Firewood Hacks

I don't think they are ever going to let you live this down. Maybe the first time but not the second.

 

Dad taught me that to stop a stress crack in cast iron to drill a small hole at the end of the crack; that relieves the stress and prevents the crack from enlarging.

 

That works in all kinds of metals...

 

(13) Never use a pole axe to pound a wedge into a tree in the felling of it, or on splitting wedges; the impact will force the axe to enlarge the hole and loosen its grip on the handle

(14) In order to save an axe from destruction, or getting lost in the woods; when felling a tree that requires a felling wedge, first cut a limb or sapling a few inches in diamter and a few feet long to act as a club to pound the wedge in instead.

(15) When twitching tree length wood, to reduce the horsepower required, and to keep the limbs of the trees on hardwoods from getting hooked on other trees on the way out, cut 2/3 of the way through the branch, but not clear though so the limbs "fold" inward. They still stay with the tree being pulled, but are no longer jutting out.

(16) Never grease your bar tip, it is inevitable at some point the tip will touch dirt and get impacted into the sprocket and thus be ruined. The bar wears out long before the sprocket bearing gives out.

(17) Gas and bar and chain oil are always used in conjunction; tie a rope between the two jugs with a spare bar wrench/screw driver threaded through the rope in case the other (that you keep on you physically) gets lost. If you need it, you just untie or cut the rope.

(18) To swell an axe handle into the head of an axe, leave the axe submerged in antifreeze overnight. The mixture will not dry out as readily as plain water

(19) On average a person getting wood from stump to yard in tree length applications spends 15% of their time felling, 25% of their time limbing, 50% of their time twitching wood, and 10% on the landing.

(20) The more time a person spends using directional felling, whether it be with wedges, technique, or pushing the tree over with equipment, far less time will be spent on the two highest time percentages; limbing and twitching the wood to the yard. ALWAYS take your time felling, it is time well invested and efficient.

(21) Replace broken chokers quickly. My skidder has 7 chokers and if I break even one choker and do not fix it, at the end of the day I would have had to make a seperate twitch in lost production. That twitch costs a lot in fuel and time.

(22) It is inevitable that chokers will slip leaving behind trees. It is also inevitable that the fatigue has set in at the last twitch of the day too. On the last twitch I plan to pick up my lost trees, so if I have lost 3 trees throughout the day, I fell 4 trees, then pick the 3 lost trees up on the way out. If I lost 5 trees, I would fell 2 trees and pick up the lost 5...you see what I mean? This keeps my woodlot picked up, production high, and the last twitch of the day an easy one.

(23) A chain will stay sharp 3 times longer in wet mud then mud that is allowed to dry. If working in mud, always make you cuts before the mud dries out.

(24) A logger is as much a rigger as they are a logger. Keep spare cable clamps, shackles and chokers around for the inevitable breakage.

(25) Logging is all about traction and a winch has 100% of it. "A winch is half the tractor" is a true statement whether a person is using a skidder or an ATV or anything in between. They are sound investments in the woods.

(26) A cable from a winch can thread between tight trees, reach out 150 feet, change directions quickly with pulleys, and traverse terrain the attached vehicle could not even begin to tread upon.

(27) A bigger chip does not mean a cut is being made faster. A cut is made by going from point a to point b in the quickest amount of time. A saw that turns high rpms and takes more chips per second might out cut a saw that cuts a bigger chip, but does so with slower rpms. Equally the opposite might be true. The saw must be filed according to how the saw it is mounted upon performs.

(28) Chainsaws are cheap, buy the best you can. For instance, a professional saw will cost around $750 which is the price of a load of wood going to the paper mill. In the first day it will pay for itself. Equally, it takes $1800 to heat my home for a year using propane. A chainsaw that produces firewood to do the same thing pays for the same professional saw in less than 3 months of time by savings from heating costs.

(29) Spinning tires is a waste of time. Only take out the amount of wood the tractor (or other vehicle being used) can handle in terms of traction, power and condition of the twitch trail. If the machine is constantly getting hung up, spinning in mud, laboring on a hill, or doing wheelies, go with a smaller load. You are NOT being productive. Production is going from stump to landing efficiently. Such nonsense also breaks equipment.

