Back in July, I was sitting in the side yard on a windy (normal) day and kept hearing loud "CRACK, CRACK, CRACK". I went to the other side of the house and the cracking was coming from one my giant Elm trees. It had a big wye in it, and I could see it splitting with every wind gust. If it let go, it would fall on my pole barn and/or LP tank. I was able to get a strap around a decent branch and tied off to another tree 75 feet away, so if it did let go, it would only fall into the corn field. I made a frantic call, he came out that afternoon for a look and the crew came out the next morning for an "emergency" take down. I kept all the wood (of course), and they did a great job on taking it down. The stump is 48" across.
Elm. I hope you have a hydro to split that! Great burning wood but can be some tough stuff to split. A lot of guys here might even run away from it.
Yep, Elm is a mother to split but it burns great. I would never buy it, but I DID pay to have it taken down. My Ariens should do OK on it. It'll be a few years until it all gets split and rotated to the racks.
I ended up getting some Elm from a friend who thought it was red maple. I stacked ~2dozen rounds by themselves. I'll leave them there until the bark falls off. If they still won't split after the bark loosens, I'll just noodle them,
That should be fine to split it. It does indeed burn well. If I had to pay to take it down you could bet your last dollar that I would be burning it. Noodling is cutting with the grain the length of the log to section it up. This produces long stringy chips that resemble long noodles like linguini.
Noodling refers to process when you cut a round with the grain. The chips are elongated as they are striped along the grain. You get noodles instead of chips
That's a big tree. Yes, wait until the bark falls off and frozen is even better. It's The Wood Wolverine favorite wood...
I too would noodle any future elm. That last run in with it, I was clearing a lot for a friend and it needed gone. That learned me, lol. First choice is to drag it into the woods and let it re-enrichen the soil. Great wood for that.
gstrom99 Welcome to the forum. Great people here willing to share knowledge and give you a hard time, all in jest We love lots of pics of your wood burning adventures.
Welcome to the forum gstrom99. I love elm, but now when it is cut green. We always wait until it dies and even then, wait until the bark has fallen off or at least most of the bark. Then it splits nice and is not stringy. Makes excellent firewood then.
Welcome to the FHC Sad the tree has to come down, but will make some good firewood for you. Good you heard it before it came down on something. Some folks love it and some hate it. Im in the latter for the splitting factor.
Heres a pic of some sugar maple i noodled. The HUGE rounds were too big to handle as is so they got chunked down to smaller size to load. Notice the "noodle" sawdust. The log is nearly 3' diameter
Yep. That tree provided great afternoon/evening shade for my house. I bought a red oak (8 - 9 feet tall, on sale @ $30), to replace it. Should only take 45 years to work...
