Well, the attempt was ultimately a failure. We did, admittedly, only put in six hours of work, and wound up getting through about six full cords of wood. The bottleneck turned out to be the log splitter. Plus a lot of the smaller stuff wound up getting split and didn't really need it. On the bright side, all I need is one more decent fall day and I'm done cutting for 2016-2017 wood.
Yesterday after morning rain, I went over to my dad's place as he had asked me to drop a large maple with "mushrooms" growing out of it. It had been years since I had paid attention to the tree, and it was a lot bigger than I expected. 30" diameter at 2' off the ground, then it split into three trunks about 10' up, each one between 16" and 20" diameter. The mushrooms were growing from rot that appeared to be from an old lightning strike. The rot started at a crotch about 50' up the tree and extended all the way to the ground. I dropped it fine and then he and I spent about three hours until dark, bucking it up. Got about halfway through it, basically all the wood under 12" diameter. Used up almost a gallon of fuel. No pics, forgot my phone. It'll probably be 50% or more of his entire firewood stash for 2016-2017.
No, soft or red maple. Still good BTU's. It's rare that Dad harvests live trees; 90% of what he burns is standing dead. He was worried about this particular one for some reason, even though it leafed out pretty well this year. Turns out it probably had at least 10-15 years left if the rot didn't spread too quickly.
The red maple that I have been processing from across the street had been struck by lightning. Rotted out just like you described. Still plenty of good wood left though. The buggy dirty inside did dull my chain quicker than I expected. Splits like a dream though. Have fun!
A very large % of the Reds I've been getting from SisIL's have been at least partially rotten somewhere in the first few feet of the trunk. They look fairly healthy....until I cut 'em down.
