Never again

[CalG]

Arrow, maybe you could fasten a rough platform or piece of plywood on the end of your forks to make moving the big blocks around and positioning them on the vertical splitter shoe easier. Sort of like this..

View attachment 4193260


gg

I use the decked carry all as a lifting table for all the big stuff going on to the Horizontal splitter.
Roll the big ones on to the deck, lift with the 3pt, roll the rounds off to the splitter rail.
Bah dah BING!

 

[Tbone07]

I feel your pain. I'm 37yr old and still very physically capable. Even I don't mess with firewood rounds that large unless I noodle them first. My 461 28" bar full chisel chain takes care of the noodling no problem. I use splitter horizontal and pull tractor bucket right up to splitter level, and use that as my table.

 

[dadohead]

I made a crane with a winch on it to lift the chunks of wood up on the splitter. Too old to wrestle chunks around on the ground to get them into the splitter stand up position anymore.

Got pics?

I feel your pain. I'm 37yr old and still very physically capable. Even I don't mess with firewood rounds that large unless I noodle them first. My 461 28" bar full chisel chain takes care of the noodling no problem. I use splitter horizontal and pull tractor bucket right up to splitter level, and use that as my table.

Our method too on bigger rounds (wife and I). Always interested how others do it though.

 

[SW OR John W]

Been cutting wood for 60 years.
I tried something new today.
Had a load of stems delivered and the driver asked if he could bring me a 40” wide stem, 15’ long and tapering to 32”. I said “sure” since I got this new Champion vert/*** splitter.
So I take to it with my 20” bar and my tried and true Husky 257 and 3 cuts into this thing and I’m out of fuel. Now I have these 3 cookies averaging 36” wide and 16” long and they weigh at least 250 lbs per.
I try to stand them on end so I can roll them to the splitter and have to use a 4’ peavy to get them up.
I get them to the splitter and push them up the splitter foot w the tractor.
The 27 ton splitter easily splits this wood but to wrangle the splits is back breaking.
4 hrs later including bringing these splits to the woodshed to be stacked, I got the stem half done.
Yes it produces a lot of wood but it’s way too much work so, I won’t be doing that again.

Sounds like you earned some wisdom the hard way.

 

[ruffdog]

Years ago, our PTO pump driven splitter beam laid flat on the ground. We would get tons of free Elm because of Dutch Elm disease and most of it was 36" or bigger. Being that the splitter beam was flat on the ground, the rounds could be rolled on and split. Back then, bending over didn't bother me so much. It did seem easier than using a modern splitter in the vertical position though.

 

[mx842]

Even if I’m loading them whole and not noodling them all the way I like to put a saw cut in the opposite side as the splitter. They pretty much always crack all the way in half the first time that way instead of having to rotate it around and splitting it again. This one has a saw cut in it. View attachment 4189545

Any way you slice it big wood is hard to deal with. I used to be able to handle the big stuff without my log lift that I built into my newer splitter. Some of the stuff I worked with weighed 4 times my own weight, but I could manage to get it up on to the beam. Sometimes I could work on one round for over an hour before it was in little pieces. Now days even with the lift it's still a good fight getting them split. Most of the time the piece on the left side will stay upright and not fall off and I pull the other side on to my lift table where it will stay while I'm working on the other side.
Red or Chesnut oak isn't too bad but White oak and hickory can be a bear because it's so stringy. The big 30" or larger wood don't like to split all the way and will leave just enough at the top to hold the process up. I have tried doing a 6 or 8" cut on the top and it does help most of the time but there will always going to be that one hard head that will fight you to the end.
I too learned a new word today, 'noodling'. I have done that many times before I knew what it was called when the rounds were just too big to deal with. I never did cut all the way through, maybe half then put the wedge to it.
One job we did there was a huge white oak that my old 044 with a 30" bar wouldn't get all the way through. I cut what I could then took the 955 cat we had on the job to beat and bang it enough to break it apart. The first two rounds were so heavy the 955 wasn't able to lift it but a few inches off the ground so I had to go get the 977 cat and that would get it almost high enough to get it on to my dump truck. We ended up having to dig slanted hole into the ground so we could back the truck down in to. Then we finally pushed the round to the back of the truck and shoved it into the bed of the truck. One piece was all that poor old truck could handle.
It took us a whole day to get that tree cut up and hauled to the farm. Me and my wood cutting buddy worked on one of those rounds for another day and a half to get it into pieces. We probably could have done it all in the same day but about 7 hours into the first day I went to the old country store down the road and got a case of cold bud's and about another hour and a half we ran out of beer and decided to go get some more beer. we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on that one unsplit round and told hunting and fishing stories until it was time for another beer run. My father-in-law came down while we were working, and he looked at us with a bewildered look on his face. He finally said, Damn boys I've seen it all now, it's 8 degrees out here and you two are sweating like it's 102*

 

[fustsgt]

Cookies are short rounds.

View attachment 4189536

Red Legs never mention short rounds.

 

[fustsgt]

And stems LOL. In the US a stem is a stick. We call the big stuff logs.
The different terms among countries is interesting.

Never ask for a napkin in New Zealand

 

[walnutman]

Cutting with the grain. Saw will spit out long streams of linguini-like "noodles". It's an extremely fast way to halve or quarter a round, many times faster than traditional rip cutting.

I like to just make two criss cross cuts with the chain saw across the end of the "cookie" LOL to help hold the splitting wedge in. Split it in quarters.

