Total of 3 trees dropped on Thursday. The big oak, a large birch and a small red maple that died on the side of my driveway. Yesterday, I got everything bucked from all 3. Then I brought all the limb wood from the oak along with all the birch and maple to my splitting/stacks area. What's left for today is getting the oak trunk split small enough to move and to chip all the slash. The oak was the closest I've come to burying the 28" bar on the 500i. I had maybe an inch to spare. Man, those rounds are heavy. My plan was to bring the splitter over and quarter the rounds so that I could lift them into my trailer. But they are so heavy, it's hell to even get them off their sides... never mind hold them on the foot of the splitter. And, when they are that big, they often don't split all the way across and then you have to rotate them 180. Maybe noodling is in order. Will see how it goes when the sun comes up...
I dealt with a similar sized tree after tropical storm Isaias hit in August 2020. That was actually the storm that motivated me to finally buy a splitter. I found for me that the path of least resistance was to wedge and sledge the 30”+ rounds in half first. The halves were still heavy no doubt, but manageable. Good luck, that’s a lot of work but the payout is worth it
Decided to do a hybrid method similar to above. I used the 500i with the 28" to noodle the oak in half. Then the splitter to turn the halves to quarters. Got it all moved to behind the barn for finish splitting at a later date. Pics to come...
Here is the destruction. Just finished chipping the slash and raking the yard. Nothing left now but to grind the stump. In the later pics you can see my wood shed with 6.5 cords for next year. (This years is already in the basement...) Then you can see my stacks between the trees for year 3. I was at about 4.25 cords already so I'll definitely be over the top once I get this all split. The last couple pics you can see the halves and quarters.
And... done.... My measurements get me 2.75 cords out of it. The round branch wood is in another stack that was a little short of being full but it would be about enough to fill that last stack in the left of my pic below. Let the drying begin....
