How many hours per cord?

[lapeer20m]

8.

It takes me approximately 2 hours from the time I walk out the door to gas up the saw, drive the atv out back, cut a couple smaller trees, buck them, load them, drive back to the woodshed, stack them, and go back in the house. The atv hauls about 1/4 of a cord per trip. Most wood I have been cutting is standing dead elm or cherry, small enough I don't need to split. (12" or less in diameter mostly)

How long does it take you to process a cord of wood from standing to stacked?

 

[ole yukon]

Depends on where it is, what the terrain is like, how big the trees are, etc.
I guess to be honest I never timed myself. I have wondered at x dollars a cord, how much that figures an hour.

 

[chucker]

from home to woods, fell trees(not pulling to a clearing), blocking, splitting(by hand), loading into truck, clean up, drive home have lunch .... stack wood from truck between metal stakes on split firewood runners, ..... 6 to 8 hours = depending on weather and temp at that time .... as well as how much ambition I have from the day before as fishing really "saps" my energy level for work motivation!.......

 

[cnice_37]

It depends.... Probably on average 4 hours to fell, buck and get 2 loads home in the truck. Another 3 to split and 1-2 to stack.

I work at my pace, otherwise it's too much like work.

So about 9, and excluding stacking that would be about $200/7 or just shy of $30 per hr, less fuel and maintenance based on the going rate of a cord here.

 

[mn woodcutter]

like Lapeer is doing. I also am cutting standing dead elm much of which doesn't require splitting and is ready to burn. I drove about 5 miles down the road, cut up 5 small trees, loaded them up and took them home. I backed the wood truck up near the basement door and have been just pulling wood out of the box and burning it. I got about 1.5 cords stacked tight in the box all they way past the cab in about 3 hrs. that should last a month!

 

[Mtthwvn]

The bigger the wood the quicker i can get a cord cut and split. Might be just me but I'd much rather fool with a few big rounds than a few dozen smaller ones. Their a pain to roll up on the splitter at first but theirs quite a few chunks of wood that come out of one 30"x16" round.

 

[svk]

Have never timed from start to finish but here's my estimate per cord. In the past I've always stockpiled 5-10 cords then split it all in a day or two with a rented splitter.

Fell-limb-buck 1 hour
Load/haul to processing area/unload 1 hour
Split with hydraulic 1:15
Load/haul to stacking area/stack 1 hour.

So a bit over 4 hours. This year I intend to hand split so I will split at the tree sight. This will reduce the number of times each piece is handled and reduce overall time as the splits go directly from tree sight to pile.

 

[Cheesecutter]

I figure I average 3 hours per cord with 2 guys working together, about 1/2 that if we don't split it. It depends on the terrain, type, size of the tree. Ideally, a few tall straight 12" dead red elm can be cut for the OWB, loaded, and stacked in a couple hours. On the other side of the coin a gnarly mulberry can take several hours just because of the brush.

 

[spike60]

The bigger the wood the quicker i can get a cord cut and split. Might be just me but I'd much rather fool with a few big rounds than a few dozen smaller ones. Their a pain to roll up on the splitter at first but theirs quite a few chunks of wood that come out of one 30"x16" round.

Interesting, cause I was thinking just the opposite. Do you have any equipment to help you move those big rounds? I had a lot of big wood left over from the GTG at the store last Oct. Thought it was an awfull lot of work to get them down to firewood size. I would have to quarter those 30" rounds in order to get them in the truck. Then there's still some splitting left yet. For me, there's less effort to get the same amount of splits from a few 12" rounds than from one 30" round. 10"-14" is the ideal size. 8" and lower means almost no splitting, since anything 6" and under doesn't need to be split at all, so I like that also.

But there are so many other variables that it's hard to answer the original question. Place I'm cutting now is a half hour away, so I guess drive time has to be figured in. I figure my Dakota takes 2 loads to do a full cord. Once home though it's dumped close to the splitter, which is right next to the shed. So, from there, I'd guess 2 hours max to finish it off.

 

[zogger]

I did two cords in one day once, cutting from a log pile and using a loader and dumptruck and a hydraulic splitter. GF helped with stacking from the splitter.

If I was selling commercially, that's how I would do it, except skipping the stacking part, log pile/splitter right there, split, toss in dumptruck (or conveyor running at back of splitter), deliver when full.

Freeking firewood can season at the customers house as far as I would care.

Mostly though, way slower than that today as I milk trees out for the small stuff. Never timed it though, shoot might be ten hours a cord or something even longer as I putz with it, take a lot of breaks, etc. I usually just cut to size and haul back and do a rough stack with the rounds, heap the small stuff in a mountain, then when I feel like it go on a splitting and stacking binge. So start to finish for a single cord would be real hard to really guesstimate.

