Maybe I am just too picky?

[andydodgegeek]

To the OP is your avatar a picture of your wife, she gives me funny feelings. I would say you are not picky. You just want the job done right and there is nothing wrong with that. I have a hard time when people help me and are doing it there own way (wrong way). Even if they are just helping and not getting paid doesnt mean they cant do it right.

 

[Iska3]

Nothing worse than trying to sell wood when it's all different sizes. It gives you a bad name, the piles look like you were trying to cheat someone and the wood doesn't burn good. Bring that stuff over here and I will hide it for you.

My wife would mark all my wood before I cut it. I laughed because after a few years I can tell 16 or 18 inches. I would hate to have those guys build my house. All the wood I sell is cut to 16 inches and split evenly.

Where is lunch?

 

[flyboy553]

To the OP is your avatar a picture of your wife, she gives me funny feelings. I would say you are not picky. You just want the job done right and there is nothing wrong with that. I have a hard time when people help me and are doing it there own way (wrong way). Even if they are just helping and not getting paid doesnt mean they cant do it right.

Yes, that is my wife. She just doesnt know that yet. She gives ME funny feelings too.

 

[greendohn]

I dont think your out of hand at all. I occasionally get a kid to help me. He is the rare teenager around here who will work his butt off. However,,I do cut small stuff to length and want it on the truck and he thinks I'm crazy. I tell 'im , "if I've cut it to length, just throw it on the truck or take a walk and I'll take ya off the clock"..I gotta treat him like dumb, slick-sleeve private every now and again,,but he comes around..like the sign says in the earlier post, "MY GARAGE, MY RULES" same thing in the woods..

 

[zogger]

Paid labor?

They do it your way or get new help. Your outlines are neither unreasonable nor hard. Granted, you can probably bury them in rounds if you are cutting and they can't keep up with splitting, but so what? That's how that goes, I bet a good cutter can keep four guys hopping, let alone two, gathering rounds, splitting, loading up, etc.... They just plug away at it until done. If it is going right from woodlot to the customer, you have no other choice.

 

[Whitespider]

Without a lot of practice it's difficult to judge length (within an inch) as the wood transitions in diameter. I cut my firewood to 16-inches... one of my bars just happens to be a 16-inch bar and I use that as the gauge. It becomes very fast, even automatic, to spin the saw from gauge to cut position. My other bar is 20-inches... and marking it with automotive touch-up paint does the trick. I mark it four places so it doesn't matter which side of the bar I look at, or whether-or-not I "gauge" from the tip or the saw case.

I understand not being able to eye-ball length, but as far as clean, straight cuts and consistent splits... well... sloppy work is sloppy work no matter how ya' slice it.

 

[atlarge54]

Do you tidy stackers leave all the crooks and crotches where you cut? Do you only cut straight stuff. Most of my woodcutting involves scrounging and fencerow type cutting. If I cut ten truckloads I'd be lucky to have three stackables. I burn in an OWB so length doesn't matter as much as weight of the piece, length is determined by the next fork in the road. Mulberry is great firewood but it's hard to find a straight piece in one. I guess I've never had the luxury of straight neat wood.

You firewood sellers deserve every penny you get. I cut to stay warm and the chance to run a saw. Getting out of the L-A-Z boy doesn't hurt either.

 

[Big_Al]

I can understand the length part of it but not so much the splitting part. I don't sell any wood, everything I cut is for me or family. I like a little variety in the sizes of splits, smaller ones for quicker morning fires, larger ones for overnight. But if you are paying them they need to do it your way or find different work.

 

[Garmins dad]

Being to picky??? I think not.. If i was to ever buy firewood i would show up and see that mess and turn around. Neat, tidy, uniform.. Firewood should look nice when stacked up..

Do you tidy stackers leave all the crooks and crotches where you cut?

I take it all home.. BUT... I'm not selling and i don't try to stack that stuff nice. I do how ever try to trim them up a bit to fit the bin better.. My wife is getting sick of all the noodles in her parking space here.. :hmm3grin2orange: I keep telling her.. Its so the wood fits in the stove.. Yet my dad and i did it just to piss around. :msp_tongue:

 

[Chud]

I have the same problem. I tell them 16-18, but seems like they are programmed for 12-14. I have layed down a measuring stick and given them a tape to carry and they continue to cut short. I think it's because they dont burn wood.

