So a friend of mine bought a new parcel of farm ground. It had 3 rental houses on it, but he used one as a fire department training house for a few months(when it was rented, the tenants didn’t stay long, and they rarely paid their rent). So he pushed the house in this summer, and had this tree pushed out last week. So the base is about 4’ across, and was loaded with metal. I gave up on cutting it after I ruined the second chain. I started cutting logs out of this tree starting at the first fork, about 10’ up the tree. I spent about 3 hours yesterday cutting logs out of the tree. The owner brought his skid loader & grapple over for me to use after this picture. I stacked up a large pile of logs, then had to leave to get kids from school. While I was gone the dozer operator pushed the stump and brush pile away, so I lost out on about a cord’s worth of small branches ☹️ When I go back over today, I have to stop by the land owners house to get his dump trailer to haul off the logs I cut- about 2 loads. I will take some more pics later today Charles
Nice score. Too bad about the skinnies though. Lots of others see the branches as chipper food, but easy wood in my book.
Most of the time small jobs like that (elm grew in the open) end up being big jobs! Hope it works out and you don't have to buy too many chains.
I was planning on getting some more of the branches, but it saved me a bunch of clean up time. The first chain I hit metal with was a decent chain that just took some extra file work to fix. The second chain was an old one that was at the end of its life(the ends of the cutters came to a point). So here is what was left there when I went this afternoon. It took 2 loads to get it all. The first load didn’t want to dump, thankfully I could hook up the battery charger to give it some more umph to dump it. Now to cut these to length, split, and stack in my totes for next year. Load 1 load 2
That is anything but a small project! Let us know how the splitting goes, and how much you end up with.
I would of left the tree for ditch fill if I didn’t have hydraulics...lol. Only tried to split elm by hand 1 time.
My experience says, ...,if that was a live elm tree when it was pushed over, it won’t be ready to burn next year, even if you split it 3 months ago.
That's about 2 1/2 to 3 cord going by what my dump trailer hauls. With equipment those aren't bad jobs at all. Nice looking loads, too bad about the smaller stuff though, that's usually great burning. Nice work chainsawsoldier .
Some good wood for sure. Gonna keep you busy for a while! Do you get a lot of elm chainsawsoldier or whatever comes your way?
Great stuff. Really be surprised if its close to ready next year. It wont for me. I will burn mostly elm this year and its all of 3 years seasoned. 15-20 percent. Burns sweet. Enjoy!
So I finished up splitting this today. I had a plastic insert from an IBC tote full of noodles trying to get it small enough to split with only 1 or 2 passes. So a total of 14 cages, so about 3 1/2 cords. I gave 3 totes to the scouts For their winter camp out, as all they had was eastern red cedar. The last tote was measuring 20-28% MC when it was coming off the splitter. Now to move it to the top of the hill so the sun and wind can work their magic
Glad I’m done with it for now. I had a pile of hackberry that I worked up right after and it went WAY faster...lol
