I've had my eye on this one for months.

I don't get too many wood scores but this one was an easy one. This tree was down since last fall at the end of my street. It was just a few inches off the ground all winter and lost most of its' bark It turns out the property owners are friends of my next door neighbors. They don't burn wood and they had just not got around to cleaning it up. We loaded up and headed out this morning. I had a nice sharp chain and made short work of it. I even cut the smaller stuff for the mud oven.

Here is the first load in his truck. It was sitting pretty low. The second load was half this. We raked up all the branches and bark into the brush pile. The tree was 20' from the truck and we rolled most of the bigger stuff down to the truck. There is another larger tree, I think ash, that is dead that has about a cord and a half in it that could be a future score.




Bark shot. We were thinking maple at first.



We split a few and I think we were mistaken. The small really dry stuff was unreal to hand split.

We used a wood grenade type wedge. Wow, not really cooperating without some force. This piece was near the base and sitting on the ground. This was 32% MC and the smaller diameter stuff was 15%.




I am thinking elm. Grainy as can be. Any thoughts? The green is from the wedge paint.

 

Definitely stringly like elm.

 

Might have to noodle some of these.

 

Some good btus you got there!

 

Ya, better than the maple I was expecting it to be.

 

I took my maul to them and they are yielding a bit better. My neighbors maul may not be as "wicked shaahp" as he thought it was.

I did make those swedish candles. They are just white cedar fence posts or rails with a hole down the center and a few cuts in pie shapes on the band saw. A little piece of super cedars are they are off.

 

Looks and acts like elm to me. I just busted up a bunch of it by hand. I decided to make my life a little easier and cut it to 1 foot length for EW loading. Slightly less difficult, but still a beast to split. The sapwood slabs off OK if you hit it accurately and hard, but the heartwood is another story. I tried slabbing off as much as I could and saving the heartwood for overnight logs. Some was too big so I drove in a metal wedge then drove in a wooden wedge to get the metal one out. Then I could go to work on the stings without fear of hitting the wedge until it finally came apart.

 

I cast my vote for White Elm, definitely want a splitter for the big ones.

 

I'll vote elm by looking at that heartwood.

 

deadus whitus elmus,worth the effort though

 

Vote elm also
Looks like you got it just in time, still good solid wood

Noce score, close to home & nice size
It's all BTUs

 

I don't know about Am Elm, but Red Elm holds up well. It has to be down for quite a few years before it starts to punk.

 

American elm holds up very well and is pretty punk resistant.

I'd definitely say it's elm. I'll also say you should find some hydraulics to split it.

 

Yep American Elm. I just split up some today over at my BIL's house. A couple of the rounds did take 2 whacks instead of my usual 1.