I am sure this is on here but I never found it so sorry guys. I am wondering what the price of a bundle slab wood sells for or is worth verse regular tree wood?
I agree with backwoods. I have gotten softwood slabs before but I really dont they are worth the effort. I have no experience with hardwood slabs.
I got hardwood slabs from a friend who was making custom pallets for shipping heavy items from his own milled oak. Very many years ago. Bark on, which was a lot of bark. It got dumped off a trailer 6,8,10 foot long slabs for free and I had to go throw it in a pile to more or less get to when I had a chance and cut up into lengths as needed with an old table saw. A lot of the bark fell off over time and actually became pretty good dirt after a couple years. When he started to want to charge for it I passed. At the time I really didn't have time for it. Thin stuff burns pretty quick si I'd spend a couple hours cutting slabs to length on the weekend, stack it on the porch and be out by Friday. Rinse and repeat. I'd work under a tarp in the cold. It got old quick. There's a place about a half hour drive away that makes flooring from maple and oak and they sell slabs bundled up long lengths about a cord. They debark and the mix is about 50% edge slabs that are 3/4 to 5/4 "boards" and the rest is the size of splits. Probably worth the 60 bucks they wanted and I was going to try some to get back ahead, but now I have a whole bunch of dead trees to cut down so I'm not looking any more.
I burn all mine. Makes good shoulder season fires. It's also great for my maple syrup boiler. I don't think I'd buy it, I see it for free on CL.
Local Amish mill has a you load price of 25.00 for a pickup bed load. 20 for a short bed. All kinds of odds and ends go onto a huge pile, so the greenest is on top. Its a nuisance to load and unload. Too green for a firplace, but this method burns okay, just too small for messing with on a boiler If it comes bundled that would be better.
I burn it, but only because I saw a lot of hemlock into lumber. hemlock burns hot and leaves a pretty good bed of coal so it is well worth doing. I would never buy slabs though.
I was at a auction sale the other day and there were bundles approx 4x3x8'and they sold for $28.00 each material was Ash & Maple and of coarse that is what got me thinking easy cutting and can leave bundled to dry for couple years if I wanted
Used to get a bundle of red oak slabs for 25; Now it's up to 35. Was ideal for what I would burn at the cottage as some of those slab ends actually had to be split! There would be a lot of handling and re-loading with slab wood, but overnight burns would be harder to come by, but if that doesn't bother you, then by all means...
Thanks I was thinking the same thing price wise. As for night burns I would still use big pieces of normal wood if I burn in the wood stove. I am looking at installing a OWB in the near future so I would think in there should not be much difference.
Thats when I had first bought the slab wood bundles. Back in the mid 90's....had an OWB then also. I got a truckload for 150!, How can you go wrong with a price like that? I would leaved the bundles tied up with their strapping and just cut off each end one time, then another right through the center of the bundle while it was still strapped. Ended up with 2' length pieces and wouold load up that OWB for overnighters. Since it pretty much stacked so flat, it would last overnight. Just kind of a pain loading the stove....
Sometimes I see the oak slab thread here and they say its so so. Depends on what you get and what you have as a burner can be interesting. Otherwise it’s just wood to burn. If it’s free and scrap, you take that and you get everything you can! Just cut to size and burn! I managed to get some myself, it was scrap trim cullings of slab wood maple and doug fir. They made great burners for me. Some like it in their OWB to cut down on some cutting. If it were me and an OWB, I’d want to stack that as much as I could tightly. Heat tolerances notwithstanding (which is not a real safe school of thought). However if could get wood strapped together with burnable strapping that would hold wood together until you can grab it.
Saw mill across the hill from my folks, makes hard wood pallets. They in the 1960 cut it into fire wood size and dad would buy a truck load 1 1/2 Ford stake truck load for a dollar. Worked perfect for moms cook stove and to get the old pot belly going good in the morning for instant heat. Mid 1970's they stopped the cutting in fire wood sizes and made long slaps that piled up on a rail system they had and once the pile got so high they used a big front loader with forks to move them out and stack up. Dad would take his equipment trailer and they would load it for him if he left it for a couple days for $5.00. At home dad would fire up the buzz saw on the WD 45 and we would have a buzz saw day of cutting them into fire wood size and pitch into the wood shed. By the mid 1980 they no longer produced saleable slab wood. every thing was ran thru a chipper and blowen into a semi trailer along with the saw dust. when it was full it was taken to the wood fired electric generating power plant in Hersey Michigan. farmers used to buy the saw dust for cattle bedding too but no more. they made some prtty good money selling the chips and never had any stray slabs around. One of the cleanest saw mills I have ever been around. Al
$10 to $15 a bundle is a pretty good price. Some people want more, but I wouldn't bother. This is for a large bundle (2/3 of a cord or so). I had 10 bundles delivered for $200 before. Some times the lumber mills get backed up and need to off it. Basically just paying trucking at that rate.
