Need to try a lobster roll, my Parents went up to Maine couple years ago and they toured the New England area. I'll say that was something my mom Wanted every day. I guess I meant someone was joking about your truck? Have a big one or something? Free firewood is always on my mind. I have only paid for firewood once and that was some cedar ironically last fall. I had trouble finding wood to burn because everything was still really green. I had hauled a few trailer loads of mill cuts that were really long but also the rain soaked what little firewood I had as starter after some pallets and a miter chop saw was purchased too .... All taken care of now! Well I too love all things seafood, crabs clams and Chinook Salmon. Russell Wilson and his orchestra, fires if you can't tell and a little sipping whiskey is good around here from local places too! Anyways if there was a GTG, come in the summer where the food is plentiful spirits are golden and fires are best burned long into the night! Nice to meetcha
I've burned lots of our western red cedar as the main firewood. It works great. You aren't going to make kindling out of a 48" DBH tree anyway and the red cedar is much more dense than the eastern white cedar that many easterners are familiar with. Cut and split it like doug fir, it will be great fuel. Now I have no problem with 48" rounds and need to start picking up some of these free loads again. Are you following a tree service around or just answering random free wood ads?
Im just responding to random wood ads and trying to keep it at 30 mins away at most unless the wood becomes more worth it. (Say a madrone comes into play) Im tempted to cut a tree in my parents since its leaning over the public drive and its on the smaller side. It is great as a main wood but if I kept doing that it would be gone fast so its best as a good hot start then pile on the wood that is often rain beaten needing just a simple dry by rapid fire. I notice the cedars come down a lot in the spring now and there are plenty of ads. But not enough time or room.
The diameter doesn't matter so much as the wood is easy to split and splinter. I use this term as the cedar just pops off in thin strips then it becomes chopstick thickness. I find that this is one area where I would lack the supply or readiness of materials. Now have plenty. Its good burning wood but I tend to go overboard on burning it since its so easy to ignite but I have plenty of dry supply just needing to stay ready for later and split into boxes for storage. The range of wood as its purpose I am aiming to maximize. Its not rare but I asked myself "how long can I make a ball of yarn last when I only need a few threads?" The stark reminder for me was my wood getting soaked and this included my tinder. I devoted a lot of time reading about what to do and correct my errors. Keeping my wood exposed on the right place in my yard is key but won't require a lot of planning this time. I feel ready as my supply for fire starter is more than enough.
Red cedar "likes wet feet" so they are often located in wet areas with shallow root systems. Since they are large and evergreen they are easy targets for spring windstorms. Usually they topple over and the huge (wide) root ball flips up into the air. Looks cool but be careful not to be crushed when you cut the tree from the stump. It's a dangerous situation with lots of hidden forces.
When I lived and burned in Whistler I would get lots of red cedar and burn it in the wood stove in slabs. I also got to burn quite a bit of yellow cedar as well. If you think red cedar smells great then you would love the smell of yellow. Now that Im in the wet Rockies we have a fair amount of cedar but Im to lazy to drive half hour to get any so stick to lodgpole for kindling. I did some camping early november and posted some pictures here of some smaller red cedar that were exposed to a burn. We used it for camp wood, man was it dry stuff! Brought about 8 small rounds home for kindling.
I've smelled yellow, Im actually getting a flashback of it. Red cedar has almost a licorice like smell of cedar. The smell of an actual tree down is concentrated so much its overpowering in some ways but a log split not as much. So the smell is more thinned out to pick apart the subtle nuances. The yellow has a bit of a "clean" like Smell. Similar cedar base smell but like citrus maybe more like lemon or grapefruit? Being that if you had the two you'd tell the difference. Yellow cedar actually also has higher rot resistance than Red so fences will last a bit longer if built with that. I stacked a bunch and now Im thinking about having a kindling stack and a burn stack. Right now its just being up off the ground since most of it is just muddy. Probably just get it on my smaller racks later. I feel like I've got some kind of rotational thing going for this wood. Been burning a lot more than I realized in my burn pit so Im hoping the sun comes around a bit more often soon so I can throw the wood around more.
I remember working on a condo development in Whistler in the early 90s and yellow cedar was being sanded by a finishing carpenter inside a condo. When I walked down the hall and through the door I was hit by the most amazing smell! Ive been told we have a bit here in the Rockies but Ive only seen the red. I didnt know it was higher rot resistant than red... interesting.
Im going to guess it has to do with the oil content and other stuff. I have cedar fencing that got wet and then mold grew on it. Its not rotting super fast unless the moisture conditions are lengthy. I just plan to get a stack out, dry them on the fence and then cut them for bonfire wood. Do this until its cut and dried. This was 200 feet of it so its becoming an eyesore because its not at a burning length. Just 6 foot lengths. Makes great firewood when its been standing for 20+ years. I thought about using it to build my daughter a play house but the mold worries me.
What are you cutting your other stuff to? I cut my overnight woods to lengths of 18" and my day time stuff about 17" as this is what works best for my stove. If you cut everything to 16" you will be good for most stoves.
Probably anywhere inside those but some are smaller not by my saw. I probably have anything thats hinting 3 feet to about 18-22 inches that isnt split yet. Others are just kinda in between that. Some are a weird crotch piece that is 3 trees that intersected another. The trunks met at an apex then joined. Weird but probably too big for my stove unless the splitter takes care of it later. Im saving these hard pieces to split for that 27 ton so I can get a real ugly pile going. Some of this stuff is just so hard to split that my wedges are bouncing off. Seriously. Need some heavy duty.
Yeah hydraulics are your friend. With my back I do very little splitting by hand. I have a 6.5 ton electric and it does a good job on anything I throw at it. Maybe I missed it but what stove are you getting?
