I'm a surburban scrounger with a pickup and a couple of sources of wood. Gooder source: Local tree guys drop rounds in my processing area. I just have to split and stack right there. Another source: The town highway department doing road maintenance. They drop trees near the right-of-way in the morning and a different crew picks it up in the afternoon. If you get there between crews it is yours. The tree crew likes their toys so if you ask and they will buck to any size you need and leave it there. Then you get as many loads as you can before the clean-up crew or another scrounger gets it. I keep a maul and wedges in the truck for the really big rounds and take the clean rounds first. I usually split about a face cord at a time, toss it where it will be stacked as I split, then stack neatly. Repeat. If I stack the rounds right I slowly shift my splitting block as one line of rounds is processed and a stack of splits is finished. This minimizes handling and breaks up the boredom of doing the same job for too long or having to move the rounds/splits multiple times. KaptJaq
This is a good discussion. Interesting to hear how other people do it. Most of the wood I cut from National Forest land. I buck it to length there usually then haul it home in the pickup and unload. I try to split at my leisure but would really like to be done before May (warm weather). Once it's all split I take a day or two and stack. I wait until I'm done burning for the year since what I cut now will replace what I burn this winter, so I don't want to block access to it before I'm done burning. Lately I've been splitting more in the woods to save my back. Yesterday I cut a load of red oak that was mostly good straight rounds just under 18". I could have lifted them all, but a couple of swings quartered the pieces and allowed me to get more on the truck along with no sore back. When I cut on my own land, I'll split in the woods, then haul out and stack right away. Since it's my land I can leave it in the woods with no worries, unlike National Forest land.
[QUOTE="fuelrod, post: 231836, member: 1756"I like to "mix up" all 3 phases (bucking-splitting & stacking) during a session, leaving everything split in the new stack not needing to be touched again until fire time. For me, this keeps things mixed up and I think helps me use different muscles along with helping with boredom. It might be an OCD thing with a little ADD mixed in there, but I like to leave all that I have split, on the pallet/in the stack, done!! Of course this will change with different equipment available. My tractor is my friend![/QUOTE] Now that part about boredom is something I can not relate to. I know several folks who always complain about being bored but I am rarely bored and for certain am never bored when putting up wood. First we cut it. Sometimes we get into some tangled areas like this. I had to back the trailer downhill and through the brush several times to get this all out. Here, my wife is loading the trailer. She does the small stuff; I do the larger ones. Once the trailer is full it gets moved. The wood sort of gets piled up. Usually not very careful in this stacking as it won't stay like this because later it gets split. Now comes the splitting. After all the wood is split, it gets stacked right there. And usually we make some kindling wood. Some of this got split a bit large but it was beginning to turn into punk so if I tried to split small, it would break apart. But, it made some excellent kindling wood.
I truck rounds home and dump over a small bank onto a terrace I built for the splitter that holds 2 or 3 cords. Then split over a 6 foot bank into a heap that can hold up to 20s cord if needed. Splits then go into the loader to move to the stacks. I like it because there is always something that can be done no matter what the weather, how much time I have or what scrounging opportunity I come across. My long term strategy is a big fill project (over 10 feet in places) to create a spot big enough for the tree service a 1/2 mile down the road to drop logs at the end of their day. Then, buck, split & stack all in the same place/time.
Backwoods Savage Man oh man, BS. If I can lift rounds half that size when I get to your level of 'experience' I will be a happy man.
I have tried several different ways over the years. From having the wood I bought already split dumped right where it would be stacked , to dragging it out to the processing area in log length, to bucking everything up in the woods and hauling it out. Some of the hauling done with the pick up truck, some with a tractor and three point hitch box, and some with a tractor with the loader box on the forks I have now. I think the way I am doing it now is the best for me so far. Being able to set the box on the ground right next to the rounds saves me from picking them up off the ground very far. It also saves me from carrying them very far as well. Then when I get them back to the processing area I can just dump them. All of this saves a good amount of labor. As I get to areas where I am further away from the house/processing area, I can see having a trailer to pull behind the tractor being handy. Leave the trailer out there until I get a full load and then pull it home. We will see what the future brings. Good thread fuelrod!
Starting this thread, I forgot what it was like when I had to haul wood home. I used to be able to get it from the clearing for housing - developments. It certainly add's a whole other dimension to wood burning. For the past 20 years or so I've had my own "standing inventory". "Gooder" on all you wood hauling home fellas!
