Tractors and wood! Show your pics

[BnRidge]

A wood drying question. In my mind you have two kinds of moisture, from when the tree was a living organism and when it gets external moisture, like rain. If you season wood for a year or two that gets the moisture out of it from when it was alive.

When the wood gets rained on, does that mostly stay on the outside and dry off quickly or get inside the wood and take weeks to dry out?

Wood contains free water (within cells) and bound water (within the cell walls). It only takes a few weeks or months for free water to escape, but months to years for bound water to escape. Wood will rapidly dry to around 30%, then very slowly dry to the equilibrium moisture content.

Rain soaking adds to the cells in a short time, and also can evaporate off in a short time. It could slow or reverse the drying of the bound water.

Some woods have closed cells, like white oak, and will not allow water to pass (water tight barrels, ship timbers). Others, like red oak, are open cell, which you could blow through like a straw, and will wet up and pass water far easier.

 

[Jstpssng]

A wood drying question. In my mind you have two kinds of moisture, from when the tree was a living organism and when it gets external moisture, like rain. If you season wood for a year or two that gets the moisture out of it from when it was alive.

When the wood gets rained on, does that mostly stay on the outside and dry off quickly or get inside the wood and take weeks to dry out?

It also depends on if it's split. I bring home 2 year old log ends from when trees were processed into hardwood logs. Sometimes (like this year) I don't get them processed until after it starts snowing. While the ends and outside can be wet, inside the wood is dry.

 

[Rockbadchild]

Oh no you di'nt! That old "bark up vs bark down" debate on various woodburner forums, makes every "Deere vs. Kubota" thread on this forum look tame and agreeable.

Bark up is indeed a good way to shed incident rain, but also slows the drying of the wood in good weather, so which is best is going to depend on your conditions. I tend to stack bark down, because my stacks are under a roof. But since I'm drying my wood for 3-4 years before use, it honestly wouldn't matter much either way, in my case.

I wasn't aware of this debate it seem evident to me that the bark is a good sealer and make the water drip on both side instead of retain it ... I would agree, bark up when stack in the elements and bark down when under a roof, although inside a shed I would argue it doesn't really matter much which way, it doesn't see the sun and it's out of the elements. Personally I think orientating your wood stack to the dominant wind and having enough gap for air to go between the rows has a greater impact then putting the bark down.

 

[WinterDeere]

It also depends on if it's split. I bring home 2 year old log ends from when trees were processed into hardwood logs. Sometimes (like this year) I don't get them processed until after it starts snowing. While the ends and outside can be wet, inside the wood is dry.

Wood in log form doesn't give up much moisture, and at least in our climate, always starts to rot after a year or two stacked in the weather. I pretty much always have a backlog (pun?) of stacked logs, and it's a constant problem for me.

Wood does not really begin to dry well until it is split. When I say my wood has been drying 4 years, that means it's been split 4 years, generally felled 6 years ago.

 

[WinterDeere]

Personally I think orientating your wood stack to the dominant wind and having enough gap for air to go between the row has a greater impact then putting the bark down.

Agreed. My "sheds" are a roof only, open on all four sides. But they're 4-rows deep, and being open on both faces, that means there's an inner row on each side that doesn't get the sun and wind of the outer rows. You can see the arrangement of the rows in my shed in this old photo:



Since I'm leaving the wood dry in those sheds 3-4 years before use, it really doesn't matter much, until you get into something like white oak... which is difficult to dry under the most ideal conditions. Last week I was unloading a bay from one of the sheds, where some of the oak on the inner row still felt a bit heavier (i.e. wetter) than the outer row, even after 4 years split and stacked.

I tag every bay in every shed, so I know exactly when it was split and stacked. I don't track when it was felled, but I always have a backlog of logs (see background of photo above) running 1 - 3 years.

 

[ning]

I have old metal roofing over my stacks but I’m sure it still gets wet.

I used to have roof-only stacks as well (24" roof over a ~16" stack; I had two next to each other so the roofs slightly overlapped), with the short end towards most weather.
You could toss a rained-on log onto a decent fire and the superficial surface moisture would quickly dry off, and the log burned just like a dry log of its age.

So those stacks worked well for me, considering we haven't had crazy wet (for this area) winters for quite some time.
A couple weeks ago we did have some sustained 30mph heavy rains for 4 days straight which would've made that system kinda iffy though... I've changed to totes now, with most of them outside, a few staged in my barn, and two in a covered hut next to the house.

 

[EdwardL]

OK thanks. Good explanation and a good way to do what you do. When I see something different I am always curious how it is used. There is something to be learned everywhere.

Where in VT. I'm in Waterford near St. J.

gg

I'm in Bennington. Communist land. Use to be a wholesome place to grow up...

 

[WinterDeere]

Fetched two trees from two neighbors, this weekend. One larger oak, and one medium ash. Had to scramble both mornings, while ground was frozen, as afternoon sun softened the surface both days.



At one point, I returned home with a load, to find my tall pile had rolled down, thanks to thawing conditions, and had to be piled up all over again:



Unfortunately this site still limits photo size to some antique standard, lower than that which any modern iPhone takes, so half my photos won’t post from my phone.

 

[wolc123]

I’m looking forward to a little break from deer hunting, before Christmas, to work on firewood in my spare time. NY state closes deer hunting season for a week then, before muzzleloader season reopens, on December 26.

I’ve got about 1-1/2 face cord of EAB killed ash accumulated in my splitter shed, and that will be enough to fill up the far end of my woodshed. Usually, I throw the split stuff into the tractor bucket, then move it over to the woodshed. Since I’m on the last row, I’ll go right to the woodshed from the splitter.

I find splitting wood to be a bit more fun than cutting it to length, and stacking it in the woodshed is better yet. Before I had the woodshed, stacking wood outside on pallets was my least favorite part of the operation.

Actually my second least favorite. The worst part back then was digging wood out from under snow, for burning in the wood stove up in the house.

 

[WinterDeere]

I find splitting wood to be a bit more fun than cutting it to length, and stacking it in the woodshed is better yet. Before I had the woodshed, stacking wood outside on pallets was my least favorite part of the operation.

You and I would make a good team, as your order of preference is nearly the opposite of mine. Too bad you're in NY!

Using the saws is more tiring on the hands and arms than splitting and stacking, but I find it very satisfying work. I always look at splitting and stacking as the forced break between sawing sessions.

Speeding my splitter up has helped, a lot. I've gone from 11 gpm at 7 hp to 19 gpm at 11 hp, which has cut the cycle time way down.