Chip (JAW) Drop

Worked on some cutting and splitting in the light rain today, which made the sappy mess a little less sticky. Not too much but I'm further along than I would have been had I hid inside all morning. I managed to move about 15 wheelbarrow loads of pine splits to the backyard before calling it quits. The long term stacking of it will have to wait until I shuffle a couple things around back there. My path to the wood piles is a muddy disaster and now it's rutted out from the wheelbarrow. Overnight temperatures will freeze the Somme battlefield again so hopefully if I start early enough I can beat the thaw.

 

The plus side of processing this pine is all the kindling I'm generating along the way. I found that if I have a small pile of splinters and oddball scraps, all I have to do is leave them inside on the hearth for a couple days and they become dry as a bone. It doesn't take much.

 

I haven't heard a peep from any arborists from my chip drop "anything but willow" log/ wood request. I have heard a bunch of saws over the weekend though.

That's fine, I'm busy with ash tree branches I've been dropping with the pole saw and burning the too small of stuff in the fire pit. I even got a few pieces that were big enough to put in the stacks.

Any word from the "maple drop" yet?

 

I'm pretty sure the maple is a lost cause. It's been a while and I haven't heard anything. In a way I'm not too heartbroken because I've got other scores in the works for when this pine is stacked. There's a couple sugar maple logs I've been eyeing for 6 months now, a boatload of locust I can go after, and dozens of trees coming down this year on my uncle's land. The maple drop would've been cool but not necessary.

 

I like the improvised splitter cover. Done similar things with mine!

 

Hadn't heard of chip drop before, so glad I saw this. I'm going to give it a try myself. Requested hardwoods only; not sure if that's too selective, or not selective enough. I'd imagine that if you want to get rid of a load of wood, that definition can move, or you can "not realize" that you had a bunch of junk in the load.

For those of you getting the delivery, are you paying the $20?

 

I haven't offered, but when I look on the delivery map, there hasn't been much activity in the whole 4 county area as far as recently dropped deliveries. If I get bored, and get my ash trees all CSS'd, maybe I'll offer the $20.

At any rate, the arborists pay $20 to use chip drop. That's way less and way more convenient for them if there's a tree job in the area.

 

Ah, I didn't see the map. One person on this side of the state got a delivery. Waited 349 days for delivery. I won't hold my breath.

 

The whole thing seems like a major roll of the dice to me. Requesting hardwoods only might yield you some awesome stuff, or a triaxle load of Basswood There’s no telling. In my area the site seems to be very popular. The area map is full of recent drops. Next time I’m going to be more selective about what species I don’t want. If another load of pine like this shows up I might lose my you-know-what

 

I never had any luck, used it all last year but I just reactivated my request and giving it another shot. If I could get a dump in front of the house boy that would save me a lot of work hauling and unload. On this new request I didn't put any restrictions on the kind of wood I can get, perhaps that will get me something.

 

It will be interesting to see. I will keep my expectations low.

 

I woke up this morning to a very windy 14 degrees so the ground was rock solid. Good day to get some work done. I moved the rest of what I split into the backyard and got to stacking. As luck would have it, the ~ 3/4 cord bin that I recently emptied was able to house all the pine splits I’ve made so far. Everything under the clear tarp is what I stacked today. The stuff under the blue one is a mix of pine, spruce and hemlock for next year.

 

If you like the pine, hemlock is better IMO.

 

I’ll find out this fall. I’ve only burned a few punky pieces in my outdoor pit this past summer.

 

Finished processing this sticky mess. Have to put down another long pallet to stack the rest.



When I got to the bottom of the pile I found some of that maple the driver promised me and didn’t deliver. Red Maple with a lot of heartwood punk. Sometimes you have to say thank you for the things that didn’t materialize.

 

I'll have to look on chip drop to see if there's been any activity near me, but there's a whole area of my yard that's free of snow, and now free of any dog doodies. No wood dropped or any calls...

Nice that you got all that wood taken care of. How much coconut oil or mayo did you go through?

 

Haha none yet... The trigger and handle on my 029 do have a sticky coating of sap on them though. Bar seems to be clean enough. I'm making arrangements to send my saw to Huskihl for an overhaul soon so I better get that nastiness taken care of before it goes out Hopefully get to finish stacking the rest tomorrow. Wife told me on Saturday when I brought home the elm that if any more wood came home before I took care of the pine at the end of the driveway... So I got it done and out to the backyard. Sorry to hear about your dry spell with Chipdrop. Maybe in the spring tree work will pick up and you'll be inundated with BTU gold

 

DONE. FINALLY. Behold, my wall of conifer! Next time I want to stock up on shoulder wood, I’ll go for some Aspen and Tulip Poplar, or maybe even Eastern Cottonwood.
I think the way to score pine is to go after the stuff that’s been on the ground for a couple years but not rotting. In any case, I’m happy to report that my pine processing days are behind me. At least for a while.

 

Does that mean you're not "stick"ing with pine?
Looks good Eric.

 

Tulip poplar is my favorite. Easy splitting, easy drying, and easy starting up the coals in the morning.
I think one of my first scores on here.