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CaseyForrest

I am NOT a tree freak.
AS Supporting Member.
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With the near completion of a host of other projects, I can finally turn some attention to splitting. Heats going to break for the week and aside from the stray odds and ends on the existing projects, I should be able to make consistent progress.

Tomorrow morning it begins. Hopefully.

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Sent from a field
 
I can't begin to split until Monday. Still hot tomorrow. Then mid next week rain is coming in to put out the sun's fire, and wet, high-humidity weather isn't much better.

Great setup, there Casey. You must have 40 to 50 cords of logs to cut to length and then split. That's a bunch. Even the loggers out here who cut logs for pallet making would be jealous.
 
I can't begin to split until Monday. Still hot tomorrow. Then mid next week rain is coming in to put out the sun's fire, and wet, high-humidity weather isn't much better.

Great setup, there Casey. You must have 40 to 50 cords of logs to cut to length and then split. That's a bunch. Even the loggers out here who cut logs for pallet making would be jealous.

Its darn humid here too. Not hot and its cloudy but after 10 minutes or so I'm soaking wet. Sun just starting to peak out so I'm not sure if I'm going to push through, set up the canopy or call it a day.

I figured Ive got 35 full cords to process. Likely a little less, but certainly enough to keep me busy.
 
Its darn humid here too. Not hot and its cloudy but after 10 minutes or so I'm soaking wet. Sun just starting to peak out so I'm not sure if I'm going to push through, set up the canopy or call it a day.

I figured I've got 35 full cords to process. Likely a little less, but certainly enough to keep me busy.
Well, that was just my estimate of your hoard and thanks for confirming it. I'm getting more accurate the older I age. I tried a powerful fan and installed an umbrella, but even that only works in the morning. I ran the fan off of a 12 v car battery with a converter and it would last about an hour or so, which isn't too bad.

What impresses me most about your collection of rounds is how closely you cut them all the same length. I always try to do that (16" to 18") and in the long run, it pays off. The shorts left behind I save for special orders that come in from pot belly stove owners who don't give a hoot what the length is along as it's short. They love chunks.

One other thing I did this year was spread around several sacks of powder insecticide that you can buy at the home improvement stores. It has been remarkably effective. The bugs ate me alive (and the wood) last year. People usually use this for their lawns, but it also works around my collection. I've dropped two applications about 45 days apart so far.
 
Consistent lengths is one of the drivers behind building all the splitting furniture. The smaller of our wood burning appliances wants 20" wood to be the most efficient. Smaller and it rolls into the door glass. 21.5" and it's to long to fit. So I copied sandhill cranes idea

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Not sure if the marks on the front board show, but I just line the saw up with them and I get 20" pieces every time. Give or take.

Anything shorter than 20" goes in here

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And will get used but oriented differently in either stove. I try to keep these pieces right around 8". It allows me to stack them at 90 degrees of how we normally load the stoves.

Not much gets wasted. 4 totes of wood to stack and of that, about half a tote for the shorts bin.

Sent from a field
 
The shorter lengths get gobbled up around here like hotcakes. Several of my buyers simply do not want fireplace length wood, so the shorts disappear fast when the heating season is in fill swing. Hard to stack, I often just mound up a random pile as they accumulate. I recall getting 600 short logs in one pickup truck load.

On the other hand, the majority rules, so the 18" logs vanish rapidly when the season starts -- about late August. That log count per truckload is right around 400. Nowadays, people want to know how many logs are in a truckload. That's because they drop about a dollar log at the stores when buying bundles. One of my favorite expressions is "Save a bundle -- buy a truckload."
 
They're certainly easier to deal with. If all I had to do was load the stove and not worry about breaking a stone or the glass, all I'd use is chunks I can chuck in the stove. Top load and fill'er up.


Sent from a field
 
Temps broke last night. It was 61 this morning. Nice breeze out of the north and cloudy. Perfect day for splitting and I'm stuck here

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At least I have a window.


Sent from a field
 
I just came in from doing wood.
Beautiful day for it. Low 70's and nine mile per hour wind.
Rolled a log on the deck, hollow end, and bees nest.
Yellow jackets...
Got nailed twice and lucky at that. Left the saw sit there. The one on the shoulder is just there. The one in the thumb joint is down right painful. Funny thing is the dog got stung earlier this morning and I laughed. I waited a bit and got the conveyor and splitter shut off.
Time to clean the garage I guess.
 
No bee is worse than a team of yellow jackets. They are mean and ruthless. I recall years ago being on a 24' ladder and painting a house when they attacked me. I could not get down the ladder very fast and got stung at least ten times by their army patrol, twice right next to my eyes. Usually they are in the ground, but this time they had a nest on a rotting vine branch, which is quite unusual. Hard to believe Georgia Tech named their mascot after them.

I cut a truckload of ash today from a blow down and will get another tomorrow. I usually try to split a truckload on the same day, provided my energy is still there. Today I only split and stacked a half truckload before pooping out and after the temp went up 25 degrees F. Still, it was far better than last week, which was sheer misery.
 
Tried to upload a short three sec. video without luck. Two holes. The bigger one is the nest. Mixed a liter of water and 20% Joy dish soap to flood the holes. End of log is punky and some seeped out. Returning bees were getting upset, so I got my saw and left them alone.
Feels like I slammed my thumb in a car door. Pain went into other fingers for a bit but that's gone.
Not in a big hurry to cut this one. Ideally getting it off the deck and wait for winter, but that's not going to happen.
Need to find a spray bottle for dish soap/water. It coats their wings and they can't fly. It's that or a torch...
Edit:I guess I'll put my Carhartt bibs on and jacket and give it a try. Home alone so may be good idea to wait till someone else is around incase things go sideways. IMG_4911.jpg
 
Most yellow jackets dig their nest in the ground and attack buried wood, rotting away. Thousands of them occupy one nest. They usually have a 1" diameter hole that they use to enter and exit their abode.

To kill them all, wait until dusk and pour a gallon of waste oil or creosote into the hole and cover it with a flat stone that weighs about ten to twenty pounds. Leave it there four three to four days. The flying soldiers of the colony will try to get back in, but they will eventually give up.

You will win and they will lose.
 
There is no activity on the two rounds I set aside. The soapy water did the trick. There are three dozen or so flying around the logs on the deck. I rolled the logs and sprayed them and the logs as well, but they are persistent. Perhaps the soap smell will drive them away tonight.
Actually I'm surprised I have not come across this before on the log deck. Years ago I did, and that was a nest in the ground so I just avoided it. Actually I was loading scrounged wood in a mini van. I left it idling for over an hour before I could get to it to shut it off. The nest today must have been very small.
 
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