Stacked and Ready to be Processed - Ash Firewood Rounds - November 2020

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 Last month - right at the end of October - I posted a couple of photos and talked about how I had sourced some Ash firewood from one of my neighbors.  They had a crew there to take down a dead Ash tree and I was able to get some of the wood dropped near by so I could get to it.  I left it just laying there for a couple of weeks, but recently, I decided to tidy the place up and get it stacked to it can begin to season and put it in a spot where I can start to process it.  I ended up laying down a couple of 16' 2x4's and rolled the large rounds on top.  Everything (well...almost everything) needs to be cut down to size, so I'll need a chainsaw.  Then, from there, I'll need to split the rounds.  This is one tree, but here's how it is looking all stacked up with some longer limbs that I've sourced from around the yard laying on top.  


I have one rack in the back of our lot that is 3/4 of the way full, but I also have the lumber to make a companion rack that I'd like to get to this Winter.  I'll build the rack and then begin to process this pile.  My thinking is that if I don't build that NEW rack, I'll end up piling this stuff up on top of the existing rack and that means all the wood that has been seasoning for more than a year will be UNDER the stuff that is from this year.  

The two-toned interiors of the medium-sized limbs is interesting, isn't it?  That heartwood is much darker sapwood - and is something that I haven't seen in the other Ash trees that I've processed over the past two years.    Compare the color of this batch of rounds to a similar tree that I received last year here.  No dark heartwood/interiors. 

But, based on how much this one has been chewed up, with a close look at this Ash tree and I'm pretty confident that it has been dead A LONG TIME.  Perhaps the browning out is decay?  Some of the tree is rotted out pretty good, but once I get it up in the air, covered from the rain, I think it'll dry out and be just fine for the outdoor fire pit.
Location: Downers Grove, IL, USA

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