 

[camr]

I can understand the length part of it but not so much the splitting part. I don't sell any wood, everything I cut is for me or family. I like a little variety in the sizes of splits, smaller ones for quicker morning fires, larger ones for overnight. But if you are paying them they need to do it your way or find different work.

I was scrolling thru this thread reading the responses and this statement is EXACTLY what was runnig thru my mind. I prefer a mix of sizes, too, for the same reason. The only way I could justify trying for consistency on the splits is if I was ornamental buring in a fireplace and the appearance of the fire was more important then the amount of heat generated.

 

[Naked Arborist]

Heard that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

as they say:

if you want it done right, gotta do it yourself.

My only problem is, not enough hours in a day to do it all myself, nobody wants to work hard for a decent wage!!! I always need more help but, always hard to find it. My back (shot to hell) just can't keep up with doing it all myself. The flip side is most guys who will do it right are already working, hence the term, "good help is hard to find". A 10 year old can follow direction better than some of the people I have hired and fired. Prime example is my 8 year old daughter. If a ten year old had the strength of a full grown average man I would hire three of them in a heartbeat.

Granted this is NOT easy work but, nobody said life or making an honest living was going to be easy.

Worst part of this whole scenario of selling firewood is, I've got the wood, no dought. I can sell it as fast as I can deliver it. I have 50 cords standing dead 3 years, oak and others species, waiting to be done now. I can fell and cut up 3-4 cords a day myself. If I could find 2 good men that showed up every day for work and just did there job "my way, the right way lol" without #####ing and moaning they would: get 15 bucks an hour, free lunch delivered and so much more. If the youngins keep up at this pace they will all be in dire'-straights for living a good life because they will all be begging for work that requires no labor, no education, with a very high pay. If this was the case all of us over 30 guys would be doing that job yesterday! No offense to all the hard working people out there that "are" getting it done, good job! Keep on keepin on, cause we got mouths to feed...

 

[Garmins dad]

15 a hour wont get anyone out in the bush here.. they pay 14 bucks a hour at Mc D's I'm serious.. it's that bad around here... for someone to run a splitter and doing it outside.. they would want 20 at least.. Good luck getting help.. It truly is difficult to find good help..:msp_unsure:

 

[zogger]

Do you tidy stackers leave all the crooks and crotches where you cut? Do you only cut straight stuff. Most of my woodcutting involves scrounging and fencerow type cutting. If I cut ten truckloads I'd be lucky to have three stackables. I burn in an OWB so length doesn't matter as much as weight of the piece, length is determined by the next fork in the road. Mulberry is great firewood but it's hard to find a straight piece in one. I guess I've never had the luxury of straight neat wood.

You firewood sellers deserve every penny you get. I cut to stay warm and the chance to run a saw. Getting out of the L-A-Z boy doesn't hurt either.

When I used to help cut firewood for other folks commercially, we all burned the oddball pieces and sold the perfect uniform pieces. Worked out just perfect, we all got wood to burn, the workers, the bosses, the customers.

Ha, never got fired so I musta done at least OK.....

When I cut for myself now, stackable stuff gets stacked, oddball chunks go in a pile, and/or used to hold the plastic down on top of the stacks. It all gets burnt.

I just look at a branch or log and guess how many good same size pieces, cut those, what is left over still gets cut. Crotches I cut short, all three ends as short as possible and the whole leftover chunk becomes an overnighter piece. If the crotch is too big to fit, no probs, cut both branches down to the crotch, then cut it in half, like noodling, then finish cutting it off the larger branch or trunk and start again with uniform blocks.

Oddball straight but not quite long enough, meh, you can still stack it after it is split. I build my rows three across, sometimes have a pile of shorts, they go four across, it all fits and burns. I'd rather have two short pieces that fit in the stove rather than one too long of a piece, those suck to get cut to size again. I don't get many of those, much rather just whack them right off the tree short, the rest of the tree holding them in place. I work from the tops down to the buttend usually. Now I *shoot* for 16, but aren't as picky cutting for myself, 12 to near 20 will all fit just fine. 16s make nice rows though and are OK to split, so I aim there and get fairly close all the time.

I think right now if I had to guess, I *might* have half a dozen just a scosh too long pieces I threw back in my bummer pile for later on something to do cutting.