 

[sailonner]

There's still one big Oak at the top of the hill on my property. About 15' tall, where it broke in a snow storm a couple years back. Too big around for my Chinese 42" chainsaw. Too much for my 70 year old body. So this year I broke down and bought two cords of split Oak. My back thanks me...and my feet are warming up.

 

[qualsite]

When the tree companies drop off logs, there are always some very large diameter rounds... but fortunately, mostly redwood [light and won't rot]. Most get used for bollards or backstops, but I keep thinking of carving something out of them. The redwood burns so poorly, it's not worth wasting the effort to get them into smaller pieces. But then again, that's the calculation that goes into any piece of wood... is the time and effort worth it? When you have lots of wood vs not much, the outcome changes.

 

[sixdogs]

There were a few years when it felt like everything I was dragging home was over 36" diameter. Lagest was a white oak that was 60" diameter where it broke off about 15 feet above the ground, and flared out to more than 72" diameter at knee height. But there were many ash trees from the same property that were all 36" - 44".

I took to noodling most of that big stuff into 8" thick slabs, then "walking" those slabs over to the vertical splitter. You get used to moving those heavy pieces with a lot less effort after awhile, but still a total PITA.

I was only in my late 30's or very early 40's, when I was doing most of that, so still excited by such heroic efforts.

Long ago when I was in my early 20's I was so broke I could barely eat. I needed six cords for the woodstove and it was already July in rural Maine. All I could get for firewood was from the dump and it was old elm trees cut into rounds. Some were pretty big but they were free. Sign me up.

No problem, I thought, since I had splitting wedges and a maul plus my Skil low RPM chainsaw. Well, it was a problem and every one of those pieces was a life and death struggle. Still, I managed to split almost all of them and by hand. Now I know why the wood was free for the taking.

The grain twisted and turned and once I got the wedge in I had to use two more to get it out. It took me forever to split that pile but heat that winter never felt so good. Along with a couple other things, splitting elm by hand is a never again.

 

[TimberFarm]

Long ago when I was in my early 20's I was so broke I could barely eat. I needed six cords for the woodstove and it was already July in rural Maine. All I could get for firewood was from the dump and it was old elm trees cut into rounds. Some were pretty big but they were free. Sign me up.

No problem, I thought, since I had splitting wedges and a maul plus my Skil low RPM chainsaw. Well, it was a problem and every one of those pieces was a life and death struggle. Still, I managed to split almost all of them and by hand. Now I know why the wood was free for the taking.

The grain twisted and turned and once I got the wedge in I had to use two more to get it out. It took me forever to split that pile but heat that winter never felt so good. Along with a couple other things, splitting elm by hand is a never again.

Been there, done that too.

 

[dodge man]

I had a tree across the road from me that fell over. The farmer said help yourself. I was a huge oak. I thought of all the great wood I was going to get. The main truck was big but it had these huge forks. I cut one piece out of the truck, maybe a couple of large rounds worth and decided the main truck wasn’t worth it. I still got a lot of firewood but the splitter earned its keep splitting a lot of twisted pieces.

 

[CalG]

Been there, done that too.

As a boy, I lived a while on "Elm Street".
Dutch Elm came through, and all those trees had to come out. Some of it went to fireplaces, BUT NOT MUCH!
We strapping young boys learned quickly. ;-)

 

[arrow]

Mama said "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach," and while you ain't eatin' logs . . .

Geeze she was smart as a whip - and never logged a tree in her 91 years.

My trouble is that when I see a tree that can be turned into firewood, no matter what its size, it calls to me like a siren on the Mediterranean

 

[arrow]

Been feeding wood stoves for over 5 decades.

I love the big rounds and the yields they produce.

I really didn’t know what I was gonna get into seeing I never really never broke up or 3foot tree for fire wood.
It’s just too much stress on everything.
Me, the splitter, the chainsaw constantly running.
Now that I have neighbors, instead of living in the woods, like I once had, I have to be conscious of noise being made, and that’s like insult to injury to me.
It was an opportunity for a lot of new coping skills, however.
If I had the stuff, I once had, maybe it wouldn’t of been so bad but somebody once said to me “don’t get old” and I didn’t listen.

 

[masseyrider]

When I was a kid Pa heated with wood and coal.
Both he always managed to wrangle for free.
I remember the one old farm house had converted to oil and he got the coal.
It had been put in the basement through a coal chute.
The only way to get it out was up the back basement stairs that were double steep and so narrow I had to go up the stairs sideways.
And it had to be the hottest week of the summer.
10+ tons 2 buckets at a time. My legs...
Also he dragged home every piece of mongrel twisted wood.
We had a couple chainsaws but he refused to get a splitter. Axes, wedges and sledges and people power.
At least 20 cords a winter.
When I started to work full time I bought a new splitter. He refused to use it himself.
Even into his later 70s the neighbor kid called him Popeye arms.
He finally had to install a propane furnace because the insurance wouldn't cover a house heated primarily with wood and coal.
He still did with the new system only kicking in in the early morning hours when the coal had burnt down.
In his early 80s he finally accepted the convenience of not getting up and loading the wood and coal at 5-6am.
Mind you the thermostat was set at 62F.

 

[WinterDeere]

I like to just make two criss cross cuts with the chain saw across the end of the "cookie" LOL to help hold the splitting wedge in. Split it in quarters.

Yeah, that method works great. But it also works from the side of the round, when you'd rather noodle than cut end grain.

 

[Jstpssng]

somebody once said to me “don’t get old” and I didn’t listen

My grandmother said those very words to me.