Sources of wood

[Crocuta]

Just wanted to share something will all of you.  We know a gentleman who owns a small sawmill operation.  Low key, works a couple hours a day (he's almost 90.)  We were over one day and he was grumbling about all these piles of waste wood laying around - they're everywhere.  A sawmill produces a lot of waste as the logs get squared up for cutting boards.  He's been piling this wood off to the side, until off to the side got filled up and it had migrated closer and closer to his work area until he barely had room to move.  Some of the wood had good meat left in it, but it was useless to him as lumber.  We asked him what he'd want for it, and he said that if we'd haul it off, we could have it for free!



We took the big trailer over on several trips and my FIL and I loaded it up.  It's really uneven in length and thickness and so it's hard to cut into firewood.  We tried using a chop saw and feeding it in one end, but it took forever to make any progress, so this is what I came up with.

I used the best of the wood to create the whole frame and then set it on a couple of sawhorses and tilted it toward me to make it easier to cut the wood.



I mounted uprights to keep the wood from sliding off the front and marked in between them with green marker paint at 16" intervals.



By trial I figured out how much wood to load in at once to let me get the chainsaw through without having to reach.  If a piece is shorter than the whole rack, I just line it up with one of the green marks and pack in shorter chunks to make a solid block of wood to cut.



When I'm done cutting, if I'm lucky the wood stays on the rack (most of the time).  If I've got lots of weird chunks in the middle, sometimes a stack falls over and ends up on the ground below the cutting rack.  Usually I can just hook an arm under a whole stack and transport it as a unit to where it will season.



It's not a perfect system, but it wasn't bad for free wood and a rack put together in an hour.  I figure that one load like this is enough to heat my house for one day.  Takes me about 15 minutes to load, cut and unload this much wood.  Maybe less.

You might be able to find wood like this anyplace that someone is running a sawmill.

[Pat K]

 

[KBCraig]

When I was a kid, we burned lots of slabs in the wood stove. A local mill would bundle theirs together with steel bands, in a bundle about 5' in diameter and 8' long. For $20, they would deliver and set these bundles down where you wanted them.

They have a high bark:wood ratio, but if you let them dry well, the bark usually pops off pretty easily.

Kevin

[Russell Kanning]

[KBCraig]

Lots of companies will give you used pallets for free.  Hot fire!!!!

Don't bother trying to pry them apart: just take a saw to them. They're assembled with screw nails, which are tough to pull. Just burn them nails and all, and be sure to clean the grate.

Kevin