in the book “Norwegian Wood”, The author talks about firewood that early on after processing, gets some sort of fungus that takes hold and really slows down/prevent prevents drying from happening. Full disclosure- I’ve been successfully processing firewood for about 12 years for using my woodstove. Like I mentioned in a recent post, I definitely don’t have the best drawing set up, but I’ve been able to get the wood dry and or under 20% moisture content During the basic usual timeframe ( about one year for lighter hardwoods and about two years or so for denser hardwoods like oak). in addition to the somewhat slower drying of the Norway maple I posted about, I noticed something very interesting and also very frustrating about some black walnut that I processed around that same timeframe. I’ve never processed any black walnut, so it’s all new to me, but I took a couple of splits that were right near each other in the stack and also about the same size. The only difference between the two was that one of them had bark on it in the other did not. the one without bark for moisture content, which I was good with. That one was in the 40s! I tried the same experiment with a couple of other splits, and found the same thing, that the bark seems to make the difference. I’m trying to remember how long it took me to process this Wood back then, because I know at one point there was a bit of a delay where the Wood sat for several months on my driveway, but I can’t recall if it was with the walnut or another type of wood. But we can assume that this would sat on split on my driveway for a while. I processed about half a cord maybe of the black walnut total, so it’s not a total loss as far as firewood supply, but I’m still confused and frustrated over it Curious, if anyone else has had any similar observation of black walnut wood. Stepping back for a sec, the whole firewood Processing game is an interesting thing. Going back a Five or six years, I was able to really get ahead and Not have to think much about moisture content of wood, because at that point, I had probably a good three years on hand. Over the last five or six years, I’ve had problems with lower back spasms out of nowhere which, if anyone’s experienced those, can be excruciating, as well as very scary, and I found that I hesitated to do a lot of physical activity. This really affected the fire Wood production on my part. Overtime, I learned that the back problems were highly tied to stress and have gotten back to almost full bore activity again. So, the ability will be there, I just have to perhaps rework the Wood stack orientation a bit, and perhaps do some trimming, because while the big tree in the back has not been a big problem, of course the thing keeps growing and I’m sure that has some effect. Not to mention the big shrubs on the property line keep getting bigger in shading the area more and more. Anyway, thank you for letting me use this post as one part autobiography, and the other part self reflection!
Ive only had one good BW score. The logs had been sitting for well over a year IIRC. It split very easily. Never checked MC later when I sold it, but it was in the stack for over a year. I'm thinking its a faster drying wood under ideal conditions. My observation has been that barkless splits DO dry faster than those with bark. The bark protects the tree when living and is a moisture barrier of sorts once dead. Sometimes the bark will fall off when split and these dry just as fast. Seems to happen mostly on maples IME. I will put longer to dry woods (mainly oak, hickory, honey locust) in separate stacks and wait, and wait and wait for them to dry.
That makes sense, Brad. as I’m looking at my Wood pile area, I’m realizing that these arborvitae shrubs that my neighbor has right near the property line do a good amount of shading on the woodpiles. so, I’d have no control over those things getting taller, as they have been. I could trim some of the width that extends onto my property, but that would only be gaining back a small amount of sun. Was just talking it over with my wife and we were talking about likely taking down the large red maple seen in the picture. Ironically, that would only give a small amount of sun back to us, but it would at least be something. Even though it wouldn’t be a huge win, it might be a good plan because that tree could easily fall on the house in a storm, and it’s got some size to it. Not to mention that I’d be keeping all of that wood, which I have to figure would be a good cord plus. Next part of my plan is going to be to add another row in the very front of the Woodstock facing the camera in the picture that would be in a decent sunlight area for this space. I’m pretty sure that, short of packing up and moving, this is about the best I can do within reason.
While I’m talking about that red Maple in the picture. Curious what people would guess this would be as far as amount of firewood it would produce. I have a rough guess, but was curious what everyone here might think. I haven’t measured, but I would imagine the tree at its base is probably about 30 inches diameter and I’m gonna guess it’s about 65 feet tall Give or take. I’ll be sad to see it go, but probably for the best as it’s definitely within reach of the house if it fell over and with its size could be a problem.
