I think I am goin to take a whack at this silver maple tomorrow after work. I admitted to my wife that we probably didn’t need the wood even for the three year plan, but that I pretty much wanted to get it for fun and to try out some new chain sharpening techniques, like using the right size round file. She was supportive and appreciated the candidness. There is no one else clamoring for this silver maple, so I figured I’d focus on cutting to size first, and then quarter either by noodle or wedge and sledge. Transport is lower priority, unless there is a truck available as I can take multiple trips. Will the silver maple season at all if it is quartered and up off the ground? I actually look forward to having something to split and refill my stacks next winter as I burn down what I have, but I also figure quartered will be easier to transport. I also want to drop a load on the neighbor who lent me the saw. He moved from next door to across the street, and has a fire pit and now a fire place in the new house, but I need to convince him to the SS parts of CSS. How important is seasoned wood for a fire pit? Just to get it going, right?
It works a better when dry. Ive been burning scraps and "skinny seconds" plus bark. The nice dry ones burn up, but others will sizzle and smolder. If not sure put them in ahot sunny spot for a couple day...driveway, deck etc. I had a green maple i put on the sunny deck and left it for a week. Full baking sun & too hot to stand on barefoot. I was really surprised it didnt sizzle and burned real well. Keep in mind i dont burn fireplace sized logs, just scraps, remnants etc. Picture of last fire. The log on edge was put that way to dry more. I also have pallet scraps too...mostly hardwood.
On rereading this post it is making more sense and I think will come in handy. All the big ones are stacked on end. Noodle first and then knock over and cut the quarters off to length.
Here is an inventory before I got started and my take home for the day. Didn’t do as much noodling as I planned... I went for the easier stuff instead.
So it is Norway Maple? Just when I thought I figured out my maples. This I thought was red because they are prevalent and the wood felt pretty solid, then I thought was silver after comparing to trees in my yard, which I misidentified as silver. Does Norway have as many btu as red? I would guess about the same based on the heft of the wood.
Norway is not on the btu chart on the forum chart unless it goes by a different name. Heres my ranking of maples im familiar with from best to worst btu wise. Sugar Norway Red (aka swamp) Silver I think red and Norway are close and could be swapped in my ranking. Just did some quick googling and Norway is better than red btu wise. On your second pic, the round with obvious ant/insect infestation looks like silver maple to me. Bark is different from the others which appear to be Norway.
The bark does look different. They did say “two maple trees” I didn’t see the second stump, but i’ll Keep an eye out for it. If what I thought was silver is really norway, than there is not a lot of silver around my neighborhood. There is one two doors down, but 95% are red or Norway. Apparently I can’t tell a trident from a Japanese maple, but my money is on red.
I think I found the second stump which looks like Norway ?? Firewood forensics is tricky. Did someone roll an extra round in there?
yup, that it is! This is the Norway ive been processing at my friends. The pile when i got there today. He moved several wheelbarrows of noodles for mulch and we figured maybe 15 so far for the tree. The second pic is when i left late this afternoon.
Norway maple stacked on a couple single rows of pine ironically stacked next to a Norway maple.. they really are all over the place around here. I’ll save the splitting for winter, you know, to warm me twice. Now the question is how long until I get the urge to go back for some more. The chain is cutting much better after great advice from the forum here. The noodling sure was going slow however, and there are getting to be some big ones left.
Nice looking stacks of firewood! mrfancyplants , in order to noodle effectively, the bar should be longer than the round. Keep the powerhead higher than the bar tip for chip clearance & let the saw do the work. A properly sharpened chain will pull itself through the wood without having to force it. Unless cutting through a knot, the chain should attempt to feed faster noodling than cross cutting due to grain direction in the wood. No offense intended, but I'm thinking the chain may still not be optimum as far as sharpening.
I thought about it but haven’t, at least not yet. I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the red or white oak rounds that were giving me splitting grief. I did get some splits off of them per the earlier noodling exercise. It is hard to let them go given my limited “all nighter” material. I might dice them into chunks when I attempt to slab a cutting board off of some cherry burl.
Definitely no offense taken. I know there are some deficiencies in my chain sharpening skills, but on the plus side, I am getting better at it. I sharpened after this latest maple load and managed to get the face of the cutters sharp all the way down. That is a great tip on the forward leaning angle while noodling. I did put some thought into the angle of attack, but thought that leaning back would scrape the grain out.. didn’t work so well.
Just FYI saws that have a wide opening on the bottom of the clutch cover do better with noodles...stays cleared out better. Some guys will even cut a bit off the bottom of the cover to allow for better noodle discharge...or some even buy an extra cover to mod just for noodling.
Looks like i’ll get another shot tomorrow afternoon, in the hottest part of the day. I’ll be bringing water this time. Even though I only spent a couple hours last week and it was relatively cooler and breezy, I was slowing down hard towards the end when I realized someone in my family appropriated my water bottles out of my car. Not even a hose to drink out of, and then I rolled my ankle in a hole in the yard... I’m just complaining now; it was fun. And, ready for round two tomorrow and the chain is already sharpened up,
