Thanks. I live in Southern interior of BC, about 15 miles from the US/Canada border near a tiny town called Keremeos. You know, I thought about cutting some to sell, but whenever I think about it I start thinking like a contractor and calculating the expenses and labor of myself, my wife and my two boys and I start coming to the realization that this firewood is pretty valuable, and nobody will ever appreciate it the way we do. Not in a monetary sense anyway. I think we're gona get a load of wood for my brother though, he burns wood too, but usually buys his wood from his neighbor. He has asked me a few time to bring him a load, but he lives in another town, and where we get our wood is just as far away, in the opposite direction.
I wish I had time to tinker on stuff. Lately I've barely had time to grab some food even. Get busy and don't even realize its 7PM and I haven't ate yet.
I've sold a little wood this year. It is a lot of work and I would rather keep all firewood I cut for myself. But the money helped out.
I'm in kind of the same boat in that processing wood is recreation/exercise for me but I live in NC and have a very efficient house. So I don't need that much wood. Fortunately, I do have a lot of sweet gum and elm that need to come down and I split by hand. If you choose your trees carefully, you can make a relatively modest job take a good long time.
This is true bert the turtle. And welcome to the club from a N.Y. Yankee waaaaaay up north. I have a brother who lives near Charlotte, beautiful country you have down there. I have been to Charlotte several times and it is a really nice place.
Lumberjack. I don't know how old you are, but I used to be just like you. But now I'm old enough that when everything is full, I just grab a cup of coffee or a rum and coke, and a chair, and sit and admire. And wait till next year.
I'm old enough to know when to relax, but still young enough to want to play with my new toys. And I did get another chance to play with them. Went out and got another load of wood with the family for my brother. He has some problem with his knee and can hardly walk so we though we'd do something nice for him and took a load of lodgepole over to his place split it all up as we took it off the back of the truck and loaded it into his woodshed. So we got to use the little electric splitter twice so far and I must say it works great for the wood we are splitting. I like the fact that it only runs when you push the handle and makes no noise at all when you aren't actually splitting wood, and of course there are no exhaust fumes. I found a way to limit the recoil pull back to the size of our splits so there was no lag time waiting for the hydraulic press to contact the wood, so that sped things up considerably. I would have to say it is actually faster then splitting by hand. Still, with the extra driving it was a long day and we didn't get home till after dark, I was glad to be done.
I'm sure your brother appreciated that LJ. He'll think of you often when it gets below zero this winter. Yep, those elec splitters do a decent job. I wonder if anyone has powered one of those fast DR type splitters with an elec motor? Nice... quiet and quick.
Same rig as the gas powered ones? ... elec motor turning the big flywheel? Bet it was nice and quiet.
Guess it will all be over even quicker next year. The woodshed is still full and I'm sweating it out here in the tropics where staying cool is a lot harder then staying warm back home. Can't say I miss winter yet (I've only been here a week), but I had a good taste of it the day I left, we had a major dump of snow the night before we left to the airport and I actually had to chain up the truck just to make it out to the highway so we could get to our flight on time, and saw plenty of vehicles getting dug out of the snow on the trip there. I'll be back burning wood come February, meanwhile I'll be trying to stay cool and I can keep an eye on my full woodshed via my online surveillance cameras.
