I was going to prune the top of a 30-foot oak, but on advice of this forum, I simply chain sawed it down.
I cut up the logs into 20 inch lengths of from 1.5 feet in diameter down to about six to ten inches in diameter.
I stacked the logs up, unsplit, and then began to wonder how long it takes to 'dry' out for campfire use.
What's the rule of thumb (if any) for how long unsplit wood takes to dry outside before being usable in a campfire setting? (The California climate is such that it won't rain from now until December.)
I'm guessing the bigger oak logs might take all summer to dry out?
I don't know about you, but, I'm a 40 year old man with a gut. I swung an ax into those wet oak logs. The ax stuck. Took me fifteen minutes to get it out.
Then, I bought a cone-shaped wedge and a triangle wedge. The points barely make a dent in the log cross section, even with a 20 pound sledge driving it home.
After, maybe a dozen or more swings, the wedge is firmly buried in the center of the 20-inch long foot and a half (or more for the bottom logs) diameter.
Then I drive the second wedge in to get the first wedge out. After fifteen or twenty minutes, I've split a single log in half.
Splitting the half into quarters takes half the time of the original split, but, the point is that these logs aren't going to get split any time soon.
Plus, it would seem to me that a log would split easier when it's DRY!
Are you sure oak splits easier when wet?
Anyway, how does two months sound (all of July and all of August in the sun) for how long a log should dry before burning?
Double that and you're almost there. Most folks say a full year to really dry out if it is not split.
The trick when splitting is not to try to split the wood via the centerline of the tree, but rather to approach it more like peeling an apple, circumferentially. I usually spend a little time looking at the grain to see where a wedge would split the wood the easiest. I use a 6lb splitting maul and two steel wedges.
First I use the pointy side of the maul and give the log as strong a blow as I can where I expect to put the wedge. If I am lucky, 75% of the time, the maul make an indentation deep enough to more or less support the wedge and then I drive the wedge on in until the wood splits. Having a good solid base to put the log to be split on is important. Putting the log on the ground means that you are not coming straight down on the wedge. If you have some sort of a platform to raise the log about 12 -18', it makes things much easier. I usually use the largest unsplit log I have as a base because it is about 16" thick/tall and gets me the correct angle for the maul to hit the wedge squarely. I am 75 and only 160 lbs so my swing isn't what it once was, but I find that splitting wood is actually easier now that I have learned how to do it in a more efficient manner.
One tree that size isn't going to make much of a dent on a gut though. I'm 77 and out there almost daily doing something at my woodpile. Been at it over 30 years and my gut is still there. Of course my problem is not "lack of exersize" but too many brews.
Most species will dry in one season. Oak seems to want 2 seasons. But you want it for campfire use so it doesn't have to be 'dry'. A couple months should do it. Expect rather smoky fires though.
Did you consider that maybe that tree had value as timber / lumber rather than fire wood?
Additionally, burning wood logs in a conventional fireplace in the South Coast Air Basin is just creating more air pollution.
The process you described is more or less the classical hand split method. Forget those silly cone wedges, they don't work.
If you have a gut & you're really able to swing a 20lb sledge.......don't worry, that gut will be gone soon. It's been more than a few years since I've hand split any appreciable quantity of wood and I only used a 12lb. A maul is a better tool but you still need at least 3, preferably 4, wedges.
Your log lengths are too long, 16" or shorter would have been about ideal, even 12" would have been better than 20". At this point, if you're serious about the hand splitting, cut them down to 10" and get busy splitting.
Shorter pieces will split easier. Shorter pieces will dry quicker. Shorter pieces will burn more efficiently....... the smaller the piece of wood you add to a fire, the closer you come to wood pellet behavior. Dumping a huge log (20" long, 1/4 split?) on a fire will nearly kill it.
If you can't split all of the wood completely in a reasonable amount of time, at least split ALL of the logs in half.
If you wait until the wood dries you will be amazingly unhappy. As others have said, green wood splits WAY easier than dry wood.
Of course you can always do your own experiment and report back.
essay on hand splitting
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Split the logs in 6ths. Split in half & then each 1/2 into three pieces.
If stack the wood with stickers & space it "might" be burnable in 6 months. If you stack it & air flow is inhibited....... you'll be burning it Jan 2013.
Air drying wood is a function of air temperature, relative humidity & air flow and the size / shape of the piece of wood. Unsplit, the wood will take at least twice as long to dry....... its a volume to surface thing, as well as length & width. :(
You can speed up the process with a properly designed stacking arrangement supplemented with 20" box fans. Estimated your Dec 2011 thru March 2012 usage and only force dry that amount.
I used to dry full units of 2x4's by re-stacking the unit stickered & placing two 20" box fans at the end of the unit. Running the fans 24/7 I could get a unit of 2x4's down into the 12% moisture content range (from 30%+) in a couple weeks.
The two fans cost about $1/day to run. As they say....you can have it fast, cheap or right..... pick two. :(
Wood may season at an uneven rate in bigger pieces. It dries from the inside out, and the outside may be dry, but the inside still wet. I would split it, and then allow it to dry for one season. If you split it too small, it will burn too quickly. If you split it too large, or don't split it, it will take a long time to dry. I try to make different sizes of finished split wood, as once your fire is going, a large dry piece will burn for a very long time versus feeding many smaller pieces in the same time span.
I would say that 16 square inches would be a good size, 4" on a side, and then 36 square inches for larger long burning pieces, 6" on a side.
Species of woods all have their btu ratings, and desirability for different reasons. But, the basics apply to all woods, and that includes drying time. Splitting reduces drying time.
I have a 26 ton splitter. If I didn't have a splitter, I would not be able to have a wood stove. I have an artificial heart valve, and have had a 9 hour 5 way bypass/aortic valve replacement surgery. With the splitter, I can do a lot of wood in a short time. No Luddites in this household.
I have around 35 large live oaks on my property. They sometimes get pruned. They also just drop limbs - sometimes BIG limbs - whenever they feel like it. I buck anything from about 3" up to 10" in diameter for my fireplace; anything larger is burned as trash.
The fireplace logs are burned as needed...sometimes thay are 1-6 years old, sometimes 1-6 months. IOW, they don't need drying to burn; yes, the greener ones will splutter and spit but they burn.
Oak isn't a very good fireplace wood for a "pretty fire" because it doesn't have much volatile material to create the gas that provides the "pretty" part; OTOH, it burns (glows) long and hot.
Forget about splitting it manually, BTDT. Had a bunch when I first moved here, figured I'd split it, bought a wedge, good solid blow and it split like a dream. Set up another piece, did the same, my arms are still ringing. Looked more closely at piece #1 and it had split along a line of rot.
A few years ago, after a couple of hurricanes, we had 100s of tons of oak lying around. A young, strong and naive fellow was helping me with it, thought he whould split some of the bigger stuff for me, got a splitting axe and had at it. He split nothing.
I find the best time is when the wood is frozen for a week or so. it just pops apart with one blow of the splitting maul. Problem si, if you live in the south, your wife may get tired of seeing logs in the freezer.
These are HEAVY logs! Solid oak. Very dense. And wet. I can barely lift a
20-inch long section, about a foot or more in diameter, in my hands, let alone on the end of a stuck-fast ax!
I had a more robust friend try to split the logs and his experience was the same. If this were lighter maple, or hickory, or pine, I could see lifting the log by the ax - but not heavy oak.
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