my new Firewood toys

Brushhill dave · Mar 15, 2012

Congrats on your purchase. I am willing to admit I'm jealous.

GrizzyDan · Mar 15, 2012

Love the pictures! It's great to see how other people are handling their firewood. Who knows, you just may find that firewood is a profitable source of (a lot of) extra income now that you have the means of producing it quickly while at the same time putting less strain on your body. Yet even for 20 cords a year that processor would pay for itself where I live in 3-4 years depending on the type of firewood... That is, if you were to buy it. 20 cords is no easy feat with a chainsaw and logsplitter.

Sackett2 · Mar 15, 2012

amazing equipment; but even if we burned 20 cord a year that would be difficult to process the wood we seem to get. Last summer and this summer we had to bust the firewood into pieces to get them to the splitter

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/photos/208168-tree-removal.html

AchingBack · Mar 15, 2012

Just terrific work on your setup. I do not envy you having to process 20 cords per year. I probably use that much in 5 years. How many hours does it take to produce 20 cords?

namesray · Mar 15, 2012

awesome setup. 20 cords, you mean 20 full cords (60 face cords?) we use the face cord measurement here in northern pa. alot. that is a lot of wood to get a year. i do firewood as part of a small business and i do about 66 full cords (200 face cords) a year, mostly by myself. i wish i had your set up. i have thought about firewood processors, but would need more customers before i would get one. (getting more customers each year.) i also do a lot of tree tops that would not work on a processor due to all the branches (not too many straight logs.) so i still cut it up by hand. i love my 3ph winch. that has made a tremendous difference.

way to use your ingenuity and determination. those are some great pieces of equipment. enjoy and many years of happy, safe working!:thumbsup:

arrow · Mar 15, 2012

namesray said:
awesome setup. 20 cords, you mean 20 full cords (60 face cords?) we use the face cord measurement here in northern pa. alot. that is a lot of wood to get a year. i do firewood as part of a small business and i do about 66 full cords (200 face cords) a year, mostly by myself. i wish i had your set up. i have thought about firewood processors, but would need more customers before i would get one. (getting more customers each year.) i also do a lot of tree tops that would not work on a processor due to all the branches (not too many straight logs.) so i still cut it up by hand. i love my 3ph winch. that has made a tremendous difference.

way to use your ingenuity and determination. those are some great pieces of equipment. enjoy and many years of happy, safe working!:thumbsup:

Ray, When I was in the business. The yard I worked for produced 200 cord per year. We used to bring quite a bit of it to Cape Cod Ma. as prices there would be over $75-100 more than what we'd get for it here per cord. Now this was with a yard full of workers. If I were alone, I'd feel more than justified in sinking 15K-20K for some type of processor even if I had to get a 3 yr note business loan. You could also deduct much of it as it would be for a business.

JohnDeere4300 · Mar 15, 2012

tbutman said:
take another look, posted pics

Very nice equipment!!!:thumbsup:...I want it all!!!

Thanks for sharing!!

Bill

tbutman · Mar 15, 2012

Exactly the right question to ask. I'm 47 years old and quite portly. It takes me most of the summer and I'm sick of it. I'm hoping this will stream line things so that I can get a year ahead and take a fraction of that amount of time thereafter.

tbutman · Mar 15, 2012

namesray said:
awesome setup. 20 cords, you mean 20 full cords (60 face cords?) we use the face cord measurement here in northern pa. alot. that is a lot of wood to get a year. i do firewood as part of a small business and i do about 66 full cords (200 face cords) a year, mostly by myself. i wish i had your set up. i have thought about firewood processors, but would need more customers before i would get one. (getting more customers each year.) i also do a lot of tree tops that would not work on a processor due to all the branches (not too many straight logs.) so i still cut it up by hand. i love my 3ph winch. that has made a tremendous difference.

way to use your ingenuity and determination. those are some great pieces of equipment. enjoy and many years of happy, safe working!:thumbsup:

Yes full cords of wood. The processor despite it's small size will process up to a 20" log but you may have to run it through the splitter a second time when the woods that big. The hydraulic 4 way split won't quite line up right on wood that size. It will do 16" logs all day though. The splitter auto detents, just smack both levers forward and it splits and retracts by itself, allowing you to advance the log for your next cut while it does so. Bill in his infinite wisdom also made the reservoir twice as large as needed so that even with cavitation the hydraulic oil never gets all that hot. It has a 40 gal reservoir.

