Hello friends Currently in the process of harvesting white birch and sugar maple on my land. I am stacking them in 6-7 ish feet lengths on pallets on the ground. Bucking them in bar lengths now is going to be too much work for how much free time I have I'm afraid. The drying chart tells me I'm looking at 2 years drying time yet I bought 8 feet lengths of birch logs to compliment this year's supply, cut in June 2019, and it is BONE dry... Is there a huge difference between leaving my harvest in their current lengths versus bucking them now? They will be split and stacked in a super windy field as soon as the snow melts. Thanks
Logs typically dry very little until cut split and stacked. (CSS) I'm shocked those birch logs we're dry... they usually just rot if not cut and split...unless some of the bark was off? Edit: maybe I misread that...they have been CSS for over a year already?
Most of the bark was still on, some odds and ends with rot but for the most part hard as a rock. Do I risk rot if they just sit elevated in the woods for the winter? I was thinking of buying my full supply next year so I don't really mind this wood only being ready in 2022 come to think of it.
See edit above... As long as birch is CSS, or at least the bark has been "unzipped" (cut through the bark the length of the log) they will keep for a bit... mostly.
I think the most time efficient way depends on your available equipment. If you have a decent size tractor, then I'd say to buck them, split them and put them in crates, cages, bins, etc right away. Less touches. Making logs may seem quicker at first, but in the long run I believe its actually slower, and gives the wood less time to season.
Without big equipment to aid in stacking 7' logs, unless they're tiny pecker poles. I think processing into splits on site is the quickest way.
I lost 25 pounds since I started hahaha. They aren't massive by any means but some of the bases can be a foot in diameter easily. Problem is I have an electric splitter (5 ton) which is fine but without a generator I'm quite limited. Best I could do would be to at least cut them to 15 inch lengths on site but time spent doing that is time not spent cutting more trees.
The amount of time lost is the amount of time between now and the time you get them bucked into rounds and split. Rounds dry faster than logs. And split pieces dry faster than rounds.
White Birch is the worst wood I personally know to leave in log length,,,, even rounds. Usually rots very fast.
One problem I've seen over and over is that people either see big cracking of the wood on the ends or they even stick a mm in the end and find a low reading leading them to think the wood is dry. Well, they are right! It is dry...on the end. And a mm is worthless if the wood is not checked right after being split. Best to both buck and split ASAP and then get it stacked. Primer on Woodburning by Backwoods Savage
I'm always trying to minimize the touches. Good advice. I also like to css immediately. I don't really have the space to store logs in the first place.....and since I get my wood dumped into the driveway it behooves me to get rid of it as quickly as possible. But yeah free time is precious and this nasty humid weather isn't fun either. At least it's starting to cool off a bit now but if I were you I'd at least buck it up near where you plan on stacking.....
I've come in to a good supply of wood and I've found you have to process it in stages. First stage for me was spending a few hours over a few weekends bucking the logs and moving some of the rounds from my neighbor's property over to ours. Next, I'd spend some time here and there splitting and stacking. You'd be surprised what a few hours over the course of a number of days/weekends/weeks will do to the stacks. Finding large blocks of time can be a challenge. And working on wood all day can be a lot of work (not that I'm complaining!). If you're able to break the process down, you'll get there quicker than you think.
