Firewood Processing, go big or go home.

[TFPace]

So what does it all accomplish. Piles and piles and piles of firewood everywhere. He is selling more than 1500 cords per year but we will not admit how much becuase the town does not want him getting bigger in his operation. So no official number goes out here. He stacks the wood so it will dry with no mold. Views of the piles. I also can't show photos of all of it because the town might do the math and get cranky.QUOTE]

Your brother has a sharp operation. It sucks that the town he lives in is complaining about his business that appears to be operating in rural farm setting.Bothering no one and contributing to the tax base!

Big brother is always watching!

With 26k hrs on the machine am I correct in saying the power unit has seen an overhaul of some type?

Thanks!

Tom

 

[BuddhaKat]

Wow, that's the ultimate. I've always dreamed of someone asking me where I want the load of logs to go and telling them "Stack em up down there by my lake."

 

[corrupt]

26 000h over 9 years is 8h a day 7 days a week, your brother is a hard worker.
May be the town wants to slow down the hours more than the wood output??

 

[Curlycherry1]

[Your brother has a sharp operation. It sucks that the town he lives in is complaining about his business that appears to be operating in rural farm setting.Bothering no one and contributing to the tax base!

Big brother is always watching!

With 26k hrs on the machine am I correct in saying the power unit has seen an overhaul of some type?

Thanks!

Tom

The beef was not started by the town but the guy that wanted to develop the land next door that is slightly higher than my brother's land. Thus they could see the piles and piles of wood and logs if houses were to be built. The town eventually sided with my bro and told the develper to get lost.

The power unit has never been touched internally. Frequent oil changes/maintainence and not running full out rpms makes a big difference. It seems to be sized so that it does not fluctuate in rpms much at all when the hydraulic fluid is called for. The main pump is a tripple pump with three inlets and three outlets going to various parts of the machine. He has gone through a few pumps, and the arm that the hydraulic chainsaw pivots on seems to crack about every 6 months or so. All the stress of the up and down of raising/lowering of the saw bar is what does it.

Oh and he did wear away the metal on the main wedge and had to have that recently filled in. It takes a heck of a lot of wood to wear a wedge down.

 

[Curlycherry1]

Wow, that's the ultimate. I've always dreamed of someone asking me where I want the load of logs to go and telling them "Stack em up down there by my lake."

The pond was dug a few years ago to provide some habitat for critters and to provide water in case of a fire.

My brother is peaved that some geese or something brought bullhead eggs into the pond and now he has an explosion of bullheads living in there. He stocked it with some kind of minnow and some sunnies and they have been thriving, but the bullheads are taking over. It is funny to take the Kubota RTV around the pond and watch the water boil from the fish looking for their food handout.

 

[BuddhaKat]

The pond was dug a few years ago to provide some habitat for critters and to provide water in case of a fire.

My brother is peaved that some geese or something brought bullhead eggs into the pond and now he has an explosion of bullheads living in there. He stocked it with some kind of minnow and some sunnies and they have been thriving, but the bullheads are taking over. It is funny to take the Kubota RTV around the pond and watch the water boil from the fish looking for their food handout.

Just get a couple of neighborhood grade school kids to go plinking with their BB guns. Oh wait, you're out in the country. Tell em to bring their 22's.

 

[woodman6666]

Nice setup, is it completely necessary to hand stack all the wood I would think if they got all the debris out of the wood right away, the wood could remain loosely piled with no chance of mold. But I could be wrong.

 

[Curlycherry1]

Nice setup, is it completely necessary to hand stack all the wood I would think if they got all the debris out of the wood right away, the wood could remain loosely piled with no chance of mold. But I could be wrong.

Over the decades of being in business we have tried heaping the wood many, many times and it never works. CNY is one of the most overcast areas in the US so that leads to mold. By stacking it it provides a nice gray product when dried and no chance of mold. People are paranoid about mold so this makes that problem go away. Oh and by pulling a conveyor along next to the rows it can be loaded into a truck with lightning speed.

Besides, it looks darn cool to see those stacks. Notice how straight they are. He stretches string to get every row straight as an arrow.

 

[NeoTree]

Over the decades of being in business we have tried heaping the wood many, many times and it never works. CNY is one of the most overcast areas in the US so that leads to mold. By stacking it it provides a nice gray product when dried and no chance of mold. People are paranoid about mold so this makes that problem go away. Oh and by pulling a conveyor along next to the rows it can be loaded into a truck with lightning speed.

Besides, it looks darn cool to see those stacks. Notice how straight they are. He stretches string to get every row straight as an arrow.

Ya great looking work he does! I wish my stacks came out that straight.

Today I stacked a 30 foot heap of maple cherry and oak that had been sitting for a year split now and the maple had some mold on it, and I'm wondering if the peices in the middle are seasoned enough too. I like the idea of putting it in rows, then every peice gets a degree of sun and wind , just sucks to have to handle it one more time

 

[needwood]

My brother runs a firewood operation in Upstate NY and I was there last week so I got some pics of the thing. He has a Timberwolf processor that has 26K hours on the clock. It was recently rebuilt because the steel beam for splitting was worn completly through. He also tweaked some other functions and got it running in prime shape. He bought the processor new about 9 years ago. The processor is tucked under a canteleavered roof of a barn so it stays dry while processing. Here is the processor in its position.

