Wood Heat Thread ~ post pics

Well I’m officially upping my firewood game this year!
Fired it up after work last night and man this thing is amazing. I cut a sweet gum tree that was leaning over my garden and tried once to use my splitting ax, couldn’t even get the ax to stick in the wood and I’ve split a fair amount of wood by hand. This splitter didn’t even hesitate, split probably a rick or maybe close to two in minutes.

 

You just went to heaven.

I got a 24 ton a few years ago and I have gotten so cocky I am even saving some Mulberry limbs. They are about as stringy as the Midwest has to offer and no way they can be split by hand.

 

Virgin burn for the Solo stove...

 

Nice. On a wood deck non the less.

Let us know how the burn in goes. I’ve been eyeing those for awhile.

 

It puts off a good bit of heat, not much smoke. Minimal ash is left behind. Dump the ash and ready for next burn. It comes with a weather/rain proof case to cover it when idle. The screen top was extra.

 

Does the heat come off the sides as well as the top? How far to the sides can you feel it? I'm trying to compare something like this to a similar size campfire.

 

You can feel the heat from about 4-5' away. The heat does side emit. It's a clean burn. The more you feed it the more heat emitted of course. I personally wouldn't compare it to a camp fire, a camp fire is on the ground and not enclosed. A campfire, imo will emit more heat and does not have to be policed as much.

 

What is it that you have to "police" more than a campfire?

 

The Solo stove is sitting on a wood deck connected to my house...

 

They're a neat gadget. One of our neighbor's has one. It's a nice 'ambiance' fire for the summer, but by the end of September you want something that puts out more heat

 

Picked up an old McCinderblock Pro Mac 610 on Friday for $50. Owner said that it had sat on a shelf in his garage for quite a few years until he had a tree come down a couple of weeks ago in a wind storm, and that it would fire but wouldn't run or idle, so he just went and bought a brandy-new Echo instead. I got it home and popped the air cover off, and the 3 bolts that hold the carburetor housing against the engine weren't even finger tight; the entire housing had probably 1/4 of play against the intake on the engine. It was just sucking air and was barely getting any fuel, so no wonder it wouldn't run. So I snugged them down and gave it a test pull, and she fired right up.
Runs and idles great; didn't even need to clean the carb out because he always ran it on ethanol-free. It's got great compression and chews like crazy, but it's just got an old 80's 16" hardnose bar & some sort of weird super-low-kickback chain on it. I'd forgotten how loud these old Macs are; pretty sure the 'muffler' is just a pipe with a spark guard.
So I ordered a 24" bar and a skip tooth chain for it from Amazon and it'll be my "new" big wood saw. Definitely a fairly low-hour saw, though. Guy was a "Gentleman Farmer" who said he bought it new in the 70's and only used it for cleaning up the occasional blowdown. Automatic oiler still works (these are known for losing the auto oiler & leaving you pumping the manual oiler every few seconds) and the paint on the exhaust ports is just sort of bronzed rather than black & burnt.

 

Cuts nice, even with the weird old 16" safety chain. Not a fast revving saw, but torquey as all hell. And it weighs so much that all you have to do is set it on the log and let her chew
My hat is off to the people who used these things as GP saws and limbed with them back in the day. Horsing one of these around to limb out a big Maple would build some serious in a hurry.

Can't wait for the new 24" bar and chain to arrive and see what she can really do.

 

Finally got around to installing the new bar and chain today. Ended up going with another hardnose bar, because I wanted a full chisel/full skip chain and all I could find for this saw in 24" length were 84 link chains, but all the sprocket nose bars I could find were for 81 links. Oh well. I'll just have to run the chain a little looser and turn the oiler up a notch.

Cuts nice, though. Glad I didn't go with a 28; the balance with the 24 is perfect and it still has enough power to snarf through a nice thick piece of oak (I tried). Still not a speed demon, but gobs of torque. Max RPMs are only between 10-11k, but according to my 'ear tachometer' it only loses about 1k from no load to cutting a 12" log.
And it's still heavy for the displacement, but only between cuts, lol.

 

The Smithsonian called , they want their chainsaw back

 

I wouldn't want to race it against a modern saw, but I've also only got around $120 in it at this point, and it chews along happily and with decent speed.

 

Wow, you guys are hardcore.
I did cut some doug fir once upon a time. Ye Olde splitting maul.
My fingers have thawed out, so I can type now with the remaining 7.
and, ya know. Elf. Red wine rewards after "the big" cut in the River of No Return Wilderthing.

 

Got my firewood for this winter stashed away in the house woodshed , about 50/50 mix of fir and madrone



I'm currently building a new house for my inlaws and they are going with a propane fireplace so there is a bunch of free fir firewood there for me , started hauling it home today . Its getting stashed in the scaffolding seasoning woodshed at my shop site for future use

 

Here's the pile of "take as much as you want" mixed fir and madrone I've been pilfering , most already bucked and some split

I'm only interested in the fir right now , I've got lots of dry madrone and its a 2 year dry time versus the one for fir so I stack them separately anyway




Full load inside the canopy

I have 3 plywood blanks cut to protect the canopy glass , 2 for the sides and one for the front

 

Have you got a Hookaroon for unloading the truck? They're great, saves a bunch of bending over when splitting and stacking.

 

I don't but thats a tool I've looked at buying before . For unloading I use a rake to pull any pieces I can't reach to the back