In another thread over in the "chainsaw" section somebody wanted to hear about my OWB and firewood setup for my 11,500 sqft hardware store/ tool rental business. It's -20F and we aren't cutting wood today and we won't be again until after New Years, but I thought a few photos might explain how we do things. Since I burn 30 cords a year, I never seem to get ahead on wood. I try to have everything done a year in advance, but it rarely happens. Building a building that would be large enough to hold the wood and hold the snow load really isn't in the financial cards for me.
We palletize everything so that it's easy for me to move to the boiler by my employees. The employees and I have an agreement. They feed the boiler and I supply the wood to feed it. This means that myself and my son's teenage buddies do the majority of the work. I pay the boys (and one girl) by the pallet. The harder they work, the more money they make.
I order birch logs by the truckload (self-loader) about 9 cords at a time. We then take the mini-ex and fish them off the pile and hold them up with the thumb to buck. Two cutters work at the same time from each end of the log and work towards the middle. It's extremely fast and clean this way. Chains last forever and it's the most fuel efficient way to go. We cut for a complete tank of fuel, then switch to splitting and stacking.
The wood is split by hand most of the time. The four of us swinging a splitting axe can outrun a hydraulic splitter by a substantial margin, even our fast cycle Iron and Oak that I rent out. We prefer the Stihl PA80 mauls and Fiskar Super Splitter with the 36" handle. We place a standard 42" x 48" pallet in those racks (I get pallets for free) and then stack the wood on them. We use banding and scrap 1x4's (we recycle the 1x4s several times) to hold the pallets together. Without the 1x4's the pallets just turn into a round ball.
The mini-ex shown in the pictures will pick up a 16" x 40' birch log with little trouble. What is left in the photo is the pecker poles left over after we finished processing three log truck loads. I rent that machine to many people that cut their wood the same way I do. No back breaking bending over and you keep your chains out of the rocks. If you are motivated you can buck one of those 9 cord log truck loads in one day easy.
Anyhow, I will update this thread in the future showing our process in more detail.
We palletize everything so that it's easy for me to move to the boiler by my employees. The employees and I have an agreement. They feed the boiler and I supply the wood to feed it. This means that myself and my son's teenage buddies do the majority of the work. I pay the boys (and one girl) by the pallet. The harder they work, the more money they make.
I order birch logs by the truckload (self-loader) about 9 cords at a time. We then take the mini-ex and fish them off the pile and hold them up with the thumb to buck. Two cutters work at the same time from each end of the log and work towards the middle. It's extremely fast and clean this way. Chains last forever and it's the most fuel efficient way to go. We cut for a complete tank of fuel, then switch to splitting and stacking.
The wood is split by hand most of the time. The four of us swinging a splitting axe can outrun a hydraulic splitter by a substantial margin, even our fast cycle Iron and Oak that I rent out. We prefer the Stihl PA80 mauls and Fiskar Super Splitter with the 36" handle. We place a standard 42" x 48" pallet in those racks (I get pallets for free) and then stack the wood on them. We use banding and scrap 1x4's (we recycle the 1x4s several times) to hold the pallets together. Without the 1x4's the pallets just turn into a round ball.
The mini-ex shown in the pictures will pick up a 16" x 40' birch log with little trouble. What is left in the photo is the pecker poles left over after we finished processing three log truck loads. I rent that machine to many people that cut their wood the same way I do. No back breaking bending over and you keep your chains out of the rocks. If you are motivated you can buck one of those 9 cord log truck loads in one day easy.
Anyhow, I will update this thread in the future showing our process in more detail.
