Experiment: Storing logs or rounds for later splitting

What species do you think you'd store as logs or rounds for 1 year? Maybe 2 years but 1 for sure. As an experiment.

I know a seller here whose family does some logging and I think he gets free logs. But he stores those entire logs to 'season.' I have seen him cut some rounds and store them but mostly it looks like 8 ft logs. When October rolls around, he bucks them into rounds and splits and sells. So, the buyers are getting his 'seasoned' wood that isn't seasoned, lol. A little, but probably not much?

I have seen him use this strategy for ten years now. And I know some buyers complain about his wood. But he finds new buyers every year on FBMP and delivers to the city 40 minutes away.

If you were going to do that and your aim is to provide the best firewood you could sell, whether they have to store it a year or not, what species?

1 red oak (southern red oak here, maybe it's about the same as northern red oak)
2 white oak
3 hickory (I think we have mostly mockernut / bitternut / pignut here)

You could name another species but these are the three most prolific hardwoods in this area. And they all make great firewood.

The benefit of this to the seller is he touches the wood only once. He does not stack. He splits those rounds into giant piles of splits and when he gets an order, he stacks onto his delivery trailer.

The benefit to the buyer is... I can't think of one, lol. (Poorly seasoned wood.)

A negative to the seller is his wood could get punky. He sells only oak far as I can tell. I have noticed that some of his logs/rounds, the sapwood gets punky on him. I don't know if that is after one year or two.

Negative for the buyer is wood that won't burn well this year.

If I were to try this and the wood became 'ruined' forever, that would be the end of the experiment, lol. Logs or rounds? I'd think rounds because they might be a tad more 'seasoned' than keeping in log form. What species, any opinion?

 

Depends which is easier and works for the individual. In my case I have VERY limited room so I can accumulate maybe 4-5 cords at the most in the round before they need to be split and stacked. The last year or two I've been trying to split them right off the truck to save a step in the handling.

Most sellers I see around here save and dry in log form, C/S and sell soon thereafter thus the splits are almost always over 20%MC. Drying logs for a year and CSS in the Spring would work for most one year woods IMO.

The guy I cut for at my "Disney" thread drys it mostly in baskets (some in mounds) once split and sells when dry. He cuts for another company and processes logs that have been sitting for well over a year IME. Lots of oak. I see the ill effects of long term storage...punk, loose bark, borer activity etc. I hate selling "dirty" firewood like that and try to keep mine as clean as possible.

Given the choice of those three I would pick either oak. I hate how any oak sapwood punks but heartwood has a many year shelf life. Yes, in the round dries faster than full logs.

It would be great to take full logs delivered for free, but with my "postage stamp" operation I make due.

 

IME most wood will rot before it dries if not split and got off ground.

 

buZZsaw BRAD, do you find that oak species sapwood does NOT go punky if you split it before it goes punky?

In answer to my first question in this post, I don't find that oak sapwood goes punky if you split it before it goes punky. It only seems to happen if the log sits too long.

I wonder how long a log could sit (off the ground) before the sapwood starts going punky.

The fellow I mentioned, I don't think he puts down any runners to stack his logs on, I just see the bottom layer on the ground. Not good. The ones above the ground fare better but I also wonder that if you have a layer on the ground, will it mess up the ones above it. Seems it will transfer some of that moisture upwards.

 

Ive never really paid attention to which way it goes punky faster. My main dislike is the two year drying time. Ill sell it sooner as long as it was dried two Summers as a split.

The red oak I took two weeks ago sat as logs for over six months through the Summer. The bark stayed tight and the sapwood had minimal spalting when I CS it. I was kinda surprised. See recent pics in my Don't Choke...I'm Taking Oak! thread. I try to get oak CSS and top covered before anything gets a chance to grow on it.

Any wood stored off ground away from moisture will have a longer shelf life IME. Even when I stage rounds I use some type of lumber scraps for stickers/sleepers.

 

Logs do not dry, certainly not in a year, and definitely not oak...heck, oak doesn't wanna dry even after split!
Anyone selling firewood that was just split from a log should be advertising "green" firewood, not "seasoned"...whatever that is.
The only way you get dry ready to burn firewood from a log is if it was a dead standing barkless elm.

 

Like these

 

It’s common for me to let elm that was taken alive to sit in logs or rounds for a year at least, then the bark will fall off easily. If’n I leave em in logs a year, then buck them into rounds, then give em another year and they can be split reasonably. But still need another year to dry, and still won’t burn as well as one that died from natural causes and lost its bark before it was taken down.
Hackberry has a short shelf life in the rounds or logs, especially if it’s in contact with the ground!

 

Right??!!!

Sure doesn't go over so well with some people though.

