Cancelled plans found some free time this morning. Told my dad if he didn’t want to cut some wood I’d be splitting mine. So he came down and helped run the hydros while I fed. Started on the mulberry. Had to get into the oak rounds to make proper cribbing pieces. The mulberry is everything but straight. Couple pieces of metal I found. Chain hit it on this piece. Here you can see I’m back in and under this maple giving me 100% shade. Not that it was hot today. Then it happened. Return line popped off spitting oil everywhere (again). I’m done with this line. I’ll wait for new before I use it again. Luckily I was on the other side of the spray. I can get 3 splits wide on these pallets. I’m packing it in there as tight as possible. Nice start on my mountain of rounds.
Wow. That is a hoard. IIRC mullberry is in the top 3 for btus. Here's a nail I hit the other day that was vertical inside a redcedar trunk somehow:
I love burning mulberry and I'll take it every chance I can. Definitely up there on the btu list of woods I regularly get. I swear, every time I've hit nails or bumped up against one in a round, pretty much ends the chains day. I've seen guys mill though them though. Guess not all are created equal. Screws on the other hand, they do serious damage.
All this was bucked a while ago. Thread is here: Big ole mulberry tree I remember hitting metal a time or two when I was sawing but didn’t realize how much more was in there.
I don't have much Mulberry to play with...how is it on the splitter? Some of those splits look a little ornry.
It pops rather easily despite the wavy grain. Very little if any stringiness. I've only processed large logs once and they looked just like those. Im still waiting to get to my mulberry score . Most of those are nice logs from what I saw.
Nice stuff there Jason. Looks just like some of the splits from my MB score back in January. Think I have a couple chunklies hanging around to be noodled. Still waiting to get to my current MB score. Wanted to go once last week but guy said it wasn't a good time when I called. I almost always let folks know when I'm coming to cut, load etc.
do you want hand loading? Let me know when you’re gonna go there. Been a couple weeks since the last adventure so I’m ready for another one.
For the most part, mulberry splits easy like Brad said, very little if any stringiness. With a lot of these pieces we were getting some violent popping. Guess the waviness was compressing till it let go. One piece nailed me in the hip. Betting it'll turn black and blue. After that, I started standing off to the side till the wedge got a couple inches in.
This was my impression from the pics of the splits. I've had beech and elm do the popping before but not always. My groin area is just about paralell with the top of the splitter beam, so care must be taken in those instances. lol
Love that mulberry! I got some from my BIL. He didn't know what he had and I wasn't going to tell him.
I haven't cut any mulberry this year at all, cut lots last year. One of the best smelling woodsmokes out there, I like the way it crackles. And good BTUS. There's a few standing deads over on the farm, I was gonna try and make some really thin slivers out of a piece of it to try and make wooden wicks for candles for my wife. She likes those crackling woodwick candles, thought we'd try and make a few for her own use. Good score buddy!
Carbide chains Do Not like metal !! they lose the carbide fast it is not the same as a blade designed for metal I have seen many rescue carbide chains ,those used by fire co destroyed by metal . I used carbide chains for a while for cutting firewood they are excellent for dirty logs but the metal just removes the carbide off the links also if you are used to a very fast cutting chain you probably will be disappointed by the speed of the cut JB