 

[zogger]

Selling

I was scrolling thru this thread reading the responses and this statement is EXACTLY what was runnig thru my mind. I prefer a mix of sizes, too, for the same reason. The only way I could justify trying for consistency on the splits is if I was ornamental buring in a fireplace and the appearance of the fire was more important then the amount of heat generated.

You have to remember that with selling fire wood, you are selling a volume, not a weight (in the US). It is pretty important to have uniform sizes so it can be shown you are getting the correct agreed on amount. I's real hard to have a pile of all oddball chunks and arrange it so it can in fact be measured adequately.

Now if we had developed selling firewood by the species and ton, that would be easy, but still..people buying stuff want uniform.

Ever work commercial market vegetables or fruit? I have a lot, proly well over half fruit and a little less in veggies you never even *see* at the store. It has to be uniform size to retail. Stuff that ain't is what goes in the dumptruck to the big canneries and so on. It's exactly the same as firewood. Giant apples, you get plenty of them, you'll never see them in a bag at the store, either.

Heck, happened to me fishing a few times. Gulf shrimp go by how many to a lb, the largest, jumbos, are 9-10. Whenever we hit a patch that had real whoppers, 4-5s, we wouldn't even head them or keep them, we ate them or shoveled them back through the scuppers. No market, has to be approved sizes, for measuring and getting paid etc.

I imagine every single industry out there has goofy wasteful or looks stupid aspects to it, just how it goes. How many new cars get sold with really rank bad brand new paint jobs? If it gets screwed up and they catch it, it gets redone, when realistically, a car is freaking transportation and the paint job has absolutely nothing to do with that part. but, people are insane picky about the paint on their rides, especially new or near new. Now me, I always buy used and most defintly look for mechanically good deals that I can get s severe discount on because it has dings dents and bad paint, as I could give a flip on that stuff. Do it crank and run and is it cheap and a real good deal, that is my criteria.

When noobs come here and wonder how to scrounge wood, that is always on my list, go to the pro sellers and try to get a deal on the oddball chunks. You learn the proper way to treat firewood that way I think. As in "it fits in the stove and burns, everything else is tertiary at best".

Buy outright buying it, and people have got the money for full price and don't care to scrimp or look for deals, sure, I could see why 99% of the people out there who want to buy wood want exact uniform as possible pieces, and why the sellers try to cut split and deliver that, just makes it easier all around.

 

[zogger]

Cost of living

My only problem is, not enough hours in a day to do it all myself, nobody wants to work hard for a decent wage!!! I always need more help but, always hard to find it. My back (shot to hell) just can't keep up with doing it all myself. The flip side is most guys who will do it right are already working, hence the term, "good help is hard to find". A 10 year old can follow direction better than some of the people I have hired and fired. Prime example is my 8 year old daughter. If a ten year old had the strength of a full grown average man I would hire three of them in a heartbeat.

Granted this is NOT easy work but, nobody said life or making an honest living was going to be easy.

Worst part of this whole scenario of selling firewood is, I've got the wood, no dought. I can sell it as fast as I can deliver it. I have 50 cords standing dead 3 years, oak and others species, waiting to be done now. I can fell and cut up 3-4 cords a day myself. If I could find 2 good men that showed up every day for work and just did there job "my way, the right way lol" without #####ing and moaning they would: get 15 bucks an hour, free lunch delivered and so much more. If the youngins keep up at this pace they will all be in dire'-straights for living a good life because they will all be begging for work that requires no labor, no education, with a very high pay. If this was the case all of us over 30 guys would be doing that job yesterday! No offense to all the hard working people out there that "are" getting it done, good job! Keep on keepin on, cause we got mouths to feed...

You guys who live in expensive areas are stuck with having to pay higher wages, just how it goes. Around here were I am you would have no problems getting good help for $15-20 an hour. Heck, if any of ya 'all were closer I could do it two days a week, because that is great pay...not giving up my job here though, not at this point. For *me* to work full time for someone it would have to pay enough I could afford to buy my own small farm,(raggedy fixer upper house and some acres, at least ten or so) make the payments, plus the ancillary stuff, as in reliable low mileage truck, etc, taxes, all of that. If the pay scale can't do that..why do it. Just to go live in some room or cheap apartment? No thanks.

