Posters have said that if you buck your wood into rounds and not split it, it will dry very slowly, not nearly as fast versus splitting it because the end surface area doesn't dry it readily. Wondering about... what if you split a round just once, roughly in half. I wonder if it would dry well and reasonably fast versus splitting into typical firewood pieces. Each half would have one fresh cut side with no bark. For times you don't have time to split each round into firewood size pieces. Anyone ever tried just splitting rounds in half? Not sure, but maybe someone said it might even dry unevenly and get punky in spots? Maybe I dreamed that part, lol.
They say that moisture moves along the grain 10 times faster than across the grain. But moisture doesn't get through bark. So splitting will expose a surface that can lose moisture. I think splitting in half will help a lot vs solid round.
That's odd considering (except for birch) bark is a premium component of potting soil, used because of its water retention capacity. Half fast split rounds yields half fast firewood.
If I have time to handle all of it and split in half,, I have time to split it all the way down, and stack 1 wheel barrow at a time
What if you have a huge amount of wood to move out of an area and only so much time to get it out, and every hour you spend splitting, you could have been moving more rounds out of that spot? That's the issue. That makes a little bit different.
Then I would only split the rounds that are too big to move easily. Don't think a few days or even a few months are going to make that big of a difference. Store the rounds off the ground so they do not take in any excess moisture and if you can keep them in the sun. I even like to cover all of my wood rounds or split. Now if you were planning on using the rounds for tables or something else then drying should be as slow as possible. Even paint the ends so they dry real slow and keep them evenly stored so one side does not get more moisture than another.
I have split in half just to lift and move many times, you have to sometimes. Or for time restraints, yes. But for drying time, it just doesn't pay off.
Point one. If you need to move them fast then move them fast. Don’t worry about drying full or halved. There’s not much difference. Scroungers sometimes need to move fast Point two. If you want them drying while unsplit keep them off the ground and top covered. That’s about the best you can do. Cut,split and stack as soon as possible. Smaller splits dry faster than big splits.
I think this really depends on diameter of round. If they were really big I would split them in half just so they stack better till I got to them. IME stacks of rounds don't stay stacked very well.
I would move the wood as fast as I can. Only split if the rounds are too big to move. Once it’s on my property I can split it to firewood size at my leisure. Then when it’s stacked and top-covered the three year countdown begins.
I may be the world champion of being behind on wood for the coming winter and forcing it to dry as fast as possible. My observations; Wood dries most readily from the endgrain but in all cases from the outside in just more from the endgrain than along the grain. Center staying wet the longest so. Smaller obviously is better and more surface area=faster drying.. Whenever possible, strip the bark off. Depending on when you cut it, some will completely release the bark within a day or two. I especially do this with any Oak & Hickory. Even if I take an inch or so of wood with the bark while it's on the splitter and then split that into thinner pieces that work for getting it going again later. It's amazing how much water the bark keeps in the wood. So yes, splitting the round will let it dry faster than in the round, but again, if you're going to go through that trouble, might as well just keep going. Apologies if I answered more of your question than you asked..
See my avatar, I like round wood up to about 7-8". Sometimes I'll just open one end but leave it attached at the other end (on the splitter) but those in the pic are checking nicely at only few months. I'll burn them at 18 months to 24 months (no oak) stacked the whole time. Much bigger than that if I were you, half or quarter them, but then we're in very different climates for drying.
The more you split a piece of wood the more you increase the surface area exposing it to the atmosphere and so the faster it dries.
Hey Yawner- Good question posed. I was outside splitting rounds in my backyard today that I got last year but for one reason or another I didn't make time to split them. When I initially got them and stacked them (as rounds) in my back yard they were on the heavy side and were fresh cut, so quite green and wet. A coniferous soft wood in this instance. Today, probably a little more than a full year later they split quite easy and were light to an extent that surprised me, and only 1 or 2 of the rounds seemed damp on the inside. Contrast this with a tree that is downed at my in-laws place. The tree was a rather massive hardwood. My brother in law believes it to be red oak, and I'm going to have to take his word for it because I'm not so great with the tree ID stuff. Point being, this stuff is on the ground and a deciduous tree, notorious for holding moisture well. Gave it some splitting attention and the pieces were real heavy- nearly saturated. Wont name names on this one but someone insisted it would burn because it was down for a year- couldn't even get it to get part of the way there. Whoever I was with spent 45 minutes and trying to get it going and the only stuff that burned was the kindling, cardboard and news paper in the outdoor chiminea. There might not be a moral to this story but the point is- sometimes you can get away with not splitting it right away, sometimes you can't- there are the normal variables such as how the wood was stored, on the ground or off- air movement and sunshine and of course species of wood. The hard way is usually the right way, so under normal circumstances I'd say your best bet is to split that stuff as soon as you were able to- but in this particular instance where you need to get the move off in a hurry from where it is- I don't see any reason why halving the rounds for the ease of lifting and moving would do you any harm. I've been in that boat too... Other times I've driven a wedge through a round and got that to split in half but its still got some moisture to it so its not super easy, I might not really be in the mood for fighting the newly halved round all that much more, so I'll keep going with the sledge and wedge on the other rounds to open them up and get a little bit of drying going on those before I take the maul to them and get them down to size. So long as you get it split and stacked to give it enough time to dry out, exactly when and where you do it... I don't know if it matters, but the earlier the better in my book. It's all personal preference at some level.
I remember a few years back I had bucked a 16" black locust log at someone's house. It was down an embankment, so everything was getting split in half before moving it. Fresh split halves were a noticeable bit heavier than the wood I had halved a week before but didnt have room to bring home. If you wanted to store rounds to process the next year, say some of your fourth year wood ready for processing, I'd say that it would definitely have a head start over any rounds left.
For my boiler, and my holsen hauses, i cut 24" rounds and split them once for stacking. Ig it is a larger round,I will sometimes split a half a round to make some slab type splits, which help with adding a ring now and then on the haus, to keep the spilts leaning inward. It will dry enough to make burning better than cutting and burning the same month, which the boiler will do, but consumption is higher. Any bit of seasoning is a plus for the boiler, so a single split will do.
In this scenario, cut it into manageable pieces to get home, pile it up and sort it out later. If you don't have access to the wood, the size of the round, or 1/2 round, doesn't matter. Hoard on, WOT.
Splitting in half will dry faster than leaving it round, but not anywhere near as fast as if it was split. Sent from my moto g(7) using Tapatalk
I was just checking some Norwegian Maple that I gathered over the last 6 months. I split into large chunks for transportation and stacked when I got it home. Full rounds were at 40% whereas the chunks were around 30%. There were A couple bark-less chunks from the top row(more sun) reading 20%, but that was a rarity. I’m planing on splitting it all over the next few months and saving it for next season. Split in half would dry quicker, but if you can get it in half, you might as well go quarters. Hoard on. Oh, and “show us your pics!”
