Ya had me at... free oak. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Got tagged on a FB post from a guy we used to wheel/4x4 with. His brother had an oak tree blown over a few days ago. OAK you say... thinking to myself, I can be there tomorrow morning! We firewood hoarders ain't right!!

This will be a pic intensive journey so here we go. This is the original pic provided to me.

 

Got in touch with the homeowner. He wanted to know what size I wanted. My reply, anything wrist size and larger. And I get more pics.


Did ya catch that? Yep...

 

#1 he was dam lucky it didn't fall on his house!
#2 the rot @ the base.

Well, it's for a friends brother so... I'll help a guy out and remove it all. there has to be some good, right?

Then another couple pics the next day. He had a chipper come in and remove all the brush and he's down to this and asked it it was ok.


And here it is, the ugly

 

I'm thinking CRAP! It's going to go pretty far up looking like that. But it's game on. My strategy is to start at the top in case I hit metal, that way I'd get the most life per chain. Ugg, hoping I don't hit metal.
Didn't take many pics @ this point. He was loading as I was cutting, didn't want slow progress. Got home and took more.
Load 1

 

Drive back to the site, which is a 45 minute drive. This is whats left. Still haven't hit decay, woot!


I'm noodling, then cutting one of the halves off, then in half again, move to the other side and repeat. This stuff is heavy!!!!

Load 2

I was definitely over loaded. I didn't want to make another trip. Should have loaded more on the 1st run.

 

Alot of good wood there-nice score

 

So the bad is, you can see some rotten/light pieces in there. I took almost all of it. The very bottom he loaded up to take to the local mulch business that accepts wood scraps. I'd say the first round and a half, about 30/32" had severe decay. The rest was good.
The closest pieces were of the first round off the base. You couldn't plunge a screwdriver in there very deep, it's not that far gone.

I had to keep taking breaks near the end. I was beat!

 

All I can say is you da man

 

I'm sure. Well, at least it's home-to me the hardest part. Now just split and stack when convenient to work at it

 

Da man that isn't 30 anymore!!! I'm feeling it.

When I first fired up my 394 it was cold so it sat there and idled like it does when cold, bing bing bing, like it has a hot cam. He gets a big grin on his face and walks over, "it sounds like my old 250 dirt bike". Man, I love this saw!
Here's a vid in case you've never heard that dirt bike like idle in a big saw.

 

And he messaged me pics of the finished site.


Advised him to not bother with a stump grinder. A digging iron would probably do the job fine.

 

Wow I would say you did good. I see some good firewood in there and a whole lot of work. One thing about it, once it is all split and stacked it just puts a big grin on your face knowing you have all those BTU's sitting there ready for use. Nice Score.

Oh and the pics were great too.

 

Nice score and pics! Man I could use a 394 for the stuff I'm coming across. Thank you power company. I recognize the PA plates, went school there, miss that state.

 

That punk on there isn't really even that much. I've dealt with worse and if you top cover that stuff it dries right out. When I had to deal with it I thought it was going to be terrible but in the end it turned out to not be an issue.

That's a lot of oak. My friends parents had 3 oaks taken down and I'm going to get them today. The tree service knocked 200 bucks off their bill to just stack it and not bother chipping it. Same thing as you where it's 45 minutes away though. I can't wait to see the pile.

 

My god !!!!! Score city . I like seeing big chunked quarters.

 

Nice looking wood. A lot of work. Good job.

Sent from my XT1030 using Tapatalk

 

Nicely done! The Wood Wolverine. Im envious of the BTU's! Hope you broke out in beer after that and got yourself some fine sleep.

 

Nice, very nice work. Now, stop yer gloatin' an gets ta an :stacke:! Gooder on ya! In about 3 years all dat hard work jes gonna be another good story ya tells in front o' you nice warm stove...whilst ya be a laffin' at dat ol lectric man!

 

There's a LOT of BTU's in that pile!! Congrats.

 

Nice pics and great score! We're going to need to see the splitting and stack pics now....

I think the homeowner was very fortunate and saved a lot of money in getting this all cleaned up. If he had noticed the trunk rot earlier and decided to have the pros come in and piece it down it would have been thousands and thousands I'm guessing.

Mother Nature takes it down, it misses the house, lands in the perfect spot, you cut the wood, no need for a stump grinder to come out. I'm thinking his only significant bill was for the chipper? Although the chipper guy probably wasn't too cheap.

It's a lot of nice solid red oak you got!