Now where I am, not happening for me, although cost of living is lower here in the south, north georgia is at least medium expensive place to live, I can't reproduce being able to afford to go move and live on a ten million (or more, I know what big spreads go for around here) dollar farm. Which is spiffy, plenty of room here, lots to do, can have all my pets, big gardens, all of that. So, I work for crap pay when it comes to FRNs, but I get paid to live here, too. If I had to live elsewhere and work here, he'd have to up my pay five times. Or more.

There's tradeoffs. If a locally livable wage cannot be paid, enough to attract and keep decent help, it is not a great business model. Something needs an adjustment. Guys who will work for less than a livable wage-whatever that is- in some area are usually not "the cream of the crop". And even given a livable wage, sure, you'll go through help fast to get to the good ones, don't be afraid to fire and rehire until you get what you need and want.

Now what has skewed just a ton of service type jobs out there, that I have seen, is the influx of illegals, because they are perfectly fine to live ten adults to an apartment or single wide, hence, they can be gotten for real dang cheap compared to a regular family guy just wanting to live with his family in a small house or even apartment.

Unless your potential worker can live real cheap cramped up like that, they won't take a job that pays a scale that only affords that, they'll keep looking, and the only guys you will find to do that are either desperate, or are planning to quit after a paycheck or two anyway.

I work on one of the last two really large farms around here who have all or nearly all "born here's" employees. Almost all of them have gone to "recent arrivals". and now we are starting to see really rich foreigners coming in and getting good farms when they go up for sale.

I will also state as 100% fact that if all the illegals were fired tomorrow and went home, there wouldn't be any food on the grocery store shelves within one week.

I will also state that in the poultry business, if the average person buying a whole chicken at the store could afford five more cents per bird, and the farmers got that five cents, they could overnight double all the worker's pay and attract a much better overall employee. A nickle. That's it. all the loot is in wall street and with the big cartel packers and buyers. The farmer's margins are slim to non existent right now.

*That* trend will continue, farmers going broke then foreigners buying up the land, as long term investments, as in they don't care if it gets farmed for a season or two. They aren't as interested in dropping millions or billions on pieces of paper government IOUs as they used to be, they want real stuff, and land is the ultimate real stuff that can't be counterfeited, created on a server out of thin air (like the FRN for the bankers), copied cheaply, or anything like that...what is here..is here, and that's it.

Not sure how this will impact wood burning and that market, but *someone* owns all that land, and firewood is an ag business at the beginning of the money chain.

 

[camr]

You have to remember that with selling fire wood, you are selling a volume, not a weight (in the US). It is pretty important to have uniform sizes so it can be shown you are getting the correct agreed on amount. I's real hard to have a pile of all oddball chunks and arrange it so it can in fact be measured adequately.

Now if we had developed selling firewood by the species and ton, that would be easy, but still..people buying stuff want uniform.

Ever work commercial market vegetables or fruit? I have a lot, proly well over half fruit and a little less in veggies you never even *see* at the store. It has to be uniform size to retail. Stuff that ain't is what goes in the dumptruck to the big canneries and so on. It's exactly the same as firewood. Giant apples, you get plenty of them, you'll never see them in a bag at the store, either.

Heck, happened to me fishing a few times. Gulf shrimp go by how many to a lb, the largest, jumbos, are 9-10. Whenever we hit a patch that had real whoppers, 4-5s, we wouldn't even head them or keep them, we ate them or shoveled them back through the scuppers. No market, has to be approved sizes, for measuring and getting paid etc.

I imagine every single industry out there has goofy wasteful or looks stupid aspects to it, just how it goes. How many new cars get sold with really rank bad brand new paint jobs? If it gets screwed up and they catch it, it gets redone, when realistically, a car is freaking transportation and the paint job has absolutely nothing to do with that part. but, people are insane picky about the paint on their rides, especially new or near new. Now me, I always buy used and most defintly look for mechanically good deals that I can get s severe discount on because it has dings dents and bad paint, as I could give a flip on that stuff. Do it crank and run and is it cheap and a real good deal, that is my criteria.

When noobs come here and wonder how to scrounge wood, that is always on my list, go to the pro sellers and try to get a deal on the oddball chunks. You learn the proper way to treat firewood that way I think. As in "it fits in the stove and burns, everything else is tertiary at best".

