Great score Midwinter !!!! I know exactly how your wife feels Urban Woods, I kinda feel the same way sometimes. I pass a nice patch of woods near my house and a nice area of it has been cleared, lots of down trees for whatever reason, mostly pine. So after constantly saying to myself everytime I pass it am gonna get in there someday and see whats what I did just that early on Sunday morning. However all the pine has been sitting too long and too punky. I did find some nice pine rounds not far away that was worth the effort, just laying on side of the road, they were big! You do kinda feel like someone is going to say something but like Midwinter says sometimes you have to just be a pirate all within reasonable boundaries. Most people in my area don't want it and doing Twp a favor sometimes by getting off side of the roads. They cut it and just leave it there! Comes to think there is a nice maple tree laying not far I've had my eye on....... Road is heavily traveled so the earlier the better......Sometimes you need to be a wood ninja as well
Yep, to all that bear! And Midwinter that cop sounds like an idiot! However I don't know the whole circumstances so I'll give him the benefit of a doubt that he had no choice and felt bad. At least he let you keep what you had. Are you ready for a story? I had a similar situation like that in a park by my house that I occasionally take fallen branch wood from the sides of its roads at times. It's not my first choice for wood pilfering, but sometimes opportunities arise. This is one of those places like bear said "sometimes you gotta go early". It's a big park designed by the same architect who was commissioned to create central park, Frederick Law Olmsted. Anyway it is known for its cherry blossoms that they claim is the largest collection of Cherry blossom trees in the US. Come Spring time for two weeks its a big Asian draw with picnics and cameras snapping, but the rest of the time its just a rather run down park that connects Newark to my town and a nice place to walk your dogs or jog and such. Anyway I think it is also a place where gay men like to meet up or "cruise" as they say, especially on this particular dead end lane. The dead end is the least trafficked place to score wood from fallen and broken limbs, but I notice men always parked sitting alone in their cars or outside just wiping down their vehicles with a damp rag for hours. Like why do you need to go to a park to clean your car??? Sometimes when I pull over for a piece of wood to drag to my car I notice them staring at me. Other times when they drive by and see me out of my car they stare at me as if they are wondering: Is this the guy I have been chatting with on-line who agreed to meet me here? I'm like... YOU WISH!!! haha. Now because of what I suspect is a pick up spot (among other things illegal), there is a large police presence and a sheriff truck always drives up that road every 10 to 15 minutes. So its always interesting scoring wood in that spot given the obstacles. Ok, back to my point (I know, I can really write novels. Sorry about that) So one time when walking my dog I noticed in a spot where the park seems to dump small loads of mixed branches, and also idiot people dump there garbage there sometimes as well ( you know, stuff the town wont pick up) there were these downed black locust trunks that a parks truck must of dragged to the pile. So I made my plan to go there early in the morning that coming weekend to cut them into lengths that would fit my trailer crate and trunk. Well I got there as planned, admittedly a little late, but still early before 9am and started to cut the 12 inch diameter 12 foot long logs into sizes I could lift into my car and the crate. I made the mistake of driving on the grass to pull up to the pile because I just wanted to cut and go fast and besides the logs were far from the road and too heavy and time consuming to carry logs one at a time back and forth to my car. Also I have often seen people park their cars near that same spot when having family reunion type picnics and barbecues while playing baseball. So I knew the parking was a not the best idea, but I felt I wouldn't be around long enough for anyone to notice or care. I took out my cordless and quiet chainsaw and proceeded to cut as I always do. Problem was the black locust (a dense hard wood to begin with) was so bone dry and hard that my saws chain with its special thin steal narrow kerf meant for helping the light duty saw cut faster was getting jammed. The struggling saw was slowing the chain to the point the saw teeth would catch and jam hard. I started having problems where if a tooth got caught and slammed to a stop it bent just a little off true. That bent spot you could hear and feel making a dinking noise every time it came back around to cut the wood. Eventually that vulnerable spot was prone to catch and bend some more. It slowed me down having to get the jammed teeth unstuck from the wood and I started attempting to straighten out the teeth with a hammer which helped for a little. Eventually though, the teeth became such a problem I was just prying them off with pliers. I wound up being there way too long and ruined my blade on this petrified wood! I had a few pieces in the back in the crate and was working on cutting more when a black unmarked blazer pulled up and a guy asked what was I doing there. I told him I was just trying to take away this discarded wood the town dumped that was only going to take up space and rot. He looked my operation over and came to the conclusion that this was indeed what I was up to. I think he initially thought I was parked out of site and off the beaten path because I was using my car as an impromptu cruising motel. Once he saw I was just an idiot scrounging wood he seemed less aggressive, but lifted his shirt so I could see he had a badge on his belt. He said he was the sheriff in charge of this section of the park and told me I am not allowed to be parked on the grass areas. I'm a bit stubborn and said "yes officer sorry about that, I'm leaving soon as I get this wood in the car. He snapped back "You're not allowed to take wood from the park! I played dumb and said "I'm not???". I told him I didn't realize I was doing anything wrong taking something that the town was throwing away. Then in a moment of "it doesn't hurt to ask", I asked him if he knew a place in the park where the park workers dumped wood for the taking? He said "No there isn't any, so if you'll just get on your way and don't let me see you ever parked anywhere but in the designated street parking " I said yes officer I understand now, thank you for the warning, it wont ever happen again, but can I at least keep the pieces I already have in my back crate?" As a response to that he took out his notebook and clicked his pen and started reading out loud my license plate numbers D44B.... Me "Okay Okay! Sorry for asking, I'm throwing them back! He should've let me keep them at least. Of course it was killing me I already invested all that time and aggravation cutting them into manageable size so I wasn't going to let all my hard work go to waste. Long story short I returned a week later and legally parked and rolled my prepared logs to my car and took off. I have other stories about this park and the law I will share another time. One is really funny and all the problems I have with this park have always been the result of illegal parking more than the wood scrounging. Such is the plight and misadventures of the Urban Woodsman. Hope I didn't bore you all.
Nothing to hoard from the dump today, but once it stopped raining, I did some cutting. These were the beech poles I got on Craigslist earlier this fall, and the little bit of honey locust from yesterday. I wanted to get it all out from under the pine tree, which is where I dump new scrounges. Never know when the next ice storm will come! Tomorrow I'll find a home for the beech.
The honey locust split great ! I've had some branched pieces in the past that were impossible, but this lot was nice and straight.
That's all the beech from out front! There's a little more, but it's at the bottom of some other stack. I split the bigger pieces. Most of it was straight grained... but some of it was a little flakey. Small stuff like this wasn't bad to split, but I don't know about big rounds.
Snapped this a few months ago. I don't typically mess with my phone while driving, but this was on my road literally a few hundred feet from my driveway...
Haha! Looks like you stuffed a giant tarantula into your trunk! Oh sorry edit, that's a picture you took of a tarantula kidnapper!
