I kept a large amount of wrist or slightly larger pieces a few years ago doing a cleanup at a neighbor's place. It all had to be removed. On the advice of somebody here or another forum I ended up cracking them with the splitter to speed drying. These were only partially split and remain together. Sounded like a good idea. Have yet to burn any but I felt better about keeping them stacked in that condition. A thought!
I hauled a considerable amount of wood to a saw like that when I was a teenager. An old neighbour did the sawing, which made Mom happy. We ran it off the belt pulley on the Cockshutt 30 with a 5" wide flat belt. No need for fancy right angle drives.
35+ years ago when we were using a Buzzsaw, I believe it came off the PTO. I had a '49 "M" that I sold. I still have the belt pully. Wish I had the tractor back now.
2 or 3 inches on my own property since I have to do something with the brush anyway. If I’m elsewhere I try to not go smaller than 5 or 6, unless I have a bit more room in the truck and ran out of bigger stuff. May as well top off the load in that case.
That same combo still sits in a shed at our family farm. It hasn't been used in many years. I thought nothing of it when I was young except it was always loud! Now it seems like a rather dangerous tool
Exactly! I hate to waste anything. The rest goes through the chipper and ends up in the garden or elsewhere as mulch or compost if possible.
Same here. Except birch. All of that gets split so it doesn’t rot. A lot of what I cut on our property is trail clearing so I cut a lot of it up for firewood just to get rid of it but still leave a good sized brush pile for critters. I have noticed a lot more rabbits around the woods since we moved here.
I never knew how birch was. I cut one about 2 years ago and split it like everything else. The 2-4" rounds that i didnt split have a lot of fungus growing on them.
We usually cut down to 1 to 1 1/2 ". Less limbs to move, usually don't split under 4". We have one 5x10 shed that we stack all limb wood in. Have some that's 4 years old we are burning now. Kept us warm so far this year. My finger is in the bottom left corner for reference. This is the rig we use to cut small limbs up. I usually use my pole saw for this. The odd size pieces go in the drums beside the shed, we have a second box by the stove for them, a few during day or pack it full for overnight burn. So, I guess you could say that we waste little.
I’ve found that as well. I once bought 11 cord of tree length white birch delivered for $110. It lasted us 2 1/2 years, and it dried and stayed perfect under cover in a drafty pole barn. No sun required, and no rain either so no rot. I left a lot of 4-6” rounds with no issues. Of course that was back in the early 80’s. Maybe birch was different back then?
As others have said : 4" is where I make my decisions, either split and stack or huck into the bonfire "stack"
It depends on what it is. Boxelder, cottonwood, willow, tree of heaven, and other low lifes get split anything 5"+. Anything smaller I leave. Black locust, Osage Orange, Persimmon, etc I split anything 3"+. The only 2" or "limb" wood I leave round is blue beech, ironwood (hop hornbeam), and the previous mentioned "good" woods. Those sit in the barn for years until Ive forgotten about them so they're usually good and dry when I burn them.
With the glut of dead ash the past several years we don't cut much small stuff as most of that is a bit too far gone. But before the EAB came to roost here and my wife was helping in the woods, we'd save some real small stuff; probably down to about 2". But she is more picky than I am and because she can't help any more, I tend to let the small stuff go. In the past though we'd cut a lot of small stuff and it is nice to burn in spring and fall. You can see a few really small rounds in this pile. More small rounds. Wife did not help on this but it was off a neighboring property so I took most so there was not much brush left. Here I was stacking wood. All the splitting had been done so the rounds you see were stacked and burned like they are with no splitting. There is no problem drying the wood in that small of a round if you give it time. On the 3 year plan, it is not a problem drying.
It is all in my yard, so I have to either burn it or chip it. I make firewood to about 2 inches, the wife will keep even smaller. I split anything I cannot pick up one handed, or smaller if I think it needs to be split to dry (heavy bark).
It really depends on several factors: what species am I cutting, how much effort do I want to put into this, am I pressed for time, do I even care? For most heavy hardwoods (think oak, birch, sugar maple, locust, beech etc.) I'll cut down to about 1-1/2". For softwoods I usually don't bother unless it's big enough to split, although I occasionally cut and save some 3" to 4" stuff. I usually split anything over 4" diameter. Some species like hornbeam and apple I will save even smaller stuff because it goes great in the fire pit or BBQ.
We still have the rig we'd mount on the front end of an old Massey Harris 101 Super and run off the flat belt. But its not a tilt top and is more difficult to use by just one person. I've got another that is a roller slide style that came off a John Deere A and run off the flat belt. I like the efficiency of this little fuel sipping B7100. Then I've still another one I just converted to use behind an 800 Ford with the ford mounted right angle drive. There is really a wide variety of these old rigs and many differing ways in which they can be used. Btw... I wish I had that old Cockshutt.
The main thing to consider on these old rigs is to remember they eat meat as good or better than they eat wood !! LOL It sure saves me time with the limb wood.