Buy outright buying it, and people have got the money for full price and don't care to scrimp or look for deals, sure, I could see why 99% of the people out there who want to buy wood want exact uniform as possible pieces, and why the sellers try to cut split and deliver that, just makes it easier all around.

I guess I need to confess that my vegatable and shrimp experience is pretty limited. I do, however, have a bit of knowledge regarding firewood. I've been processing my own wood for heat for nearly 30 years and I've sold a bit in my time, too. The uniformity of length thing is pretty self evident. I know all about volumes of wood and, dear God, I promise to never utter the phrase "face cord" in front of another human being so long as I live. My statement referred to the size of the splits. When I sold wood, I never once had someone complain about splits that weren't uniform in size or shape. The rule of thumb was and is, if you can't plam the end of a split, it's too big. As long as the pieces weren't ridiculously small or large, they got tossed on the fire and turned to ash with nary a hint of dissatisfaction from one of my customers. Giving the customer an assortment of sizes gives him or her the option of a hot, fast burning fire or a slower, longer lasting one. And a nice, tight stack, regardless of the shape of the wood, ensures the customer gets exactly what they're paying for.

 

[zogger]

I guess I need to confess that my vegatable and shrimp experience is pretty limited. I do, however, have a bit of knowledge regarding firewood. I've been processing my own wood for heat for nearly 30 years and I've sold a bit in my time, too. The uniformity of length thing is pretty self evident. I know all about volumes of wood and, dear God, I promise to never utter the phrase "face cord" in front of another human being so long as I live. My statement referred to the size of the splits. When I sold wood, I never once had someone complain about splits that weren't uniform in size or shape. The rule of thumb was and is, if you can't plam the end of a split, it's too big. As long as the pieces weren't ridiculously small or large, they got tossed on the fire and turned to ash with nary a hint of dissatisfaction from one of my customers. Giving the customer an assortment of sizes gives him or her the option of a hot, fast burning fire or a slower, longer lasting one. And a nice, tight stack, regardless of the shape of the wood, ensures the customer gets exactly what they're paying for.

I think that is a good size, a nice handful on end. I was mostly commenting on trying to sell oddball, really oddball chunks, etc.

I will also defer to the brothers here who sell full time on this subject, my commercial experience is quite a long time ago.

Although I would like to do some more, while I am still able to physically handle that sort of work. I find wood anything fun, so I am not sure at what volume it would cease to be fun. If I could keep it below that fun to no fun level, that would be acceptable. I don't necessarily equate "hard" with "work" or drudgery work, most things of a sporting nature to people could be considered a form of work. I just think of wood more as sport than work, at the level I currently do it, and with what equipment I have.

I have looked at the commercial offerings around here (not all, but some), and I have yet to see a piece fully "in the round", it has all been split, so must have come from larger sized pieces.

There must be a market for the oddball pieces, I just don't know what that market could accomplish, if the more uniform and perfect pieces are right now just marginally profitable for most producers/sellers.

Ya, it is weird on the foodstuffs and what is acceptable to sell or not. Spuds, there's another one I worked. You get some hugemongous spuds sometimes, they never go in a bag, always into the dumptruck. Along with teeny ones. Tomatoes, another. Oranges not so much, they tend to be more uniform.

I've worked over two dozen farms, just weird what is acceptable or not. Eggs. Hens start to get older and start laying really large double yolkers..you'll never see them in a store. They cull the hens then, or a scosh before that starts happening on the commercial battery farms.

 

[stihlrookie]

You are not being to picky

I cut and sell about 15 cords a year, all cut to 16" and split anything over 6" diameter. I am to the point now where I refuse just about any "help". It is just over 16" from the end of the handle to the bumper spikes on my saw, makes a nice quick accurate measure. Come out of the cut rotate saw 90 degrees line up handle with cut, pointed down the log and take note of the where the dawgs come to on the log, cut. Repeat. As far as splitting, halves on stuff up to 10", quarters up to 12" and beyond that you just use common sense. My wife likes to split, she somehow can manage to take an 8" round and slab 2" off one side and then proceed to "fix" it by slabbing 2" off the other side, makes for some strange looking splits. I don't let her split to much, I am not picky though....just particular.:msp_tongue:

 

[needwood]

Your not!

Your are a man of pride" You want to keep your customers happy,keep them coming back,and show you can do a good job. If it didn't bother you,you wouldn't be the man that you are. We need more of that" We are a dying breed"""""""