Scrounging Firewood (and other stuff)

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H-Ranch, are you keeping an eye on your wheelbarrow tire tread? With all the mileage you've put on that thing this winter, it must be pretty near bald.
It's not bald, but it sure could use a tube! It has a leak that I couldn't find with a spray bottle of soapy water. Might have to try again.
 
You’ll need bigger pieces.

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Right.
These will be for getting it going and burning up stumps :happy:.
I have the rest of the trees I'm taking down in front of the barn, the elm will have a lot of branches, they'll be plenty of fire from that.
Currently it's full of branches from a cherry I took down last week along with a bunch of other various chunks and logs.
I fell this one up lol. It was a bummer, not long after I finished installing the roof panels I noticed the large vertical crack. The good thing is once the stump is flush cut or ground I'll be able to get thru with a 60" mower deck.
I gave the wood to my neighbor, he has a fireplace. I give him cherry many times and he lets me have all the black locust I drop for him :happy:. He has 3 or 4 that are throwing shade on his peach trees, may get those down this week depending on the weather.

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LOL! I forgot to mention that on our to to Indiana I told the family, "Point out any woodburners you see from the highway. Just holler out!" I think I was the only one enthusiastically playing though. My wife did spot a couple, but I found most of them and even called out firewood stacks, a guy with a chainsaw, and a pickup loaded with wood. Maybe they were just sore that I was winning the game... :yes:
That's funny I do that with roofs.
 
I don't lack for firewood... The two large maple trees that are leaning on the right need to come down. The recent ice storm led to the root plate lifting on those two trees and the smaller tree between them. The smaller tree broke off mid stem and I dropped the snag--the stump can be seen in the photo. I also removed one the lowest branches with my pole saw to take some weight off--I took the rest off after the photo. It had been way to windy to mess with those trees and the one with the branch cut off it is being braced up by a cedar tree. I'd like to drop that tree before it falls. This as it's natural lean will wipe out a tree my father planted maybe 10 years ago. I'm pretty sure I can get it to fall between the two trees my father planted via directional felling with an open face cut, plunge cut, and trigger. If my plan works it will pivot off the cedar... if it doesn't, I'm no worse off than if I let if fall by itself. This is a very small number of trees I can turn into firewood... between my property, my parents' and my sons' there are at least 100 damaged and/or fallen trees. Add in 22 miles of rail trail and there is more wood than could be burned in a life time! There are some branch tips showing close to the dog run from another badly damaged maple... the dog run itself got smashed on two sides from it's branches.


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the round part with the indent, bottoms out on the piston shoulder to give the packing a specific preload.

See the four small bolts? That’s what puts the preload on the packing inside, that retainer doesn’t touch the gland until tightened.

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More cottonwood (meh):
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And oak! You know if a guy had a lot of this delivered I can see where he could turn into an oak snob. I'm just not one. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I'm not. I mean, I experimented with oak in college a little, but I'm NOT an oak snob! Ummm, anyway... how about those Rams in the Superbowl?
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Your able to get wood from the rail trail??? Are you hired to clear it? I drool over some of the Black Walnut I see along it.
I'm one of a small group of volunteers who are authorized to run saws on the trails and drive vehicles on them... I do chainsaw work on the entire 22 mile trail. Other "unskilled" volunteers handle small limb removal and move larger stuff off to the side if they can until a chainsaw crew comes through. Believe me, trail maintenance is a never ending task! For one of the other rail trails I only have about .8 miles to worry about as that is how much runs through the municipality that I represent on the trail coalition. Generally, they try to restrict those folks to those with formal training and experience and in some cases local highway departments handle the chainsaw work. My cutting partner and I are Game of Logging trained.

I milled some beaver killed cherry off one of the trails. To date the walnuts that have come down weren't worth messing with... I'll grab some firewood occasionally but quite frankly there are many cords of firewood available on my family's properties from the ice storm. As such, I probably will not take any from the trails (unless I see something very nice like clear straight grained oak that I can split by hand easily).

You might make inquiry into becoming a rail trail volunteer... Be prepared for some politics and folks concerned about liability... Sometimes the owners are more than happy to let you take the hazard and fallen trees. You'd be stunned how much wood I've left to "compost in place" over the years...
 
Someone mentioned that trail work is hard work, that’s not a lie. We’ve opened up a mile and a half plus of overgrown trail in the last 14 months, we really like our Echo saws. I didn’t modify them after all, the crew likes them the way they are. We’re all volunteers by the way. Here are some pictures.

Getting ready to go in. Red bottles are fuel, green bottles are oil.
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We’re mostly cutting brush.
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About to have the safety briefing.
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Some small cuts.
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Our little woman helper loves the saws too. She’s retired Forest Service, and didn’t like their big saws.
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This was solid brush we had to cut out, then we had off camber muck.
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A few of the guys built a nice trail in the muck.
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Sometimes we have to crawl in to what needs to be cut.
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The brush is getting thinner now.
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