Why I Oughta...

Our neighbors to the West were having a Walnut tree limb taken down recently and the tree guy who was doing the work was the same one that gave me a bunch of Ash firewood almost three years ago to the day.  At that time - and in this post - I called it all Ash.  But, now that I look back, it is clear that they included some Walnut in the mix, too.   They tossed (just like last time) a number of rounds of wood over the fence and I stacked them up in a spot to figure out what to do with them.  You can see that pile above - and you can also see that some of the pieces required a little bit more cutting with my chainsaw.   Now...knowing that this is Walnut gave me pause.  Sure...I could store it, process it, split it and burn it.  But, it also has woodworking value as Walnut.  So, I decided to select a few pieces to pull out and store separately.  I texted with my brother-in-law (a woodworker and carver) about if he'd want some of the Walnut and he said he would.  I grabbed about a d

Do you have a pile of Norway Maple firewood laying around?  Processed (into rounds) or unprocessed.  Split or unsplit.  I don't think it matters.   What doesn't matter, Jake?   I don't think it matters if you've done everything you can to Norway Maple firewood to get it dry and seasoned.  You'll still have some fungus growth.  See below for a peek at the mushrooms that are growing on some of my Norway Maple that I've been working through since last Fall: We had this large Maple tree taken down last Fall and I started to split the rounds immediately .  I've worked through a bunch of it (not all, though) in the 12 months since.  I've stored the wood up on racks to keep it off the ground and it hasn't mattered. I've even measured the moisture content .   Note...this pile is NOT covered.  But, it still gets mushrooms.   #20 on my 2023 to-do list was to finish processing this wood.   Have I done that?  Nope.  But, I was able to get a bunch of it done

September is firewood-figurin' season around here.  It is the time when I typically place our seasonal order for firewood for the Winter.  I went out to look at how things were shaping up (currently) and then I figured I'd wander through the archives to see what history tells me.  Lets start where we were a year ago and where we are today. A little bit under a year ago - pre-order - the racks looked like this . The two outdoor - side-of-garage racks were empty, the rack on the top of the stoop by my office was empty.  And the inside-the-screened-porch racks were mixed (small one half-full, large one was full on bottom and half-full on top).   I ordered 3 Facecords in September of 2022 .  Oak, Cherry and Hickory.  We used a lot of wood last year - here's January's status .   Today, here's what those racks look like:  The two outdoor side-of-garage racks have been emptied of the kiln-dried wood.  The stoop rack is empty, too.  Inside the screened porch, the small rack

Back in last October (2022), we had the large Norway Maple tree taken down in our front yard.  The guys who removed the tree chip'd a bunch of the smaller stuff and then hauled all of the larger material back to the far reaches our yard .  I had them put as much of it on the rack that I had back there to begin to dry out.   You can see what the original pile of rounds looked like in this post if you scroll all the way down to the bottom.   Almost as soon as the tree was taken down, I began to split some of the rounds .  Here's a post from November showing some of that work .   I was curious about the moisture content and how long Norway Maple would take to season - as some online suggest it is 'fast'.   By December, I had blown through most of the kiln-dried firewood that I had delivered, so that free'd up the racks by the side of our house.  I decided to move some of the recently-split Maple firewood up there .   Now...five months later (October --> March), wh

In October, I began to split all the Norway Maple wood that came from the mature tree that we took down in our front yard .  The crew that took the tree down processed the trunk and major limbs into rounds of various lengths and put them up on a rack in the far back of our property.   That work continued in November and December.   In November, I decided to begin to attack some of the large pieces with a splitting wedge to get some smaller pieces that I could split with my axe and that's been really helpful in getting some of the larger pieces processed.  I've used the fact that some of the wood is just sitting on the ground as a sort-of forcing function to compel me to split those pieces first.  They're the largest ones because I couldn't lift them up on the rack due to their weight.  By November 11th, I noted that some of the freshly-split Norway Maple was *VERY* high in moisture with a reading of 50% moisture .  But, a month later, it was already down to 13% .   I di

I've gone about splitting, stacking and seasoning firewood in different bursts (of activity) over the past few years.  Usually, I process, split, stack the wood during the winter months in preparation for Fall/next Winter burning.  Here's a look at some January 2021 winter-time splitting .  I've done this with a splitting axe.  But, the Norway Maple rounds that I recently put on the new rack in the backyard are different than what I've dealt with previously.  Some of these rounds are *so* big and *so* heavy that I can't really move them, let alone put them up on a block to begin splitting.  So, the axe has worked, but it has mostly - what I call - 'nibbled' around the edge.  You can see those results here from the end of October where there are a lot of thin slices.   My Dad recommended that I try a splitting wedge on the very big, borderline immovable rounds.  The theory is that the wedge can split them in-place and by removing 1/2 to 3/4 of the wood in se

As I mentioned in the post showing how we had our Norway Maple tree removed , we had the wood processed into rounds.  16 to 18" rounds.  That I could split as they dried out.  I wanted to see how hard these were going to be, so I put one of the larger rounds up on another one and began chopping with my axe.  I was able to split the round into about 40 different pieces.  Knowing I pay between 25 and 40 cents per piece of firewood, that means that one round processed into about $12-$15 of firewood.  Currently unseasoned firewood, but....still...firewood.  Here, below, is a look at the wood that came from just ONE round split by hand: As I empty out one of the racks close to the house, I'll start to fill it with this Norway Maple split wood.  Based on what I read on the Web, it doesn't take long for Norway Maple to season from green to 20% in six to eight weeks . That means...that we'll be able to burn this stuff THIS SEASON if I run out of wood.  

