Snow melted off so we could get back at it. A little delay due to a snow but we finish the rest of the splitting. Top is all done now. Not a whole lot of wood but it'll keep us warm for a little while. We'll do the hauling next. Bad news was the whole tree was what I call wavy grain. Laughs at a maul and I bet a Kinetic would be beating itself to death. Makes for a lot of junk and nasty stacking. If you've never had the "pleasure" of working with this stuff consider yourself lucky. We've had some that you can't even start a wedge and sledge. Before we had my splitter and couldn't move 4 ft rounds, we actually would plunge cut a slot for the wedge to start so we could 1/4 the round to be able to move it. It's really wild as we've had beech right beside each other that one was like this and the other was all straight grain. No rhyme or reason on why it grows like this but you can imaging how hard it would be. This piece was NOT a knot, just the way the grain of the wood grew.
Got it all hauled so we will burn the brush tomorrow as Dad want's it cleaned up as he mows here around the cabin. Had a couple of missed ones we'll work up as they were under the trunk. Going to burn the brush on the stump in an effort to get rid of it. Going to try an experiment and we'll take a poll here to see if you guys think it will work. I'll know tomorrow if it does so we will see. I dug as much rot as I could from the stump. In the center I got down over 2 feet so I'm to the dirt there. Good size hole in the center to start the fire. Stump is about 5 foot across and it has been completely dead for a year. Dirt/rot held a lot of moisture but the wood on the outside is fairly solid. Here's my experiment. I made a bunch of cuts through the stump. had the saw with the bar out and the head in the center hole. Dug the spikes into the center and pivoted the bar on a sweep cut till it broke through at the bottom. I did the cuts at the lowest part of the "web" on the trunk. My theory is it will be like one of the Norway camp log stoves and will burn the stump quicker. Do you guys think it will work? Comment below and I'll report back tomorrow with pics. I was kind of surprised as the 192 made all those cuts on one tank of fuel. I had sharpened the chain prior but it did hit some dirt at the start and finish of most cuts. Still was cutting decent at the end.
I don’t think you will burn that entire stump with just the brush left from the tree. Is there a way to increase the size of the cuts near the bottom? My thinking is that this would allow the fire to pull fresh air in from the bottom and help burn the stump from the bottom up instead of top down. That may decrease the amount of time it takes to burn it all the way.
Got to thinking and decided to do a little more to the stump. Plunge cut some X's into the wider sections making sure not to cut through. I'll fill these with oil to stoke the fire. I ran the saw back through the straights to clear them out. Now to build the fire. Paper in the bottom and dead twigs to start till I get a good coal pile and some heat. Drug all the brush in and raked the big chunks up so Dad can mow come Spring. Yeah, those are some BIG Sycamores in the background. One in the middle is over 5ft across We started the fire at 9AM and this is what it looked like at around Noon.
It seemed to help as in the lows of the web you could see the red glow in the middle, feeding it air. Here you can see what I was referring to with the glow. Not as good as I hoped but I think it does help to do the cuts. tends to fill up with ash some but once it gets a little bigger the air draw keeps it pretty open. The other side has a glowing window to the inside as well. I'm hoping it will continue to burn outward as the coals burn down and settle. Time will tell on that. So far it's doing okay. This is what it looked like at 2:30. We hung around till 3 and will go back over before night to check on it. I'll try to get some pics then.
Yeah, that would have been better. We did get the whole center filled with coals as you can see. Picked up all the fallen stuff around the cabin and also burnt the brush(not shown) from Dad's earlier cleanup of a large limb off of it. Tree was not dead for years so that hurts some too as it may not be completely dry. I remember when I was just out of high school I was working on a farm and they wanted to clear about 30 acres of old pasture ground that had bee let go for years. Osage orange and cedar trees with Muliflora rose that were firewood size. I cut for 3 days just dropping everything and then we came in with a fork tractor and a mega backhoe and pushed it into burning piles. Coal piles were over 3 ft deep and burnt for 3 weeks through rains. Wildest thing was in some places were we started the fires on the dead osage stumps you would see smoke coming out of the ground where it was burning back the roots. Sometimes over 30 foot out from the stump. Once it rained it left ruts where the dirt settled in. We saved some of the Osage logs for firewood but it was about getting it done fast back then. Nothing like throwing a pile of green cedars into a huge coal pile. You better be backing up quick as it was like gasoline and the hot embers that flew in the air would settle on you and burn the crap out of you exposed flesh. Ah, memories!
Went back over to check on it and when we first saw it from a distance didn't think it looked too good. When we walked up on it though we were pleasantly surprised. It's burning back on all sides and going strong. This has 10 hours of burn time on it here. This side is real nice and basically gone. I'd say it's about 1/3 burnt now. You can see the glow at the top and sides where it is going back. This side has a lot to go but the coal pile is stacked high there and a BUNCH of heat working on it. As soon as it breaks through a side it will probably do really nice. Here's hoping with fingers crossed.
I see what it looks like tomorrow. We didn't want to stir it up tonight and leave so we just let it have it's cover for the night. I think there is plenty of coals there to keep the "away from home fire" burning.
1 day burn 1 day in and we were hopeful as it was working it's way out pretty good. I took some of the coals and put it in the outer webs in hopes that it would start burning from the outside in. I would throw some firewood around to get it flaming hot but then I'd have to babysit it. We've got other stuff to do. We'll see how that does tonight. 1 1/2 days of burn here. A little disappointed as the coals did nothing on the outside and basically went out. It's still burning nice but slow. we always want more than we have I guess but it's human nature. We did take a leaf blower over but it had carb issues so that's a no go. Lots of heat coming off of it. I took the dirt and ash away on the outside and cleaned out the cracks on the top. Dropped some nice coals on that and they were burning till we left. We'll see what tomorrow holds.
I wouldn't pick up that stuff, with no splitter. I noticed that if the beech looks kind of pimply on the bark, it's the wavy grain kind.
If I didn't have a hydraulic splitter and needed wood and this was the only option, I'd be noodling for sure.
