There are uses for most of the wood that you can get off a tree. Firewood splits, large and small, including uglies that you hide away in the centre of the stack so as not to frighten small children and elderly ladies. Splits are our mainstay feed for the wood burner. Noodles for fire-starters and packing fragile things. Sawdust to soak up spills, or to firm up muddy spots, or just to provide "browns" for your compost. Bark for the garden or for mulching. But there's a kind of wood that we don't discuss openly. It is spoken of in hushed tones in dark corners, if at all. I want to bring this taboo subject out into the light and dispel some of the stigma. I'm talking about the small uglies, a.k.a the "smuglies". Namely, shards and chips and stubs from the size of a matchbox to about a cigarette packet. Bits that fly off when you're splitting by maul or by hydraulic splitter. Sticky-outy bits that you trim off with chainsaw or hatchet. Since I split my wood on a lawn, I don't want these things getting picked up by the lawnmower so I put down a tarp and then empty it into a barrel when I'm finished. Gum (eucalyptus) is especially prone to shedding these bitsy bits, so I've got a couple of 55 gal barrels full. The Scottish in my ancestry won't let me discard them. Some species of gum fracture into sharp-edged pieces that are Splinter City Arizona if you handle them without gloves. At least if you're a delicate flower like I am who works part time as a hand model (Don't hate me because I'm beautiful). Any ideas on what I can do with these smuglies? Either how to burn them without too much extra prep, or some non-burning use. I don't have access to a chipper/shredder and even if I did many of them are little knots or other very hard pieces that might damage the machinery. It's raining right now so I can't get a picture of what I mean, but I'll follow up with one later. I think you know what I mean though.
I usually have a bucket that sits under the back end of my splitter, all those pieces slivers and shares and bark go into it. It doesn't take very long to fill up! If my owb is going, they go directly in when the buckets full, if not, they go into my firepit where they get burned on our next campfire. Otherwise if that's not possible I would throw it back into the woods, let nature run its course, throw in in a low spot.
Guess I'm pretty lucky in that department. After using the spplitter, 99 will rake everything up-after picking out the "save" pieces-and the small scraps you speak of head straight to the fire pit. I think she would give Eric VW 's and TurboDiesel 's a good run for he money on splitter ops!
I put em in milk crates under cover and keep a couple of said crates in the wood boxes on the porch. A handful of these bits and pieces get the fire going just fine. Any extras I throw on the trail through the woods over to neighbors to keep the poison ivy down.
I was thinking this was a thread about smug ugly people. There's not much use in life for those such people. Put em in caves!
A/k/a splitter trash and branch stubs. The larger pieces go into plastic tubs with rope handles, I keep a few around and they fill up quickly. I use them for the BBQ, firepit or to restart the wood boiler that occasionally goes out. I also bring a tub or two along on Scout troop events if we are planning a campfire and are required to bring our own firewood. Everything else gets mixed in with the bark bits, leaves and other forest debris and goes to the compost pile.
I usually keep a 55 gal plastic drum or 2 of these along with 2 large trash cans of noodles for fire starters. Any overflow just gets put in the outside firepit.
It all gets put into a metal garbage can and used for kindling. If I acquire to much it gets used to start the fire pit.
We use the uglies and unstackables to help hold the top covers down then they are our camping wood or early shoulder season wood....keeps the stacks cleaned up
I burn just about anything with an OWB, but stuff the size of match or cigarette boxes isn't worth the effort. That stuff just stays where it is. Once a year or so I might rake some of that smaller junk up and toss into a burn barrel to smolder away, otherwise it pretty much just goes back to the earth whence it came.
Yep I know what you mean. I get a huge pile of that stuff every year. I usually load up my truck and off to the local compost to dump them. I have no use for that stuff what so ever. A lot of the junk wood is bark or pieces of rotted wood that I do not have a use for.
Then you definitely should be bringing her to a well known GTG in Central Michigan. Perhaps she could teach us a thing or three.
Sometimes my wife gets ambitious and cleans up the splitter trash but since we split away from the house, I just don't worry about it. I remember all those years of cleaning up that crap when we did split by the house and that came to an end, forever! So now most of it just lays on the ground until it rots. If it does get picked up, we use it as kindling.
We clean up our processing area at my brother's with a landscape rake. Just make a pile of those chunks and let them rot. Now this is a 30'x 80' area- no way are we picking up those little pieces by hand!