(30) When first using a new twitch road, or the extension of one, go with light twitches. A twitch trail gets better as more twitches are hauled over it.

(31) Proper woodlot management means locating twitch trails carefully. Twitch trails will reduce timber production for years to come so limit them and make every one access as much area as possible.

(32) Trunk lines aid in this endeavor. Circular paths, while great for not having to do as much backing up, also doubles the loss of timber production. Learn to back a trailer up instead. (One person I knew on a different forum planned to put in a circular road on his 10 acre property. I did the math, he was losing 10% of his land base just in making a circular road. He would have lost less then a half acre by utilizing a trunk road system).

(33) Logging recklessly can take out backs and knees. Body parts are expensive, a cord of wood is not. Learn to stop when tired and stay healthy enough to log another day.

(34) When starting to log, make a bee-line to the back of the woodlot and work your way out, in that way you are not working on top of your limbs and brush.

(35) Traipsing over brush is what wears a person out who is cutting wood. Far better to plan your tree felling accurately, then after EACH tree is dropped, limb it out. Limbing out 7 downed trees all at once in a pile is a mess, tiring and unproductive.

(36) Know your saw's fuel capacity. I can cut 2 twitches with my saw before refueling with my skidder, 3 with my bulldozer, and 4 with my tractor. Fueling up at every twitch is wasteful in splashed fuel, and in time.

 

LodgedTree What is twitching wood?

 

Geez ow...dang walkin encyclopedia he is...you got a publisher?

 

Moving wood from stump to the landing with a machine or horse. The specific method does not matter, for instance how you load your rounds on your carrier is just as much "twitching" wood as I do by dragging them out tree length with my skidder. Using a forwarder or loading wood by hand on a trailer are also "twitching wood."

I think it might be a local Maine logging term, though it is an old one. Probably adapted from the word timber (t) and the fact that in the old days they hitched horses to the wood, (hitched) so that combined (timber-hitch) contracted in Maine accent speak, was shortened to giving us the term (t'w'itch). But that is 100% speculation on my part.

Twitch trail thus is a path through the woods. It differs from logging road because that means the main haul road the trucks take, most often graveled, wide, with culverts and the like.

 

My hope was, and still is, that others will join in with their wealth of knowledge and that people can learn from our COLLECTIVE experience and enable them to work more efficient and safer in the woods. My goal is not to have anyone fell like they have to adopt all of these truths as I found them to be, but to adapt what works for them. Some are not mine, like #14, I learned that watching a video of a man named Soren Erickson from Sweden who was teaching loggers in the 1980's how to hand fall trees. It was the heyday of chainsaw felling and before mechanical harvesters came out. Others I have learned from watching, like ruining many axes by elongating the axe handle hole by pounding on wedges.

The real goal is to get people thinking about how they do things and if there might be a better way. Myself I carried an axe with m to pound felling wedges too until I saw that club making method. "Why didn't I think of that", I thought? Now I pass it on to others.

 

I use the word twitch up here , you guys ever use the word gitny ?

 

My wife's grandfather does, but he is in New Hampshire. Here we use the wood "Jitterbug", which of course is the same thing, a homemade log hauler (tractor, skidder, bulldozer, etc)

When my father was in school they asked the Superintendent if they could build a Jitterbug in shop class and he said they could. All that year they worked on it, but the Jitterbug...was actually a hot rod. At the end of the year the different classes had to show off what they made so they threw off the top of that hotrod and smoked the tires across the parking lot. The Superintendent just aid, "Boys, that is the fastest jitterbug I ever saw." Naturally for pulling wood a jitterbug would be geared with two transmissions and go incredibly sloowwwwwwww.

 

Lodged Tree,
When you talk about pounding wedges and loosening the axe head are you talking metal splitting wedges? Surely a non metallic falling wedge wouldn't harm an axe?

