I am growing tired of wheelbarrowing and scrounging pallets. So going seven feet on my stacks. Have only had two collapses over the past two years, so not worried about the height. Have found rain doesn't go down more than two feet, so most of it stays dry.
Have about 15 cords of barkless hickory in my inventory. Bank $300 plus tips for this per face cord. Barkless hickory drys faster, leaves no mess, and keeps the bugs away. BuzzSaw receives a premium for his barkless BL, so this got me on the right track for hickory.
I stack mine about 6’ tall @ two wide then one row 12”-15” high in the middle of those. Haven’t had any tip overs.
After stacking hundreds of cords you learn a lot of little things such as what wood types have more friction. Stringy hickory holds together the best while hard maple has little friction to hold splits together. I have many labor intensive efforts I perform to make my firewood season faster and better. I move firewood to each specific ready rows multiple times as it ages and skim the top layers off multiple pallets for delivery. Yep, I am handling firewood multiple times but for a higher value purpose. I am aiming for the customers that want the best and driest firewood without regard to price. I have more firewood scheduled for delivery the first week of July than I delivered the entire month last year. My weirdness seems to be paying off. I believe Nashville is a unique firewood area and your results following my methods might not result in higher revenue. I delivered a Rick of hickory to a customer yesterday that will burn it in his amazing fire pit. He has a crew of interior flooring specialists that travel around the country doing high end projects. So very much appreciated his purchase and compliments on the quality of the hickory. This is a repeat, but I would have never grasped the importance of producing perfect pieces of firewood without following the major dudes on this site.
Wheelbarrows and pallets cause much work! I have never liked pallets but prefer getting some skids from right out in the woods. Many times one can even use limbs to stack on. After all, you only need to get the wood off the ground.
How/where do you get bark less Hickory? When a hickory dies around here bark stays on, unlike oak. Bark less dead oaks are common.
I find I can get most of the bark off live fresh cut hickory. Removing the bark keeps the powder post beetles away since they like living under the bark. I delivered two face cords of bark on hickory to my restaurant this morning. The powder was thick. I haven't had a customer complain yet since it just comes with the territory especially in the summer months.
