Firewood questions, chainsaw comments

[Steve B]

Today me and two friends went to cut about three cords of wood. I brought a Husky 345, they brought Stihls. One was a 442 with a 25" bar. We needed it a couple of times. My Husky started easier than their Stihls, but I suspect that with a little fiddling with the jets, we could have ironed that out. We were at 10,425' elev. One of the Stihl owners said they would buy Husky next. They both had three each.

We cut mostly rounds 16-18" long. We brought them back to my house to split.

We were considering going back up there in the summer, and making it a two day event with a campout. We want to bring a splitter, and an ATV to skid the logs to a central point.

We were discussing how efficient it is to split wood right at the spot where you fell it. And how it stacks up comparatively in a rack. Say, take enough rounds to fill up a 4x4x8 frame, then split it and see if the stack is higher or lower. We all agreed that it would be nice to leave all the mess in the woods, and that it would be somewhat less handling doing it that way.

What are the facts?

Steve

[Harry K]

The facts are that the smaller you split it, the bigger the stack gets. You cannot put split wood into a smaller space than mother nature put the unsplit wood.

Rule of thumb is that split to the usual stove size, the stack will grow about 10%.

As to efficiency? Depends on your time you want to invest. I prefer bringing them home in the biggest chunks I can load and do the splitting at home at my leisure. Split on cite, you cut, split, load and are there until all jobs are finished. Time I fall, trim brush and load I am too pooped any more to also split it. :)

Harry K

[hrhofmann]

It is hard to get split wood to stack as closely as rounds, if the rounds are really fairly round without stubs sticking out. If wood always split really cleanly, it would be close to a tie, but if there are little burrs sticking out of the splits, they just don't stack as well.

[DD_BobK]

If the rounds (logs) are fairly straight & w/o stub limbs, they will stack at higher density than split wood.

take at look on pages 11 & 12

If I'm reading the information correctly, it looks like split wood stacks at ~70% the density of "rounds". So split wood would take up 40% more room.

Whether leaving the mess in woods is worth the extra volume required to transport the same amount of rounds, that determination is up to you.

cheers Bob

[Ed Pawlowski]

I don't know of anyone that splits on site. The real pros bring logs and cut to size and split in one operation, but that takes a bigger piece of equipment.

[jamesgangnc]

I can see the camping part making it a bit more fun. Leaviing the residue at location appeals as well.

[Doug Miller]

On 9/29/2011 10:36 PM, Steve B wrote: [snip]

Facts:

1. Wood in the round makes a smaller stack than split wood.
2. Wood in the round takes less time for one man to load into a truck because he's handling fewer pieces.
3. Split wood takes less effort to load into a truck because you're handling smaller pieces.
4. Two men can load split wood faster than wood in the round: one stands on the ground and pitches, one stands in the truck to catch and stack. Two trucks + four men = wood loaded faster than you can believe if you haven't done it before.

Opinions:

1. If I had an ATV to skid the logs to a central point, I wouldn't split it where I felled it -- I'd split it at the central point. I think you're a lot less likely to lose rounds off the skid than splits.
2. Two days camping in the woods with good friends (and presumably good food and good beer) sounds like a helluva good time to me. Go for it.

[Jim Elbrecht]

-snip-

Chainsaws? Splitters? weenies-- Get one of these for your Bobcat-

No Bobcat? Use this one- [it loads your truck, too] Personally, back in the day, I liked cutting it just small enough to throw on the truck, and do the final cutting and rare splitting in the woodyard. 2 days in the woods would yield enough wood to keep me busy at odd moments for a couple weeks.

I would end up with a lot of stubs that way- but they went into an unstacked pile and got used up first.

I've never missed any of that work.

Jim

[Harry K]

Weird, This question (split vs rounds) comes at least once/yr on some forum. This is the first time I have seen evrybody get the answer right :). Usually there is at leat one guy that insists he can stack the splits tighter but always refuses to do an experiment.

Harry K