Never again

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The young fellow that lives up the hill a bit on our private drive does a good business with processing fire wood. My guess he has had 15 or more truck and pup trailer loads delivered this year. Always "perfect processor sticks". He drove out twice with his 1 ton dump body making deliveries today.

I can't handle a truck and trailer, No place to turn around, and I run out of space to stack the splits as a full load would be several year's of heat. since I've gone to pellets as background heat.

Pellets have taken a large chunk of the firewood business but for some reason, wood seems to be making a come back.
Some pellet stoves do not heat as well and you have to spend some money for a good one if a home is not insulated optimally

 

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I’ve put pieces that big on my horizontal splitter. One piece stays on the beam. If I’m working with a helper usually they can hold the second piece on the beam and stop it from falling off. If it does fall off then it’s on the opposite side of the lift and I have to use the machine to move them back over to the lift side. If I was working by myself I usually would just noodle a round that size before attempting to split it.View attachment 4184730

A lift on a horizontal would be my favorite coupled with a pass through splitter. I like to stack at the splitter hence the pass through preference.
Throwing these splits into the trailer and traveling the hundred feet to the woodshed, was like a “rest”.
Life is different at the new digs as opposed to living in the forest once upon a time.

 

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The young fellow that lives up the hill a bit on our private drive does a good business with processing fire wood. My guess he has had 15 or more truck and pup trailer loads delivered this year. Always "perfect processor sticks". He drove out twice with his 1 ton dump body making deliveries today.

I can't handle a truck and trailer, No place to turn around, and I run out of space to stack the splits as a full load would be several year's of heat. since I've gone to pellets as background heat.

Thankfully, I’ve gone from burning 6 cord at the old place to 3 cord at the new place but I do miss the woods.

 

[ruffdog]

What works better is to index the round on the edges with a chainsaw cut to hold a wedge. Make the cuts across from each other and insert the wedges then pound away.
Much faster than noodling.

Nice looking wood. I also do the small cuts so my wedges stick. After I quarter a big round, I can bust them smaller with the mall. But then, I'm not in a hurry and I like swinging a mall or sledge. It's a good way to enjoy the outdoors.

 

[Jstpssng]

Ok wait a minute:
Let me get this straight.
You’re picking up a 36” round with the grapple and rolling the splitter under it?
So your splitter is a pass through or moving wedge horizontal?
What happens to the 125lb splits?
One remains on the beam and the other?

It's just a 20ton splitter. I take a slice off the side, and slowly chew it up into more manageable pieces.

 

[CalG]

Pellets have taken a large chunk of the firewood business but for some reason, wood seems to be making a come back.
Some pellet stoves do not heat as well and you have to spend some money for a good one if a home is not insulated optimally

I like the pellet stove because I only need to tend it once a day. Fill the hopper and it's good. No filling the fire box every three hours/
BUT...

As the kids are gone, there is no need for a lot of heat all through the house. The pellet burner only "breaks the chill" for the downstairs laundry etc, and keeps the house acceptably warm through the night.
The pellet burner is set at "medium idle", and just runs (no thermostat control) With adjustments for heat output based on the outdoor temps. I would not rely on the pellet burner to provide comfortable heat in my home.
The parlor wood stove is the heater now!

It used to be the big wood stove (Fisher) that is downstairs would heat the whole house and all the kids rooms. The parlor stove was only used in the 'tween seasons" and when the bitter cold weeks hit.
That big stove takes 28 inch wood. Those splits are still heavy to haul and throw into the fire box! There is a reason that stove sits disconnected now.

The parlor stove takes 14 inch wood. So much easier for us old farts! More cutting though, and the short wood still needs to be stacked in the shed ONE piece at a time.

 

[WinterDeere]

I like the pellet stove because I only need to tend it once a day. Fill the hopper and it's good. No filling the fire box every three hours/
BUT...

Stove technology has changed quite a bit, since your old Fisher was designed! Today, it really comes down to two factors:

1. Heat demand. How many BTU's can your pellet hopper vs. wood stove hold?
2. Stove type and model. Some wood stoves can run 40+ hours on a single load.

My wood stoves hold about 700,000 BTU worth of wood, and I can turn a dial to meter that out over the course of 4 hours up to about 36 hours. It's a thermostatic stove, the inlet air is regulated by a bimetallic damper that opens as the stove cools to maintain more consistent heat output all the way thru the burn cycle. It works great for even heat output on 24 hour cycles, but I will admit that output wanes a bit toward the end when stretching for 36 hours.

I generally run my two stoves on 12 or 24 hour cycles most of the season, but will turn them way up to hit 4 hour or 6 hour cycles when it's blistering cold out, due to the unusually high heat demand of my very large and very old house. Most would never need that sort of output though, with 700,000 BTU being above the total daily heat demand for many.

 

[dodge man]

I’ve noodled large rounds in the past and also lifted them on my splitter with FEL bucket. Noodling does go fast but probably what worked out the best is I got a splitter that goes vertical and just roll or walk the large rounds into the splitter.

 

[Shawn T. W.]

Well, I learned a new term, never heard of " noodling" wood ...

I do pellets now ... This 43K BTU stove was in the house when I bought it ... I gotta carry and stack the 40Lb bags in the basement, from the walkout door... Stove holds 80 Lbs of pellets, I built a extra hopper that goes on top, to add another 2 bags, it will go about 10 days with thermostat set at 53° in the basement if the main furnace goes out while I'm gone ... It has a fan to assist with heat distribution, when home I run it to heat the whole 2800 SW ft house, depending on outside temperature, it can use up to a bag a day ...

 

[kenmbz]

I use various methods, usually I just put my splitter vertical and use the tractor with forks to move rounds to it.
The splitter is currently by a load of wood and it's got a side slope so I can't go vertical until I move it again. Probably next week to the next pile of rounds.
So for Saturday I just used the X27 to hit the rounds to make a good place to knock in a splitting wedge and got three rounds broken enough to put on the splitter by hand.

A bit of work, but saved some heavy lifting and didn't have to burn through a lot of gas noodling the rounds, though I had done that in the past when I did more manual splitting with a big maul.

I have a bad shoulder so did not use the 9lb sledge only the little 4lb one, The tiny round on the right only needs the x27, but I just drop it on the splitter.

This is Ash, since I have so much of it on the ground here.

A face cord just from the three rounds, this pile and a second one I had already moved to the storage rack. I only do about a cord each year now, down from three cords.