I needed a ballpark idea of how many pieces were in a cord for the app I am working on, so I counted out one of my 1/3 cord (face cords). Obviously this can vary widely but at least I have a ballpark figure now which I can verify. How many pieces you figure in this stack?
I split relatively small and ball parked a cord at 750 pieces. So face cord would be between 200 and 250. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I've never done it, but I think I'd take a face cord,(8ftx4ftx16in) and mark out a 4ft vertical line, 1 foot wide. Count the split's and multiply by 8. Should get you close without being tedious.
250-275 I sell by the half cords and make racks to fit that amount. Normally a 4x6' stack double row. 16" long splits. I've counted them when loading and around 400 is an average being tightly stacked. If a split is on the smaller side I don't count it in the tally. Some of my stacks are not to a specific volume so I'll just count when loading. Weird habit I've gotten into is to count the pieces as I'm splitting off the truck. Yesterdays haul of barkless BL generated around 265 pcs including skinnies yet to buck so its a face cord to me. Having been making firewood for 40+ years my splits are pretty uniform in size and deviating from that is hard for me. (The splits I use in bundles are maybe 1/3 smaller than cordage splits). Faster drying that way and easier handling for the end user IMO. 16" seems to be the most common length for burners from what I've seen on FHC.
Looking closely at your stack I would count the skinny limb wood as 1/2 and even the smaller sized splits too. Ive had half cords counts of 350-375 (usually for thick barked black locust) and as high as 425+ IIRC so 400 seems to be a safe average. I had a delivery last month where I counted the splits and had to stack for the customer. It measured out to 55% of a cord tightly stacked. I cant tell you the number of times I've delivered one of my measured half cords to a new customer and they are amazed at how much it is volume wise. "Why so much?" "The other guy was ripping me off" is a phrase Ive commonly heard. IMO thats why firewood is a commodity that doesnt seem to increase in price. Sellers are shorting buyers!
I recalled that thread and after a little searching found it. Didn't think it was that old. How many pieces in a cord?
I remember the discussion, but it has been a while. Everybody splits a different size and stacks a little different. Nice straight wood will stack tighter than fuzzy or twisty wood. We have been splitting stringy ash and honey locust that has big shards hanging off and fluffs the stack. What kind of app needs to know how many pieces are in a cord?
Yeah it is definitely highly variable. I know a few sellers who make an art out of "fluffin the stack" lol. You can read a bit about the app here >> Feedback on "The Firewood App"
This is going to be all over the board depending on how big you split AND how long you cut the rounds. I split on the bigger side and cut to 21" long. I'm going to have WAY less splits compared to the person who splits toothpicks and cuts to 16" long.
Yeah, The guys with big stoves are gonna have a different count than the guys splitting for small stoves.. Course, if what you are really looking for is a good range of numbers this is probably a really good place to do it.
I count 26 across the top. 21 on the bottom. 16 on the left. 16 on the right. So between 336 and 416.
I added the option for people to add their own piece count if nothing added it uses defaults of 265 for face cord and 795 for a cord. Here is what it is shaping up to look like:
