I enjoy reading the "North Woods" genre web sites and read a story from someone who switched to cutting only cookies for firewood. Their purpose was to eliminate splitting and included a picture of cookies stacked on a wall around a driveway in a staggered flat pattern. After thinking about the idea, I decided to try the same pattern but with the goal of drying wood quickly. So, I cut two dozen 10" x 5"-6" green bitternut hickory cookies in March and stacked them inside, staggered-flat. At the same time, I stored half split 5" x 18" bark free EAB dead ash in the same spot. This week, late October, I split both the hickory and the ash for moisture measurements. All the bitternut hickory cookies tested 15.5-15.9% moisture and all the bark free EAB ash tested 16.5-16.9% moisture. Half cookies stacked in the same flat circle pattern would be an interesting choice also for a quick dry (split a cookie but keep to the two halves as a pair for stacking) Just another option to dry green wood in one season.
The "North Woods" poster must have liked firewood and splitting was more lifting than he could do. He did save some time moving wood to the splitter and splitter gas... I was only interested in testing for rapid drying which worked. I did suffer the "negatives" listed above when I tried cookies larger than 10" diameter. Drying in one season would save a lot of space too and some folks do ask how to dry quickly...
My firebox is rectangular and I put two 18" sticks in parallel over coals with a half circle over the top. I do not burn full cookies.