Sent from my SM-S320VL using Tapatalk

 

Yeah I doubt a plastic felling wedge would hurt an axe, but I don't use them. I use metal ones.

 

Not sure if anyone knows this but you can re sharpen a file. I forget the time limit I'd have to look in my book, but you soak them in a bin of battery acid for so long then rinse them immediately with clean water!

 

drilling and tapping holes, especially tapping holes. Smooth as buttah. Technique kelps too.

 

Yep, works as well as "Tap Magic" & smells good too.

 

Nothing to do with firewood, but with the welding and fabrication you had made references of before. Note the framing square has fasteners attached to it. I do this to hold it up off the table above the round corners of the steel, and it also helps in that I don't need an extra hand to hold the square up to whatever I'm working on. Another plus it that picking the square up off the table is much easier when it isn't laying flat. You may never use this trick, but it may help you come up with another trick that you can use sometime.

 

(37) Chain chokers grip small trees better than cable chokers, but cable chokers grip bigger trees better because they cut into the wood

(38) Chain chokers take wear better than cable, but snap unexpectedly. Cable chokers show wear by fraying/broken strands allowing them to be replaced before breakage occurs. Cable chokers are also cheap

(39) Chain chokers are easier on your hands, but often get lost in the woods, cable chokers are pined to the winch line and cannot get lost, but fray and can hurt the loggers hands even with gloves

(40) The best choker arrangement is both! On my skidder I use 7 cable chokers pinned to the slides then a tear drop on the very end that can take a chain. In this way 90% of my work is done with cable chokers, but if I ever need to grab a tree far away, I can pull the tear drop out and use a chain choker to grab it. Alternatively I can use the longer chain choker to pull big saw log trees out that my cable chokers won't fit around.

(41) To get a short cable choker around a big tree destined for firewood and pulpwood, use your chainsaw to make a notch so that the diameter of the tree is reduced.

(42) Cable chokers are easier to unhook then chain chokers at the landing, and easier to put under a tree because they can be pushed which a chain cannot.

(43) A skidder has sheer power, a tractor is cheap in cost and is traditional, but a bulldozer is the best in the woods. It leaves smooth, flat level skid trails, has plenty of traction, can maneuver easily, leaves no ruts, and consumes less fuel. It is however...slow.

(44) In northern climates, frost action will eventually fill ruts in, but they are unsightly and a pain to work around. Avoid them at all costs.

(45) A meandering twitch trail through the woods will give a more park like look and highlights the forest, but makes it harder to twitch wood tree length.

(46) When cutting softwood logs, strive for 12 foot lengths as it will give the landowner more money and a better product if they are using them for their own use. That is because two 16 foot logs with trim will be 33 feet long. Three 12 foot logs with trim will be 37-1/2 feet utilizing more of the tree. This also gives the landowner (2) really good logs and a 3rd mediocre one. In contrast (2) 16 foot logs only yields one good log, and one mediocre one.

(47) Due to the taper of a tree, (3) 12 foot logs will yield more board feet per tree then 16 foot logs.

(50) One inch in diameter equals 2 feet in length. In other words if cutting a log at 16'-6" yields a 12 inch top, yet cutting it at 14'-6" will yield a 13 inch top, cut it at 14 feet, you will get more board feet out of the log.

(51) Cut hardwood logs at 8 and 10 feet and no longer to keep the value and board footage up. Hardwood standards are far different then softwood.

(52) Cutting off stub-limbs, bumps in the log, and keeping mud off them will give saw logs destined for commercial sawmills better scale even though technically these are not deducted.

(53) Logging contractors have poor reputations, but much is undeserved. Logging is subjective in nature and most are not simpletons. "Once a logger, always a logger" is a true statement. For many a life in the woods is a content life and not something they must do because they are dumb. Befriending one will probably lead to generosity, a deep knowledge base, and help in keeping firewood in the woodshed.

 

Im interested in this. I have access to drums of 1.280 specific gravity new battery acid at work. I could fill up a container and keep it in the work shed.

 

If I remember today I'll have to look in my book and let you know.