Wood Heat Thread ~ post pics

And now it's all firewood? You'll have the Woodworker thread guys pulling their hair out that it's not going into lumber.

Of course I'm one to talk. I burn red and white oak that would make beautiful furniture etc, but I'd get less money for lumber stock than as firewood value.$$

 

I've never known sycamore as being that great for woodworking or lumber. The grain is exceptionally twisty, and the most colorful part is bark.

 

It has an interesting pattern when it's quartersawn, but I'm pretty sure it mostly it just gets used for plywood/OSB. Firewood is as good a use for it as anything.

Just like last spring when I was splitting this winter's firewood; I stumbled across a gorgeous stretch of bird's-eye Maple, but I'd already worked it up to stove length

I did save some out to turn up on the lathe once it's stabilized, but it's really not the best use of bird's-eye.

 

I've got a couple chunks that are so twisted that they start torquing the I-beam of my splitter more than they actually split. No luck with a maul or a wedge, so I mostly use sycamore rounds as chopping blocks.

 

That happened to us too. Beautiful huge old oak died. We had a couple of people look at it, nobody wanted to touch it for lumber. They only want to clear out larger lots -- single trees, even 5 feet across like this was, don't interest them. So it's firewood.

 

Sounds like a saw split candidate if ever I've heard of one.
I had a couple of lumps of oak that were like that this past year, so I sawed them down just small enough to fit through the door on the stove and burned them on Saturdays. I just kept poking smaller sticks in around them every couple of hours to keep a good hot fire going.

 

Madrone can be like that too . It twists as it grows so when it dries it twists even more and there is lots of internal tension in the wood , hard to successfully get boards out if it and firewood has to be split immediately or wait a year or two

 

I had a whole oak tree like that. Used the Mighty Ox 30-ton splitter. It was still a PITA.

 

Barber chair.

 

HOLY S#!T

 

Yep. Gotta be careful out there.
I used a step cut to swing a leaner over about 45 degrees this weekend, so I was looking for gifs about that and stumbled across this one.

 

Lots of scary vids like that on youtube

 

For sure. I've been pretty proud of some difficult drops before, but I never record any of them because I don't want to jinx myself, haha!
I just take pictures of them once they're already on the ground.

 

That guy looks like he's falling danger trees prior to harvesting the way that tree is marked

 

Looks like it. Given how well-rotted it was, that's probably the case.

 

There's a video on youtube of some guys falling an approx 15' red cedar up near where I am and half way through their falling cut the whole tree topples over , root ball and everything

I'll see if I can find it

 

Fast forward to 2:00

https://youtu.be/EKCJvdlp8JM

 

I'll have to check it out after work; the Nazi's in my IT department blocked youtube a couple of weeks ago.

 

There's a really good analogy for life in there somewhere

 

HA!
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