Johndeere3720 · Mar 15, 2012

Wow, I envy you. I processed about 15 full cord last year, we burn about 4 full cord per winter. Sold the other 11 cord in two weeks time. :thumbsup: Im hoping I will be able to process more wood this year, the customers are out there, I just need to keep up with the demand. I finally got a skid steer so i can efficiently haul logs out of the woods now. :thumbsup:

tbutman · Mar 15, 2012

Johndeere3720 said:
Wow, I envy you. I processed about 15 full cord last year, we burn about 4 full cord per winter. Sold the other 11 cord in two weeks time. :thumbsup: Im hoping I will be able to process more wood this year, the customers are out there, I just need to keep up with the demand. I finally got a skid steer so i can efficiently haul logs out of the woods now. :thumbsup:

well, I envy you for having a skidsteer. I don't know how well that will work for your application but I sure wouldn't mind having one for lifting the logs onto the log deck.And for moving brush piles. Good luck to you and thanks. Everyone must start somewhere.

Dead Horse · Mar 15, 2012

I burn 20 cord a year and put up a tad more myself. I have some pretty good equipment but you (OP) have me beat big time.

My helpers:

Johndeere3720 · Mar 15, 2012

tbutman said:
well, I envy you for having a skidsteer. I don't know how well that will work for your application but I sure wouldn't mind having one for lifting the logs onto the log deck.And for moving brush piles. Good luck to you and thanks. Everyone must start somewhere.

What convinced me on a skid steer was how much work I got done with one last year. I borrowed one from my grandpa and got every last tree brought to the log deck. Comparing it to the little 16 hp Yanmar i had it would have taken weeks using my 3 point forks. So this year I upgraded to my 61 hp Deere skid steer, it is bigger than the one i used last year and will lift considerably more, all I need are some pallet forks. We cut all our logs into 8' sections, it makes it a lot easier to bring them back to the deck and they are easy to stack/unstack when we begin cutting. What I also accomplished on the skid steer was along with getting all the logs to the log deck, i was able to clean up every last tree limb with the pallet forks and put them on the burn pile. :thumbsup: Some time this year I plan to build a hydraulic log splitter for the front of my Deere so I can split firewood from inside the cab. :thumbsup:

So far I have used my skid steer to push trees and brush back away from the road and I was very impressed at how much power it had. I have also maintained the local gravel road (filling in the pot holes/grading/etc.) and i cant believe I went so long without a bucket! :laughing:

Ken45101 · Mar 15, 2012

Nice stack of logs there, you did well.

It looks like you have one major advantage over me: you have flat ground!

I have a JD325 but it hasn't been all that useful for getting firewood because of the hills here.

Ken

tbutman · Mar 15, 2012

Indeed, Nice piece of equipment right there. You have to love how versatile they have made these today with the wide range of buckets they offer all with the "quick-tach" or equivalent coupling systems. I would love to throw a grapple bucket on my 1050 and I suppose I will someday. Can be mighty hard on the front ends though when you carry large logs and I worry about that.

tbutman · Mar 15, 2012

Definetly have the tractor end of the operation all sewed up! That farmi winch you got shows some wear like it's hauled a million trees. Badges of honor lol My old Norse log arch would look much the same if I didn't throw some red paint at it regularly.

Rustyiron · Mar 15, 2012

Ken45101 said:
Nice stack of logs there, you did well.

It looks like you have one major advantage over me: you have flat ground!

I have a JD325 but it hasn't been all that useful for getting firewood because of the hills here.

Ken

Get yourself a set of these (tracks) and flatten out those hills!

groundcover · Mar 15, 2012

20 cords ! How about some insulation !! Very nice set up though ! What happens after the dump trailer, dump and hand stack ? What are you feeding it to ?

crazyal · Mar 16, 2012

I couldn't even find the energy to start processing 20 cord. I do 2 to 3 a year for myself and 3 more for my parents. I'm lucky as my house is a timber frame with foam panels so even though I heat almost exclusively with wood it takes very little. It looks like you have the equipment to get it done though.

Ken45101 · Mar 16, 2012

Rustyiron said:
Get yourself a set of these (tracks) and flatten out those hills!

I have over the tire tracks but not the bar tracks like you have. If the ground is reasonably dry, they will give traction to the point where the skid steer is getting tippy without much lift capacity. I think we are beyond the limits of a skid steer. I built a logging winch with a 9000# 12v HF winch on an old box blade.

Ken