Here is a look inside the "sugar shack". This is the brains of the operation and the operator(s) can stand in here out of the weather. In the winter the walls are sealed up so it can be heated to above freezing. Last week he was into big wood so he was running the 6 way wedge on it. He recently also added a single little wood splitter off to the side. That way a helper when not filling the log deck with the tractor can be in the sugar shack splitting the bigger pieces that escape the 6 way wedge. With the `20" logs he was working last week each pass generates some flat pieces that need to be whacked in half. With a helper on the small splitter the operation is about 40-50% faster than just a single operator.

You can see the little splitter in this pic and see how it drops right into the conveyor.

Here is an end view of the barn. There is a place for the tractor but it was currently filled with junk. The processor is on the left under the cantaleavered roof. The tank is the diesel tank and the processor is plumbed right to the tank. Never a need to ever fill the tank on the processor. It just sucks fuel out of the tank and the fuel company fills the tank every few weeks. Bar oil is also plumbed directly out of barrels but that is inside and I did not get pictures of that.

I will continue with more pictures below.

Wow! My friends said that i was crazy when i talked about getting one of those Built Right splitters. Yea that is a dream of mine. Now i have bigger dreams"

 

[needwood]

Right now my brother has a guy that comes by and spends a few hours per day a few days per week and he is able to keep up pretty good. In past years he had some greedy kids that would get off the school bus at his house and stay until 6 or 7 when their dad or mom would pick them up. Those kids made a lot of money but that was years ago. Now kids are too darn lazy that they do not care to make a buck. They would rather text on their phones all day.

Yea,tell me about it. But its not just the kids. I told the 8 year old boy across the street to ask his parents if it was OK to help me carry some pieces of wood from the front to the back of my pickup (just trying to teach the boy the value of the dollar)and i would pay him. They said yes and he did,so i payed him 5$. It was only about 8 or 10 pieces of split soft maple. I told him i might have more next weekend,and he said OK,he would help me. When he started walking away, 3 of my neighbors started yelling about how i was a cheapskate. When i drove in with a load of wood the next weekend, he pointed at me. His parents yelled at him,no and get in the house. I wonder where they get it??""""

 

[Curlycherry1]

Yea,tell me about it. But its not just the kids. I told the 8 year old boy across the street to ask his parents if it was OK to help me carry some pieces of wood from the front to the back of my pickup (just trying to teach the boy the value of the dollar)and i would pay him. They said yes and he did,so i payed him 5$. It was only about 8 or 10 pieces of split soft maple. I told him i might have more next weekend,and he said OK,he would help me. When he started walking away, 3 of my neighbors started yelling about how i was a cheapskate. When i drove in with a load of wood the next weekend, he pointed at me. His parents yelled at him,no and get in the house. I wonder where they get it??""""

Yeah it is the parents. A few years ago my brother (when I was visiting) saw a group of pop-warner football kids washing cars. He went over to the coach and said he had a deal piling firewood where they could make far more money. He told them about firewood piling and gave his card and said to set something up. My brother figured with an army of 10-15 kids he could really get the wood piled.

A month later the coach made arrangements to do a Saturday piling. Only 5 Kids showed up! The rest had "other arrangements" to take care of that day. Those five kids worked from 9 until 3 and they did not work like crazy, but they put up a good pace. Those 5 kids and their coach earned over 900 for that amount of work. That is far more money than they ever could make in a day washing cars. Yet they never came back and when my brother called to ask why the coach said it was too much work.

These are the same brats that grow up expecting $19/hour (starting) at the local brewerys or $16/hour at the Carrier factory.

 

[ropensaddle]

I don't know if they cost more but they are more work. At least when a machine breaks down you can just install some new parts. When a hot naked chick talks you have to act interested. The whole time your thinking shut up lets get to it.

Scott

Lmfao I got in trouble with the wifey last night for that very thing. I said, I have no idea what I could have said about what your asking me about so, just told her I have confidence in her ability. This made her mad lol, I don't know nothing about the subject but am supposed to give advice It will be ok I think but I find no stone rougher than the one surrounding a woman's heart.

 

[Steve NW WI]

26 000h over 9 years is 8h a day 7 days a week, your brother is a hard worker.
May be the town wants to slow down the hours more than the wood output??

55 hours a week, every week, over nine years, even at a cord an hour, your "over 1500 cords" is under half of what it's production should be. Don't worry about the town finding out his actual numbers. Tax records, aerial photos, someone counting log trucks, etc is much more likely to be used as evidence than an internet post.

Is that Deere motor 3 or 4 cyl? Either one is not noted for living that long without some work. I have run a 7600 tractor that's at 17,000 hours with only an injection pump and new turbo on the motor, but that's a 6.8L six.

