Hello fellow firewood hoarders, My name is Rich. I grew up during the 70's "gas crisis" and my father was a child of the great depression so we turned to burning wood as he had done as a child when I was quite young. I've been processing firewood since I was 8 or 10. We burned wood for heat in two stoves in my parent's house right up until I got married in 88. My wife comes from a small farm so she has burned wood all her life as well. We had a Consolidated Dutchwest stove in our first home where we lived for 14 years. When we built our dream home, oil was wicked cheap so we figured that other than burning wood in the fireplace, our wood heating days were over. We all know what happened....oil prices skyrocketed again and we decided to install a Central Boiler OWB. When I built our house I used mostly radiant floor heat and HW baseboard in the bedrooms so the OWB was a perfect fit. A couple of years ago we bought a 42 acre woodlot next to our farm so now I get to play in the woods all the time! We recently just hosted our first GOL event on the woodlot so I was able to get some trees dropped for free! We burn around 8 to 10 cord of wood per year. My wife keeps the house at 74 degrees... I keep around 12 to 15 cord stacked and drying pretty much constantly. I use Husqvarna chainsaws; a 346XP and a 372XP. I have an Igland 3 point winch on my 52 HP Massey Ferguson for skidding. I have an Oregon splitter (hate it) but I am in the process of building my own splitter (phase 1) and eventually my own processor (phase 2). I turned 50 last year so I am looking at building equipment to make my work easier because I'm not going to get any younger!
Welcome fellow hoard-ah, Mass-h*le, and Husqvarna lov-ah Can't say we have many folks here with the cordwood saw but they do look handy and slightly intimidating. Would love to see some build threads on your splitter/ processor.
Welcome to the family, Rich!! Pull up a seat, glad to have you! Awesome first post and nice looking setup!!
The big saw works great. It was originally a cord wood saw for a tractor. It was powered by a flat belt pulley. We put a 10HP Tecumseh engine from a snow blower on it and drive it with 2 v-belts (they find their own home on either side of the crowned pulley, if you understand what I'm trying to say). The white line indicates 24" from the blade. I try to cut my smaller trees and limbs to 8' lengths for ease of use with the saw. It is a pretty scary piece of equipment, but like anything else you just need to be careful. I try to be extra careful with this... My father-in-law put this one together for me. He's been using these for years. I just added the trailer this past summer.
Hey Rich, welcome aboard. Yep, you've been doing this for a minute or two.....you'll fit right in. I like that you made that saw portable.
Welcome to FHC... DMF. Really like the cordwood saw. I bust out my 14" chopsaw sometimes to whittle down 2"-5" poles. Nice set-up...
Nice set up. Welcome to the show. Since nobody else has claimed them yet, I have dibs on the saws if you decide to trade.
Welcome. Nice first post. My neighbor had 2 cord wood saws, one ran off a motor the other a tractor pto. Wish I would have picked one up before he sold out and moved away.
Welcome to the family, glad you joined us. This is a great place of friends, knowledge, and wisdom, of all that is firewood, saws and equipment. Nice setup you have!!!!
Welcome, you're relatively local to me, grew up in Belchertown, now live in Granby. I remember playing Warren in Soccer when I was a kid. We hated them because they always beat us.
