Nice! Somehow black maple has stayed off of my radar. I was thinking maybe box-elder since it is splitting like a well behaved red maple, but I think you may be right. I need to stock up on wood that will dry in a year or less.. running real low on dry wood this year. I'll probably stop burning during the day to stretch it out. We do have gas heat, so although I always try and save money by burning wood, it doesn't make sense for me to buy wood in that regard. I'll need to get greedy with the neighbors' red and black maples. Maybe try to get two cords worth for next year. I think my cord + of locust is at about 25% moisture so far, so should be good for the overnight burns next year. I have a couple faces of mixed and 1.5 cord of white oak still wet enough to put a fire out after only one year. I sure wish I could get my hands on some Tulip poplar. Every time I check by my honey dump, it is empty. There is one stump with roots and mud of red oak, I think; impossible to split without dulling some chain on that mud.
Ive learned of black maple on here after i encountered a "mystery" maple couple Summers ago. Too bad about your dump having slim pickings. Miss your car hoarding posts. Mine is shut down til mid March. Not that i got there much, still fun too check out the wood mound. I hear ya on the one year wood. The main reason i shy away from oak. Grab as much of that maple as you can. Funny you mention TP. Area near me cutting back from power lines. Some is TP. Rare score for me. Stumps are tempting but cutting dirt isnt worth it. I was cutting some dead BL couple weeks back and tried to buck the last log at the stump and hit dirt hidden inside. I knew better!
You guys got me excited to stomp around in the mud. This was all collected in my hand wagon down the street. I’ll need to cut most of it down to size, but I haven’t run the saw much recently.
We're only here to help! Nice little scrounge and way to get after it. Some nice easy to process rounds too. CSS ASAP and should be good for next year. I hate the mud too but we do what we need to for wood! C'mon up here and you can stomp in the fresh 8" of snow weve got. Still coming down.
Thanks Brad; I would take you up if it weren’t such a drive. We were supposed to get 3-5” last night but it was more like 1” that turned to rain and then turned to mud. You know I was born in New Haven; it seems like a lifetime ago. I wait until the mud dries out before I break out the saw. I did realize I should go after the neighbors red maple branches first, since they are so much easier to cut to size.
Go after the TP for your personal stash buZZsaw BRAD , It goes up like cardboard( but burns longer than cardboard) to turn the coals back into a fire in no time. Grab a couple splits for the morning.
Really? I was too in 1968. I live in the next town up...North Haven. I hate the mud myself. Not looking forward to mud season and trying to hoard.
I will for sure. One of my customers (a cop) told me about the cutting. I checked it out and lots of variety to be had, but narrow road and some danger involved. The TP was with some chestnut oak (only cut it once in my woods) and they are nice straight grained chunks so yes i will be after it for sure. I like TP for its fast seasoning. I cut a CSS a big tree over a year ago and its gone. It was ready late Summer.
This maple is next to one of my stacks and go me to thinking of this post. Pretty sure its a red but the bark reminded me of yours.
The soft maple hoard is coming along, but slow going in the mud. I sure hope it is dry enough for next season. I want to get at least twice this stacked soon, but going slow hoarding on foot.
Stacked single-row like that you should be fine. I know some people that have CSS that stuff even in the spring and were able to get by burning it in a pinch 6 months later.
To be honest, it is not the best place for a stack, sheltered from the wind and sun by the block wall behind it and a few red and Norwegian maples overhead. But, I keep the wife happy by stacking along the perimeter.
Got a pile halfway home today, to the front yard. It takes an ant-lion to build a mole hill or something. A little hard to see from the pile, but it is very round. I’m guessing somewhere between 3/4-1 cord. Putting me at >1.5 cords soft maple for the season (last few weeks). It was nice spending a good few hours at it rather than nickel and dime-ing it. I was tweaking small parts of my strategy and I thing it made much more efficient. I.e. multiple staging piles. It is only about a 50 (icy) yard trip in the wheelbarrow, but there are a couple steep little hills that can be impossible with a full load slipping around on ice or mud. Rather than take a bunch more trips I’ll handle it up the hill. Tossing some little Ones. Still a bunch left in this score, 3+ cords? I got most of the small ones under 17” so far.
Ok have to revise my estimates downward. I got out the measuring tape and have about .75 cord of soft maple already stacked and .75 in rounds that I need to get to chopping. The good news is the locust is stacked about 6’ so that gives me over 1.5 cords. I only have the 2 face cords racks covered and I need to start shuffling the 1.5 year locust from the back layer in to the covered “on deck” stack. I also didn’t realize how much oak was in that front stack all oak except for the front little soft maple section, so I’ll shuffle the oak to the back rack and start stacking the soft maple high. I’ll staple some Plastic rolls over the long stacks sometime this summer. Who’s signature was about getting warmed 5 or 6 times from their firewood with all the restacking?
I had to leave some splitting for the week: this angle makes the stack of splits look way bigger than it is.. it is really two piles and heaping fire pit full of chips behind the first pile.
I was wondering if I might have a cord stacked, but I didn’t have my measuring tape.. only about 5’ tall so far. I split up the rest of the round I had on hand, including red maple uglies from last year. Only one hollow oak round left in my ugly pile. It is iron on one side and rotting mush on the other. I may have to noodle it in two sometime when my chain is already dull. The tarped pile has some fall red maple but the bottom few layers are fat white oak splits. I figured they’d take a while to dry anyways, so might as well stack them on the bottom. Now I need to get some more red maple from the neighbor. I am going to wait until the ground isn’t so soggy. And shift around some piles for next year unfortunately.
Making some good progress there! Every 96 square feet of face area (not cubic feet) of a stack is a cord if the splits are 16" Looks like at least 75% of a cord between the trees.
