With my beautiful snow-highway melting, my attention now turned to processing the wood that I brought up near the house.
An aside: I beat the heck out of my body hustling to cut and move the wood from the back corner of the property to the house before the snow melted. I am coasting to give my body some time to heal. In particular, the tendons on the insides of my elbows.
Tendons are not well supplied with blood so they heal slowly. Push too hard and you will be unhappy for the long time that it takes them to heal.
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| Some of my pallets still have snow on them. I decided to wait a bit before stacking wood on them. |
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| Some of the wood I hauled up from "out-back" |
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| Some more of that wood. |
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| This is my plan. Slit the bigger pieces into halves and stack bark-side-up to shed rain. |
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| Pieces that are on-deck waiting for the snow to melt. |
A good report I can relate to and do myself. So much better than the last which is why I am so glad I sold my business and got away from the employees .---kn
ReplyDelete. ---ken
Yup, I did the same thing a couple of months ago.
ReplyDeleteHow do you split your logs?
Lengthwise---ken
DeleteHAH! I just blew my coffee out......
DeleteMr Ken is a very funny guy!
DeleteI use a splitting maul to start. If I can split it in three blows then I am done. If it only starts to split, I insert a wedge into the most promising opening and resume with a 10 pound sledge hammer. I have a second wedge in case that one gets stuck. I also have a hatchet to cut the stringers.
That's pretty much how I do it. The in-laws have a powered splitter, but then I'd have to load the truck, take it out and split it, and put it back in the truck.
DeleteNOT fun at my age....
Those look a little big for stove wood. Are you going to split then again or burn them big? How long do you cure your firewood?
ReplyDeleteI would have been absolutely mortified, no... humiliated if my mommy or daddy communicated with my employer in any fashion. But I'm Gen X. Raised on hosewater and neglect.
I will split them again. My insert is on the small side and coughs up a hair-ball on pieces much larger than 4" across.
DeleteSomebody on the internet claimed that unsplit wood does not dry very quickly. I am not sure that I believe that but it isn't THAT hard to split them into halves.
It's true. Less distance between the moisture and the air. More surface area for the moisture to evaporate from. Raw wood isn't designed to retain moisture, bark is.
DeleteERJ, . . . take a break from all that work, and go get some elbow Physical Therapy eating a big bowl of ice cream - looks like you have some great volunteers over at the old Wilson Ice Cream shop/Historical Society - good story here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.wilx.com/2026/02/17/make-an-impact-eaton-rapids-historical-society-preserves-heritage-with-ice-cream/
"Tendons are not well supplied with blood so they heal slowly." A deep tissue massage to the surrounding muscles, while/because painful, causes more blood to flow to that area. That benefits the tendons while the muscles rebound from the massage. Often your muscle may twist or knot up, stretching the tendon. Massage helps that also.
ReplyDeletesam
Hey Joe - not trying to be a dink; but I have to ask:: is that wood any good? I don't know because up here in Alberta in my stomping grounds - it's mostly poplar, some birch, and fir and pine and tamarack.
ReplyDeleteWhen our wood up here looks like that it is generally close to going spongey and pithy inside. What flavour wood is that?
"What flavour wood is that?"
DeleteThats a fantastic question and of course the answer depends on how you season it!
I gather that what passes for hardwood up here is nothing like what grows in the deep south, in places like Michigan.
DeleteIt is Locust. Very hot and long burning wood. Also good to make fence rails and posts out of as it is very rot resistant.
DeleteAs Mr Guenther stated, more than 90% of the pile is Black Locust and it has all of the attributes he stated.
DeleteIt is NOT a good tree for urban areas because it suckers like the devil and it has thorns.
Other species that are either in the pile or will be soon are Eastern White Pine, Wild Black Cherry and Black Walnut which will be culled from various places to "release" better specimens. For now, I will leave the standing dead trees since they are in areas that I do not frequent when it is windy.
Back when I used to burn firewood for heat, had some off cuts of Cherry and Walnut trim that I used for kindling. I can't remember which one it was, but it burned with a cool green flame.
DeleteGood on wood.
ReplyDeleteThat said,saw Woodpile Report and thought perhaps a lost article from Remus,may he RIP.
Ditto. Long thought it time the mantle is picked up again.
DeleteIndeed, I thought the ghost of Ol' Remus entered the building!
DeleteI always enjoyed Ol' Remus's reports.
ReplyDeleteThat's a nice pile and a good workout, no question!
ReplyDeleteAs a person of slightly more age on me than you, I appreciate the info about healing tendons. I over-did it at the gym a few weeks ago and it seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for my elbow to heal. Now I know why.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/RAFxrlLzIzc
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