I need to take a nap after watching how much work that was. The only time I use an axe is never. God bless you guys that don't use a splitter.
Welcome to da club Jake. Nice job on the video You are probably better aim than I am but, putting my foot on the wood and Swinging an axe toward my foot is something I'm not going to be doing. I have, seen other people do that.
After watching the video I wonder why you named it "How to Start a Firewood Bisiness" and not "How I process Firewood" as there seems to be no mention of a firewood business other than the title. Another good thing to cover would have been drying times as not every wood requires a full three years and if this is for starting a business, time is money. Also, the measuring of the tree at forty feet and then its girth, you never calculated how much firewood that would produce so that came across as pointless. Overal, decent video but I was left scratching my head wondering what it had to do with starting a business.
I use one now and will post my techniques in a vid when I get a chance, but I didn't have that luxury back in the day.
I would hope you would plan your next video a bit better too as you did a lot of stumbling for words and what to say or do next. Planning makes for better viewing and doesn't take up as much video time either.
I was informative and entertaining. How many cords do you process like that for your firewood business?
Welcome to the club, by no means could I personally produce a video, so my hats off to you for doing this. I suggest revising the title of the thread as I am currently researching just this and the video while cool does not deliver that info. Registering as an LLC or S corp, or in your name only, acquisition and depreciation of equipment, marketing, cash flow, gross profit, net profit, and many other items I feel are the business side. You have to justify X expense by producing/selling Y cords in Z time right. Secondarily, the business is volume driven, so understanding the incremental costs and means to reduce the production times are critical. Aside from a processor, conveyor and a dump trailer, I have researched and modeled all of this and answered most of these questions myself. Good luck and welcome.
I suppose I thought about when I first started selling firewood (I mostly do marine construction/fishing/on-line sales now till I get this blo n go off my truck in a few months) and how I just sold standing dead wood & scraps from tree companies yards that I processed. That wood tho seasoned all-right due to the circumstances I found it in wasn't getting me top dollar because, well, it was what it was. I didn't really prepare to start a small business, I just processed it and sold it, and people knew that, that I sold too. Basically what i'm saying is, I started into this stuff without the most important part... seasoned firewood and I believe that a lot of people do that... for what ever reason. Yes, if someone is lucky enough to have the pre-existing skills, a truck & a few tools like I was, they might get lucky, but it's not the right way to do it...got'a have seasoned firewood & know what it is lol. At the end I busted out the math for how much firewood I got out of that 40' section. Yes, it was a very basic formula for calculating cubic feet tho. I kind'a figured if someone was looking @ a 100' tree or something, if they had watched this video, they would be able to do a sub-concous recap of this video and be better informed as to how much fire wood this tree, or that tree would produce.
Few were likely to notice this, but my technique is 100% easy on the body. It may look a little awkward but again, I don't lift much and the tools (tho few) do all the work.
What's worse is that it looks like the video is sped up so that splitter is actually slower then it appears. There are plenty of videos out there on how to process firewood, which is basically what you are showing with these videos. If you really want to show people how to start a firewood business you need to start with how to obtain a sustainable source of wood? Then describe how you going to go about storing and drying the wood so it is suitable and ready for the customer to burn when they receive it, and while you are at it you could run the numbers of how much you wood you'd have to cut and process and deliver to receive X amount of dollars, and Y how long (in labor hours) it takes to make that, and what the approximate overhead in expenses one could expect. X - Y = income Of course if you can accurately put these figures together you'd turn most people off starting a firewood business.
