I get it stacked promptly under cover.. Been paying $210. per cord for several years now. When I started burning 32 years ago I was paying $50. per cord. My only other heat is electric baseboard. We have never used it. Still cut and split wood for out deer camp though.
I split the firewood with a Fiskars maul. And I whack lots of black walnut. Yes, red oak is better at 25,000 BTU per cord, but black walnut is pretty good at 22,000 BTU per cord. I am quite fond of black walnut and last year put 5 Nissan truckloads in the woodshed, along with the oak and locust. I like black walnut, it is easy to split and is pretty and has a funky smell.
What are you gonna do, chop poplar at 16,000 BTU? No better than white pine.
I melt down stoves with locust and hedge. Usually stack and fill 8 wagon loads. Love splitting by hand, but with the quantity tend to use the gas powered version. Tried splitting hedge by maul once, doesn’t work well… plays hell on the log splitter to. Hickory and white oak are good too, but I have more locust and hedge available than I will ever get cut. Oberndorf, the German company that makes Stihl mauls are nice. Fiskars did well, just not the maul feel, broke a chopper one. Nice 8 pounder and away you go. I noticed a few like red oak; I don’t feel I get that much heat from it, kinda like burr oak.
We have a 4 acre grove of black locust out on the farm. I generally cut and stack out a bit of it every year but the thorns are a bugger. It does make a good hot fire.
I have a big ash that just fell I need to go cut up. It’s probably 18” diameter and pretty straight. Makes a pretty fire with big flames but it got it’s name for good reason, bout 2 days and the stove needs shoveled out.
When a buddy and I used to fool around making self bows we’d burn all our scrap and trimmings off the bodarks in his dad’s potbelly stove in the barn where we worked. That stuff would get that old stove glowing hot once you got it going.
Fucque all that. I make an elevated V to drop the wood onto and I use the Husky 28" saw to split wood. I can stand and saw at waist level no strain no pain.
Sawing length way through block, that's how guys with man buns split wood ! Nice pile of shavings to get rid of been there done that, no thanks. Probably too much soup and not enough beans in your diet! Bacon doesn't count.😁
If you u was a man, you’d have your own smokehouse and use all them curlies like I do when I process this hickory for cold smoking pork sausage
^^^^ bagged up
😃
Don't just brag about it, send some sausage this way. 🎅 Yep that's the shaving pile I was talking about. We use fir and pine mostly. Not using pine shavings in the smokehouse!
Another thing about black walnut trees,...you can forget about growing a garden within 60' of one. I've got so much black walnut growing on my little patch of land that it's hard to pick a place to grow tomatoes.
I normally do 300 cords a year, I only use a maul to half or quarter the bucked up pieces so I can get them into the truck without blowing my back out. Sometimes I have to saw them just enough so the maul will split them, my shoulders and elbows can't take much more abuse and I am one injury away from a life changing event.
I use splitter, with an engine, then just laugh at the maul. The maul with the fiberglass handle hates me and I hate it, meanwhile the maul with a wood handle...we is friends, and much easier on the worn out joints.
Another thing about black walnut trees,...you can forget about growing a garden within 60' of one. I've got so much black walnut growing on my little patch of land that it's hard to pick a place to grow tomatoes.
This for sure ^^^
The tannins are toxic or some type chit.
My pops won’t let me saw down two walnuts in my deer plot. He likes his trees
Love my Fiskars maul and axe! I still prefer the feel of a nice hickory handled 3.5# axe but the Fiskars gets the job done. I stuffed the hollow composite axe handle with foam pipe insulation to eliminate the "boing" sound with every strike.
Most of the wood I cut is either dead ash or dead red elm. Axe for the ash. Usually don't even need to stand it up. Maul and a lot of rest breaks for the dry, twisty elm.
Has to be something in the water if'n you're splittin' elm by hand.
Elm is why God made motorized log splitters.
Ya, am working on some standing elm right now. I just cut em into burnable chunks! Homey don't split elm no more!
I'd run down to Home Depot and get a $300 electric log splitter.
says ts will split 20" logs that are 10" diameter.
I’d hate to have to rassle these up onto a splitter, 14” long rounds of green red oak this size probably weigh 150# or more each. I try to cut a couple big trees like this one every winter and bust them up and stack them out. They’re burning nicely in the stove as we speak about a year later. I enjoy cutting and splitting wood. 8lb maul is my tool of choice. Good exercise and satisfying work.
I like it too, bet it does split better when really cold. Ain’t happening here.
I split the firewood with a Fiskars maul. And I whack lots of black walnut. Yes, red oak is better at 25,000 BTU per cord, but black walnut is pretty good at 22,000 BTU per cord. I am quite fond of black walnut and last year put 5 Nissan truckloads in the woodshed, along with the oak and locust. I like black walnut, it is easy to split and is pretty and has a funky smell.
What are you gonna do, chop poplar at 16,000 BTU? No better than white pine.
Your BTU’s are missing some 0’s
Oops. Missing 3 zeros. The BTUs are measured in the millions. Thanks for the correction.
Love me some a good splitting maul. I've been using mine since I was 12 and designated fire wood splitter in the family. It just handled some soft maple from a lawn tree that was just dropped. It works just as well as it did back in the 80s.
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