I'm going to start cutting for upcoming years soon and am thinking about the best way to set everything up to run efficiently. I'm on a small lot and storing multiple years of wood here is not really an option (yes physically it could fit but convincing my wife is another story, she puts up with a lot already). Fortunately my dad is 15 minutes down the board and owns about 50-60 acres of woodlot where we both have been cutting our firewood. My plan is to use a space there to process and stack the wood. It'll sit there for 2-3 years (or more if I can get far enough ahead) and then be moved to our house and eventually be stacked in a shed (no shed yet, top covered stacks). My Dad's process has been to pull logs into the "yard" (really more of a staging area) cut them to length with the chainsaw and a log jack, split and stack. Small stuff gets put aside and run through the cordwood saw. This process has work for him for the past 50 years and I'm probably over thinking things but figured I would see what other people are doing and see if there is anything I can learn to make things run any more smoothly.
Fell, limb, buck, load, offload, split, stack season, to shed, to house, to stove, to garden. My process : the 14 times I handle fire wood, tree to ashes | Firewood Hoarders Club
Sounds like you've got a process that works. The only comment I'd make, is that I like having my stacks close to the house. Both for ease of access in the winter time, and to keep a close eye on them - in order to deter thieves, and just to admire my hard work. It might be easier to convince your wife to keep more around the house, if you stack it real nice.
Sounds like your dad has things pretty well figured out, especially after 50 yrs of doing it. Doing everything in one area is the way to go. When you need wood for the winter, bring 3 cords (or whatever you need) over to your place in the fall, that would be the ticket.
I skid the logs onto my landing and stack them until I get at least 7 cords. From there I block it all in place all at once. Once all is blocked I split into a trailer, gator or bucket and take it directly to where it will land until I burn it. If i get a little ahead, I will stack it on pallets along the landing and will snag it when convenient. I have been working on ideas so that when i am blocking, it will fall directly into a staging area that will feed directly onto the splitter. Lets just stay it is a work in progress and is purely conceptual for right now.
Does not sound like anything wrong with your dad's system at all. You could either separate "your wood" out from the stacks or stack it all together and just take what you need every year to fill your shed. Kind of like a communal effort.
Once again, the perfect stacking of that wood amazes me. I cant do that even if I'm sober. Kudos to you.
I like to buck the logs at the point of origin, stack the rounds and split when I have time. When I first started burning wood, I did all of my splitting near the woods and brought it down to the house in a trailer and that was stupidly inefficient. It didn't take me long to figure out that splitting on the pavement near the house was the best way to go. It's so much easier to clean up and It's close to my stacks. This year I have a lot to split, so I decided to make a splitting station on the covered patio. It's walled on 3 sides, so I can split out there in any weather. It also makes it possible for me to leave the bark and debris on the floor and just sweep it into a pile. At the end of the week I take the debris up to the fire ring and burn it. When I split on the driveway, I have to clean the debris up every time I split because it's unsightly and is really messy when it gets rained on. I had been taking the wood into the patio with the wheel barrow and stacking it on the back wall and grabbing it from the stacks as I split, but on my last load of wood, I put all the wood on a rack and wheeled it into the garage. All I have to do is turn around, grab a log and throw it on the splitter. I'm going to stick with this method, unless I can find something easier. Splitting station.
[QUOoStihl, post: 392050, member: 172"]Once again, the perfect stacking of that wood amazes me. I cant do that even if I'm sober. Kudos to you.[/QUOTE] And therein is your problem; you stack sober! Try a wee drop of the dew of the roses, 4 Roses that is!
I cut my rounds in the forest. Of course you need a good trailer to do that. Otherwise I think we are doing it the same. Now a grapple trailer would be the ultimate toy,,,,,err tool. Actually more of a toy. It would take a long time to pay off one of those things which puts it in the toy category,,,,,,right? I don't need a grapple trailer. I don't need a grapple trailer. I don't need a grapple trailer. I don't need a grapple trailer. I don't need a grapple trailer. I'm doomed.
I currently fell and limb it where it is, drag out to the landing. buck and split, load and stack dry at the homestead. Everything's stacked and piled out of view from the road,(behind the garage and storage shed). the boss lady isn't keen on large piles in the yard, but if it's out of sight when she gets home or the inlaws pull in, its out of mind
That's a great set up you got there. It's so much easier splitting on concrete then the grass. Pia to clean off the grass with a rake and shovel
That's a great set up you got there. It's so much easier splitting on concrete then the grass. Pia to clean off the grass with a rake and shovel
And when you're done cleaning off the pavement, follow behind with the leaf blower and there's no sign of any work being done.
Dad has been doing it one way for 50 years yet you are still searching to see if there are more ideas you can use. Good for you to keep looking for better ways. As for the wood stacks being unsightly (a problem many ladies seem to think) they don't have to look bad. They can look neat and orderly. We have several members on this forum who has superb stacking skills and one would be hard pressed to say they look bad. A little practice and anyone can do a good job, but it does take some practice for most. In our case, I won't let my wife stack because she is so sloppy at it. One thing about pulling logs to one spot before cutting them is that the tend to get dirt in the bark. This can ruin a chain fast. Sure, a dull chain can be sharpened but the more you sharpen, the quicker you will be replacing the chain. I also do not like the log jacks. I've found them to not be so helpful, hard to use most times and they also make the cutting go much slower. As for pulling logs, one can build a dray very cheap. I built one for around $10 or I think it was less than $10 because I used mostly scrap stuff to build it but bought bolts. Here it is and it works like a charm. Easy to load and unload and it pulls easy summer or winter. Our method is to cut the wood usually in December and January. We buck it where the tree falls most of the time then load it onto the trailer and move it out to where we will be stacking the wood after it is split. After snow melt, usually late March or early April, we then put the splitter right beside those stacks and go to work splitting all the wood. When the splitter gets put away then we stack it. Notice that we just cut some saplings or small logs in the woods and that is what we stack the wood on. The picture above had around 9 cord total. Hadn't yet cleaned up around the piles but sometimes I don't clean up as most of our wood piles are quite a ways from the house and can not be seen from the house. In October I usually move enough wood for the winter into the barn so we don't have to go out to get wood with snow and ice on it. We then like to leave the wood stacked for 3 years or more before it gets burned. We do top cover the wood piles but usually don't do that until November or December. And yes, I too have been doing this for a long time. Perhaps even longer than your father. Fortunately I grew up knowing nothing but wood for heat and also getting wood dry was all I knew and have been doing it that way pretty much all my life. Remember the 3 year plan and that should be everybody's goal; to have at least 3 years worth of wood split and stacked. Do that and 99% of all wood burning problems disappear. Good luck.