I agree with Scotty and NW Walker about trying to stay on top of it. I made the mistake of splitting a trailer load into one big pile that I figured I move later. That ended up being a huge amount of work all at once because I needed to clear out the lower driveway for some work we had done on the house. Since then, I try to keep the rounds on the trailer split them and stack as I go. It's about 50 feet from the driveway to the stacking area but I don't want to destroy the lawn by processing on it and I can't get the trailer near the stacks. It's nice having a second driveway that's somewhat hidden so I can make a mess and no one really sees it.
When working off the load of logs delivered into the yard, I'll cut the log lengths into firewood size. When the saw runs out of gas, I'll take a break and stack what I've cut. Then repeat. I have tried cutting more than a tank full at a time, and it sure doesn't take long to get cluttered up with wood chunks! When I'm scrounging, I'll cut on site (in the woods) and then back up to the pile once I get home. If anything needs splitting, it gets thrown into a side pile.
It's closer than harrisburg. Germantown is about as far as I'll go. Our house is less than a mile from the Maryland line. Very very competitive here for wood. I can load enough on the truck and trailer to make it worthwhile.
I cut and bring everything home to split at my leisure. I only have access from January to early May due to either crops or deer season. My splitting area is all under roof so all of the rounds get stacked there and split when I cant cut due to weather. Wheat was planted this fall so I can get an earlier start this year before season opens but cant cut in that section this winter.
Ugh. I was not having fun getting started until the tree guy up the road finally called me back and had logs to deliver. I still feel a bit lucky.
I too am an suburban scrounger, I get ALL my wood off craigslist from homeowners who have had trees dropped by a service and do not want to pay the expense to get rid of the wood, most of the time the rounds are already bucked to 16 to 18 inches however sometimes the tree service drops them in 2 or 3 foot lengths and I well need to cut them into rounds I have a small flatbed with a hydraulic lift gate on the back, most of the time I can back real close to the wood and roll the rounds onto the lift gate and get them in the truck real easy, other times I need to noodle on site I have to be quick about responding to C/L ads and getting wood this way as many other people do this as well around here, but I have had real good luck over the years and am at least 2 years ahead right now on CSS wood, and have a bunch of rounds that I still need to split but have no room to stack at whats really comical about getting wood this way is watching the other people who show up on the site to get wood, some of them have no equipment at all to move or cut the wood, or show up in a real small truck or even a car! I always get the "you've done this before" comment from those guys when they see my technique, I just smile and say yep
Most of my wood comes log length from a tree service. I get them laid out on the uphill side of my yard. I roll the logs into my driveway to cut to size and then roll the rounds down towards where I split and stack. Driveway cleanup of cutting debris is so much easier. Once I get it all cut I start splitting. I've learned to do that as close to the stack as possible, using the slope of my yard to help deliver the rounds to the splitter. Depending on how cluttered the splitting area gets I might begin stacking before it is all split. Next load isn't going to be as efficient as I stacked up huge cube in front of where it will need to go. I have also found that less than full log loads are a lot easier to process as the yard doesn't get as cluttered with rounds. And since the tree service doesn't mind dropping off short loads it is the way to go.
Most of the CL posters here want a hundred bucks for their valuable pitiful pile of almost firewood that the landscaper/tree cutter would have to pay to dispose of.
Lately Ive been calling a guy and telling him what I want I didnt have time last year at all to go out scrounging and I can get a log company to drop a log load off. The tree services all sell firewood so they arent going to give anything away. I have been talking to someone in my area about cutting on their land I would like to start there this year and hopefully get a decent scrounge gathered up in the yard.
I'm a year round wood cutter, I never really thought about "the process" til reading this thread. Really interesting how everyone gets their firewood ready for the stove. I roll with whatever I got at the time, sometimes skidding it out log length to the splitting area which changes because I set the splitter up where I am currently building stacks, or what I do the most is cut rounds to stove length in the woods then haul them out to the splitter. When splitting I like to have it all stacked by the end of the day, just don't like to keep splitting and have an overwhelming pile of splits to stack.
I gave up on CL years ago I was never quick enough, when I first found that people posted free wood there I thought man this is gonna be easy Wrong on that, only ever had 1 person return one of many calls or emails to these ads, and that was for a locust, he was kind enough to let me know it was gone. Like billb3 mentioned the ads that stay up on CL here for more than a day are almost laughable