 

As an official procrastinator I may have some experience with this
First,,,,nothing good will ever happen from storage but the question is how much bad. Rounds kept off the ground and stacked single file won’t see much degradation in a year. Two years you’re now looking at species. Some woods that have extra waterproof bark like Black Birch will rot faster than dry. All woods except the rot resistant like Black Locust will begin losing calories/btus whatever one may call it. Same with logs. Now that’s stacked on pallets single file.

Change that to stacked on the ground in a tight pile and the process is sped up. Your environment also plays a big role. Arizona maybe not so bad. Louisiana, well I’m not an expert on your climate but I’ll call it sultry.
I once stacked red oak rounds, halves and quarters on the ground in a big tight pile. About 5 cord I’d say. Was supposed to begin splitting right away. Two years later they were soaking wet, some big mushrooms growing inside the stack. The wood itself didn’t look compromised but you could split it with a butter knife. It did burn just fine tho once it dried out. This wood started as live healthy trees not the dead oak I’m usually working with.
I’ve had Black Birch logs that sat on the ground for two years. Compromised enough that I wouldn’t sell it. Matter of fact I’m burning it this year along with some Beech that also sat too long. Another wood that doesn’t like to sit.

I’d go with the two oak species. Hickory in my limited experience will begin to rot and attract borers too fast. Hickory Shoukd be split and top covered fast IMO but again, not a lot of experience with it.

 

2 years on ground here white birch; rotted

 

Had a clump of decent sized WB that rotted standing up. About 8” trees. The only thing holding them up was the bark. The inside had turned to punk and dust. I squeezed one with my hand and could feel it squish and hear particles falling inside. I avoided them for about three years until they were on the ground, worthless. Couldn’t come up with a use for WB tubes

 

I store firewood in log form sometimes. It's often dead to begin with, but sometimes live ice/windfall. I put it up on minimum 10-12" runners, and tarp across the width of the stack only. I usually cut 10' poles/logs, and use a 12' wide tarp for just a little overhang. I don't seal either end of the tarp down to the ground, and the sides of the stacks with the cut ends are left completely open, so air circulates both through and under the pile. This works pretty well for me with oak, cherry, red maple, hickory, and ash (the ash is all standing dead salvage cut). Putting it on the ground and sealing it all around with a tarp will just stew it in most climates. Leaving it uncovered through one leaf fall will matt leaves down in the logs and make a huge moisture trap. Cutting it into firewood lengths would certainly hasten the curing process and diminish rot but it still would have to be kept off the ground, and if I'm piling poles this way it's usually because I don't have the time to buck and handle it all right then.

I'm curious to see how your experiment turns out.

 

Cleared a .1 ac piece of my woods late winter for a food plot years ago. All red, white and chestnut oak. Everything was cut to firewood length and piled in my processing area. For some reason never got around to splitting them until the following year. Split and stacked 12 pickup loads. It was still OK, but started to degrade a bit and "dirty" as the bark started sluffing off some pieces and some of the chestnut oak had fungi growing on the sapwood. I was not happy with myself for not processing it right away, but it was not a total loss by any means only some of the pieces on the bottom/ground were not usable.

 

Like jo191145 , we have plenty of experience with this. When we first started out dealing with farwood, well before I found FHC, we were piling logs on utility poles and top covering with tarps, mostly oak to begin with. Didn't turn out to well. Some dry rotted, but been there several years. We have logs on the ground now, yes the bottom logs will degrade.
Southern red oak won't last as long as northern red oak. Willow and water oak will turn punky fast, as will hickory. We bring it in log form because we need to get areas cleaned up fast and we cut different lengths.
Only way for longer term storage is to debark logs. We have had logs that laid in the hot sun for a couple months (hickory) bark split open and the logs were like hard poles, with small spalting.
White Oak will last the longest, sapwood will get punky, but heartwood will be solid...
Your climate is similar to ours, maybe a bit more humid......
This is 2 year old white oak, piled on ground in the open
Turkey tail fungus really worked on the sapwood...but the heartwood is very solid...
We gave it to our cousin, he said it burns fine...it did have some beautiful heartwood splits in the pile too.
This is some hickory from Hurricane Helene, so about 14 months old. Borers had gotten under the bark, some spalting...
If it must be stored, buck into rounds, stack single file with nice gap between rows and top cover...
Trust me...we have thrown away way more wood than I want to remember...

 

Many sellers around me do just that. They “season” in log form them cut split and deliver. I sell all of my wood through Facebook - not market place, but the local town pages. Someone will create a post looking for firewood. Many people will recommend me and I will respond with a picture of my piles (can see the gray splits) and then I will write, “no matter who you purchase from, ask how long it was cut and split.) I have ended up delivering many cords to people who went “cheaper” and it wouldn’t burn.

But, I will add that red maple, cherry, and walnut are best suited for this type of “seasoning.”

 

T.Jeff Veal you mentioned debarking. Interesting but that sounds labor intensive, lol, have you ever done it? If I had my druthers, I'd never deal with bark, I find it a nuisance, overall.