 

[olyman]

The bigger the wood the quicker i can get a cord cut and split. Might be just me but I'd much rather fool with a few big rounds than a few dozen smaller ones. Their a pain to roll up on the splitter at first but theirs quite a few chunks of wood that come out of one 30"x16" round.

its funny..wood burners around here,,dont want the big stuff..they call me,,ad I love them big chunks!! mucho wood in them...

 

[flyboy553]

Usually 6 to 7 hours to do a cord of red oak. Of course there are many things that can go wrong to add to that as well. Many things. lol

Ted

 

[avason]

Depends if I'm drinking beer or not. If I'm drinking...not much.

 

[AIM]

On average I would say 6 hours per cord. Takes about 3 to leave house, cut, load, return, and stack 1 truckload which I always figured to be 1/2 cord. (this does not include any splitting and this is with my wife)
One time this year Wife and I did it in 1 1/2 hours but the tree was down so it was just a matter of backing up and start sawing.

 

[Dalmatian90]

I've always figured at about 8 hours of honest work from felling to split (by hand or noodled) and stacked...nowdays I can put in about 2-3 hours straight with just a few short breaks, but go back a couple years and 50 pounds heavier I was taking almost as much rest time and work time. But I'm still tuckered out after three hours.

My best fitness ever was one summer I was doing 2 hours after work a couple, three times a week in the summer, doing a quarter cord each evening...and wasn't tired. Hopefully a couple more years I'll be back at that point

 

[Swamp Yankee]

Logistics

As most have stated, the time to produce a cord isn't in the saw kerf time, and to a lesser extent, running the splitter. The time comes from all the operations of moving or transport what I call playing checkers with the wood pile. As spike60 pointed out, if the wood is 1/2 hour away and you haul 1/2 cord at a time, you just added 2 hours per cord of nothing but seat time in the truck.

Mr. Murphy is always lurking. Getting stuck in the mud, hanging up a tree in another, or hanging up a third when you decide to knock the first hang up down with a second drop, etc. We won't talk about torn brake lines or damaged exhaust systems.

Simple things like terrain can drive you crazy without knowing it, Carrying a truckload through the woods uphill because that's the only way the tree would fall adds a lot of time vs. flat or down hill terrain.

Another factor is obviously brush. Stacking and moving brush takes time and is completely unproductive time that adds no value what-so-ever. Brush actually adds what I consider negative value as it takes time and resources, but there is not an end product of use that comes from the effort.

To answer the OP's original question, when I cut from the trucked in piles of treelength in my landing, working alone, from the time I get started loading my tools until I put them away usually averages between 3-1/2 to 4 hours to produce a cord of cut and split 16 to 18 inch wood. This number obviously doesn't include any loading or delivery operations.

Take Care

 

[howard270]

Recently I have been cutting standing dead or downed black locust and have not had many limbs to deal with and I can cut, split and load my pickup bed trailer (1/2 cord) and have it back to the house and unloaded in 4 to 4 1/2 hours.

When cutting where I usually cut, I am cleaning up ice storm damaged hedge and have a LOT of branches and thorns to deal with there. It takes about 6 hours to complete a load. These trees were planted by my great-grandfather in rows and it is where we winter cows for calving so I am spending a lot of time making sure we can get pickups or at least 4-wheelers through the tree rows and burning the brush as I go.

So from 8 hours to 12 hours depending on where I cut. These times are all by myself, if my wife helps load or split it goes much faster.

 

[Mtthwvn]

Interesting, cause I was thinking just the opposite. Do you have any equipment to help you move those big rounds?

I've been splitting wood in an old log yard that has a lot of big butt cuts from the oaks that were timbered off one of my father in laws pieces of property.
I use a front end loader on a tractor to pull the rounds out of the pile and get them in the open. After I get a few good sized rounds I just back the tractor up to them and start splitting. My splitter is hooked to the 3 point hitch on the tractor so it's not like I'm having to lift these big rounds. I just lower the splitter to the ground and roll them up on the beam.
I agree that if I was having to noodle the rounds to be able to lift them and put them in the truck to take them somewhere to split it would be much more time consuming, but with the equipment I have it makes things faster to snag up the bigger rounds to bust up.

 

[Vermonster]

Too many variables involved to make a generalization.

 

[muddstopper]

I usually get my wood in log lengths and most are large dia and very knotty. I get about 8 full cords per load. I will wait until I can get pletty of help, and take my FEL to lay the logs out for bucking. One guy with a husky 372 sawing round, 2 guys loading rounds on the spliter and we can get done by lunch time. I usually park my dump trailer at the end of the splitter and just let the splitter push the splits onto the bed. Get it loaded and drive it to the shed to dump. Stacking comes later.