60 degrees this morning with on and off light rain. Good polar bear firewood cuttin weather. Still using the same chain I ran on the first few logs in this pile. Unreal Pete! Couple tanks. Pulled the pile down with the claw and set up to cut each log 3/4 way thru, lifted and rolled em' and did most of the final cuts on top of the rounds. Worked well keeping the rounds out of the way. 4 hours. Might be able to finish bucking all the remaining logs tomorrow morning. Should be able to grab 2-3 of the smaller logs at a time, and lift them for cutting, which really helps. Sure is good having the claw available now & then as a helping hand... ... time for Ibu...
Looks like it. There's just something about a big pile of White... Must be the all-around high rating that gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling.
You could smell it couldn't ya... It cuts so nice too. I'd say the red oak takes just about twice the cut time. I doubt if the red oak gives quite 2x the BTUs tho... very lucky to have oak, ash and maple here. Good wood.
Hey, that Yellow Birch is the BTU equal of White Ash, right? But with this borer, before too long none of us down here will have Ash, either...
Most of the BTU charts I look at have the two very close; White Ash 23.6, Red Oak 24. A dry split of White Ash has got some serious heft to it, for sure. That's why I hate to lose it; Good heat with less dry time. By the time the Ash is gone, I have to be on the three-year plan with everyone I supply, as it will be mainly Oak from then on. The Oak seems to burn a bit longer, probably due to better coaling...
I still love oak. It's got a nice look in the stacks and it burns hot. I guess if the ash is gone, we'll have to make do with other great hardwoods.
12 years now with my little green & yellow Harley. The claw came about from a need for just the right tool to work on an old camp beach front that had grown over pure white sand. 18" of sod that had woody tiny roots intertwined all through it, with grass on top. You could jump on a sharp spade trying to slice down in it and it would bounce off. It was nuts how tied together that mass was. The beach was about 20' deep from the water to a berm with trees, and 150' long. The claw's angle of it's "grab" was all for that job. It worked really well. I could bite into about 24" of the sod, tearing it off, and the lower 5 teeth would slide under the sod, in the sand, and away that chunk would go, dropping all of the sand first. I had to make a wood road (old boards and plywood) to roll on tho, even with 4wd, the tractor would sink in the soft sand. Quite a project but, got it done and for a few years we enjoyed that beach again after not being cleaned for quite a while. Little did I know, the claw would come in handy for a lot of other stuff too.
Wow. You got a lot of work done! Interesting how the "claw" came about.. I could see how that is a really helpful tool for the firewood arsenal.
