Henry Rifle Forums

Finally got to get started on splitting next winters firewood. First I had a pile of junk wood that I give to my sister when she’s goes camping. She’s 65 and still tent camps so appreciates a nice fire. The first pic is the junk wood I have for her, she will be going to her favorite spot in North Idaho in June. I was surprised how much really rotten wood was in the stack and it’s all split and piled up under this tarp for burning tomorrow with my brush and limbs.

My splitter is only a 22 ton but that’s more than enough for the soft pine and fir I split. I have split rounds larger than the one shown plus my splitter will rotate to vertical splitting which helps with some of the larger rounds. Yesterday I split about half of what I will do for this upcoming winter and it’s just piled in my wood shed for now. In a few days I’ll stack it loosely for curing. It was cut down and into rounds last fall and was stacked outdoors under the eve of my shop until yesterday. It’s still running 40 - 50% moisture content and for indoor burning it needs to be less than 20%. I have 5-6 months before I’ll start burning it so it should be fine by then.

This might sound nuts but I enjoy doing this work. It’s really pretty easy with the splitter, I’m too old and out of shape to swing a maul or sledge.

that's a lot of junk wood .. .. I'd sure love to have some like that for our club camping trips

Use to do that with a screw splitter mounted aboard a Johnny Popper John Deere tractor. It worked pretty good.

PJM wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 24, 2021 6:29 am

All done for next year! Mostly maple beach oak and ash. Beat those black flies (NH state bird). Let wind and rain beat on it and cover in July after week of hot sun.

That's an interesting stack. How'd you get it to stick together ?

GunnyGene wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 24, 2021 8:34 am

PJM wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 24, 2021 6:29 am

All done for next year! Mostly maple beach oak and ash. Beat those black flies (NH state bird). Let wind and rain beat on it and cover in July after week of hot sun.

That's an interesting stack. How'd you get it to stick together ?

Obliviously it’s covered with one of those invisible anti-gravity black fly resisting covers. State Bird, that’s hilarious is a sad sort of way. Black flies seem to enjoy my wife, she gets several bites each year and I have never had one. Not much of a problem here but some years are worse than others.

We’ve heated with wood for 35 years, the first 30 or so I gathered and split myself. After 3 rotator cuff surgeries I went to mostly buying. A friend took out some cherry and hedge to build a welding/bow shop and I got a lot of that. Osage orange is really slow going with a sledge and wedge...

A wood fire warms you twice.