It is a heck of a setup though. What does he do with sawdust, splitter trash, bark, etc? It must be a heck of a compost pile!

 

[Curlycherry1]

55 hours a week, every week, over nine years, even at a cord an hour, your "over 1500 cords" is under half of what it's production should be. Don't worry about the town finding out his actual numbers. Tax records, aerial photos, someone counting log trucks, etc is much more likely to be used as evidence than an internet post.

Is that Deere motor 3 or 4 cyl? Either one is not noted for living that long without some work. I have run a 7600 tractor that's at 17,000 hours with only an injection pump and new turbo on the motor, but that's a 6.8L six.

It is a heck of a setup though. What does he do with sawdust, splitter trash, bark, etc? It must be a heck of a compost pile!

Official decision from the town was that "he cannot get any bigger" than at the time of the settlement. So he is not getting bigger. Wink, wink. The town does not care one way or another about what he does specifically, they just needed to shut the jerk up that wanted to develop the land next door. The town has actually been fed up with people moving there and then complaining about tractors working the fields at midnight during harvest/planting times and the smell of cows. So the town has put in place some rules that if you move there you cannot complain about what is next to you. Also note, the town gave him all those road grindings to make his processor road. He is in good with the town.

He sells the sawdust to horse people and gets a few pennies for the dust. The chips get burned in a burn pile. The butts go into his OWB along with a lot of the chips.

As for hours of use there is almost always a person running it during the day and many nights a week he puts in one load himself. That is 7 face cords/load on the yard truck.

Part of the reason the drive system has held up so well is right down the street is the best diesel mechanic in the state. Seriously the guy grew up on a farm doing nothing but fixing equipment and he left the farm at 18 to start his own business. When he was about 14 he was rebuilding other farmer's tractors for money and raking it in. Now he and his two kids are cleaning up fixing stuff that somebody else has given up on. He and his kids are also the best welders around to, so if something needs fixing, they are the guys that will do it. It is nothing to see the local Cat or Deere service center pull in with something on their truck that they need him to fix. At $80/hour he and his kids had better be good. So the neighbor helps maintain the diesel engine and he is darn good at anticipating problems and preventing them from growing. I took a pic of the hour clock but it is too fuzzy to read in the pic.

I think the drive system is 4 cyl. 40 Hp if I remember correctly. The big thing is that it runs a fast idle and does not struggle under load. That can really make a motor last a long time. Slow steady rpms and good maintainence.

 

[Curlycherry1]

Just a quick update. Last week I took the kiddies and we were up to my Bro's for vacation. Got to help process some wood and run the tractor lifting logs onto the processor deck. Good testosterone inducing fun!

Anyway a diner brawl broke out about how much wood was stacked on my brother's property so I took a few hours (yes, it takes hours to total that much wood) and I got a hard number. Not counting what he has dumped in windrows waiting to be piled, he has 1437 face cords stacked. He has many hundreds of other face cords waiting to be stacked, but I did not tally them because it is hard to get an accurate number on dumped wood.

For those that need a new measurement system for firewood, how about by the mile? That 1437 face cords makes a pile 4' high by ~2.2 miles long.

 

[adam32]

Dang, 1500 cords a year @ $160 a cord is some serious money for a firewood business!! Hard work pays off!!

 

[banshee67]

WHAT THE HELL IS A FACE CORD? lol
my understanding is that its one row of wood, 8 feet long and 4 feet high? how long does he cut his pieces? how many face cords in a cord?

what im getting at here is, how many CORDS he got stacked!?
(no i dont work for the town)

 

[Curlycherry1]

WHAT THE HELL IS A FACE CORD? lol
my understanding is that its one row of wood, 8 feet long and 4 feet high? how long does he cut his pieces? how many face cords in a cord?

what im getting at here is, how many CORDS he got stacked!?
(no i dont work for the town)

16" Pieces so 1437/3=479 full cords. $85/face cord or $255/full cord plus a $15 delivery charge. It works out to about $120,000 worth of wood. Keep in mind this is not all of what he sells. The total amount is top secret. The town only allows him up to 2000 cords per year so that is all he sells.

He will sell and deliver all of that and more between September 1st and mid December. That is the "dash for the cash" as he calls it. Things slow down late December and then just dribble along until about March. By dribble I mean 20-30 face cords per week as compared to a few hundred per week in the fall/early winter.

As for the measurment Nazis, in CNY where he is located nobody but nobody buys or sells wood by the full cord. It is unheard of in that area. Any attempt to get customers to understand and buy by the full cord is a total waste of energy. You sell what the customer expects. Face cords.

 

[ropensaddle]

WHAT THE HELL IS A FACE CORD? lol
my understanding is that its one row of wood, 8 feet long and 4 feet high? how long does he cut his pieces? how many face cords in a cord?

what im getting at here is, how many CORDS he got stacked!?
(no i dont work for the town)

My guess is divide by 3 here its illegal measurement only cords and fractions of a cord or cubic feet / meter applies.