Last Summer, I built a few firewood racks in our yard based on scrap wood that I scavenged from our neighbor's dumpster.  I put two of them next to the house and loaded them with bought firewood .  And, I built an additional one back by where our fire pit is located and loaded it with scavenged Ash firewood .  Last Fall, I also acquired even more firewood from a neighbor and ended up stacking that on a couple of two-by-fours with the hope of being able to process it this Spring.   With my brand new battery-powered chainsaw ( gloves here) , I began to cut down SOME of the larger pieces to get em into a spot where I can process the rounds.  That started, but I didn't get it all done.   As part of my Spring-time " order of operations " list, we're going to be expanding our beds.  In order to do that properly, I needed to move that existing pile of Ash rounds to a new spot.  Hence, the creation of a new firewood rack.  I built this one out of leftover lumber that I

Back at Christmas, I received a new, battery-powered chainsaw.  My first chainsaw.  (Is that a thing?) I'm a total newb with a chainsaw and, frankly, pretty hesitant with it that I haven't even taken it out to use it just yet.  I need to, but I'm playing it safe.  To that end, one of the things that I've added to my program are these gloves.   Will they keep my fingers from being lop'd off?  I'm not sure.  Can they hurt?  Not a chance. 

Back in October of last year, I posted some photos of a pile of Ash (or what I thought was Ash) firewood that I grabbed off of one of my neighbors who was taking down some trees .   After letting it sit around in the back of the yard for a few weeks, by the end of November, I had a couple of 2x4's from our basement project that I hauled back there to use as a sort of rack and stacked the rounds up on them to get them off the ground .  A lot of this stuff was wet and needed time to just dry out up off the ground.  Well...a month later, I found myself needing to get outside for 30 minutes or so and I decided to start to process some of this stuff.   Some of the rounds are cut to length.  But, a lot of them are not.  I don't have a chainsaw, so I decided to take a shot at the ones that were both small enough and cut to the right length.  I split them open and what I found inside looked a lot like I was expecting based on the previous pictures.  REALLY dark heartwood.  And lighter

Earlier this week, I posted a photo of some of our seasoned Ash Firewood that has been processed, split and on the rack for a year and is showing cracks at the ends - checking - in firewood parlance .  That Ash firewood was from our neighbor's house pre-tear down and besides the checking and cracks, the wood has taken on a much darker color and when you *clack* them together, they give you that good, seasoned firewood sound.   This year, we had a large(ish) limb come down from the Norway Maple in our front yard.  It dropped during the "El Derecho" wind storm that came through in August .   With the help my neighbor Matt (and his chainsaw), we processed some of that limb into rounds and stuck them up on one of the racks to begin to dry out.  My plan was to begin to process these pieces later this Winter when cabin fever got the best of me.   But, I was over by the racks straightening some things out earlier this week and noticed that some of these Norway Maple rounds have

 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'

Back in the of last year, I took a bunch of rounds from hardwood trees that our neighbor took down to build their house .  That pile was mostly Ash trees, but there were also a few Mulberry rounds that were included.  I didn't really know what they were, but after I identified that Mulberry tree - I processed it the same way as the Ash.  However, that Mulberry was alive when they took it down and that meant that it was heavy and wet.  And...weirdly yellow.  I split it over a number of months this past Winter and by March, I had all that I was going to split up do ne for the Winter with just a few larger pieces left.  If you look at the bottom photo of this post , you'll see what the wood looked like when split.  In April, I started to work through a few more rounds including more Mulberry and found a yellow heartwood with purple under the bark . Fast forward to today.  The pile that I had stacked came tumbling down a month or so back.  It wasn't stable, so one day, I f

One of my social distancing projects has been to keep working my way through the processing the firewood rounds that I picked up late last year.  Right after Christmas, I posted some photos of some of the split rounds and mentioned that some of them were very yellow and believed that they were Mulberry wood .  That belief (that it was Mulberry tree wood) was based on a couple of posts on the Firewood Hoarders Club site.  This one .  And this one .  Both have photos.  Have a peek at those posts.  Then come back and look at the photos in this post.  Same wood, right?  Down to the more whitish ring that appears at the very outside edge.  The white line is more prominent in the photo below: The Hoarders Club members say that it burns long and hot and makes great firewood.  I have a few rounds that I've split and a couple more left.  Unlike the Ash trees that I took, this Mulberry tree was live when it was cut down.  So, it is VERY heavy.  And wet.  The Ash can be burned almost

A few days ago, I posted a photo showing the newly acquired Ash tree firewood rounds that the tree service left me from the teardown next door .  Today, a quick update on the progress I've made on the pile.  You can see quite a few of the rounds have disappeared.  In that post, I counted 45 or so rounds.  In the photo above, I count 13 Ash rounds and six Mulberry pieces. Where did they go? The answer:  To this new processed firewood stack against the fence in the back part of our yard.  You can see the stack in the photo below.  The firewood is bright and light-colored. I used a combination of a 4# yard axe and a 5# splitting wedge to process these pieces.  Here's a close-up of some of the wood that I split - and you can see few pieces of Mulberry wood (it is the yellowish stuff) in here.  I'll watch and monitor all of this wood for color (and checking) over the next 10 or so months and will post them in here in the garden diary. I picked this spot against the