Firewood

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Yes, an owb... They'll get split enough so dad (they are for his house) can handle them and no smaller, lol.

I have a friend that only splits when it won't fit thru the stove door, yea, he's a big guy. Asked him what happens when the wife has to load the owb..."she turns up the furnace." :lol:

Ed
 
We've been firing the woodstove in the mornings for 3 or 4 weeks now. Often add some wood in the late afternoon/early evening. But not really big fires...just enough to keep the chill off.

High 30's to low 40's overnight...from low 50's to an occasional low 60's as a high.

Mist/rain/showers more days than not. Which we need in abundance. Our creek still is just a suggestion of a creek.
 
Burnham, your weather and ours are in a crossover, sounds just about the same here as there at the moment. We are getting a lot of rain atm
Derail....I'm watching the news, the premier of Queensland (a lovely lady) just said she had a big hookup with all the mayor's yesterday...(via zoom,) :lol: oopsie
 
I've kinda retired to an arboricultural graveyard where trunks are rendered into either art, lumber, or firewood.

My question's whether anyone other than me, sharpens their chain, and blows out their air-cleaner, every tank of gas?

I get a lot more more life out of a chain hand sharpening, whereas most my neighbor's pay me to sharpen their chains on my grinders, with the new boron grinding wheels, which are indeed far superior to the old pink grinding wheels.

I get a really good end product sharpening with the boron grinding wheels with a constant steam of water cooling the friction point, much like an automated chipper knife grinder.

But even so, I firmly believe my hand sharpened chains done while still hot after a tank of gas, are far sharper.

Gonna have to buy a metal detector soon to stay sharp though.......

Jomo
 
I find it unnecessary. Why waste the time needed to touch up a chain and clean a filter when I can just gas and go if the saw is still sucking itself through the wood?
 
I'm semi-retired, set in my ways, like to get the longest life out of my thousand dollar Stihls, and have clients n have old customers who indulge my eccentrics.........

I agree that having 5 razor sharp chains n five perfectly clean air filters, would out perform me ........

Jomo
 
I clean the filter when necessary, which is frequently on the 2511, and not so much on the 362. I sharpen every tank of gas on hardwoods, and maybe every two or three in soft. That's assuming clean wood which I don't seem to get a whole lot of.
 
BlackSmith said:
How do you like the box wedge?
Click to expand...

I have no experience with a regular 4 way or 6 way, but a 6 way would be the most efficient as long as your rounds are not too big, because one stroke of the ram makes 6 pieces of firewood without the need for multiple strokes to feed a whole round through. A strong enough ram with a 12 way like Easton splitters have would be ideal at least in theory. With ideal wood, a 6 way should split up to 3 cords per hour, while the box wedge on my 19 ton splitter only goes through just over 1 cord per hour at best. Ideal wood and 30-40 tons may increase that to 2 cords, but I'm doing 2-4 ricks per hour normally with 1 or 2 hard working people.

The box wedge is good for regulating the size of the split wood to be on the smaller side no matter how big of a round you put through it. Of course too big of a round will send big chunks around the sides, which will need to be resplit. Other advantages include being able to split more difficult chunks of wood because you can manipulate it to split smaller and fewer pieces, and it doesn't split all at once because some of the wedges are 6" behind the others, so it requires less tonnage than a regular 6 way. Also, it uses the ram to pull out a crooked or jammed chunk of wood, but only the low pressure/high volume side of the pump feeds the return, which means it won't pull every jammed chunk of wood out.

Disadvantages include it weighing 175lbs, and the minimum height causes short or large diameter rounds of wood to tip over on their end when returning, making you have to wrestle the wood more.

Other considerations: keep the edges very sharp to cut through the wood fibers since it is impossible to perfectly line up the wood grain with all the wedges, you will need it to cut and extrude the firewood at times. Make sure the retract arm goes back far enough to fully pull a chunk off the top of the wedge, so you don't have to pull the chunk the rest of the way by hand. Also, make sure the corner in the arm is well braced to withstand repeated full pressure pulling forces. I assume the box wedge is messier than other wedges because quite often the remaining wood is not tall enough to split over the top or fit underneath, so it just shaves a mess off the last piece of a round to go through.
 
I don't like hand splitting, but i don't mind making kindling. I looked everywhere but where it's at apparently, but one task that a double bit is awesome at is kindling. I couldn't find it, so this will have to do :lol: the struggle is real.

20211109_165037.jpg
 
I enjoy handsplitting, but crappy wood is no fun. I split *one* round of my yard spruce I took down a year or so ago, and split the rest with a chainsaw. All the knots wouldn't allow it to come apart. I brought a few pieces of locust home with me Sunday, and split them in the driveway. It was surprisingly difficult compared to locust I took down on my property, but was half dead. Very stringy, and didn't want to come apart. Made me question for half a second whether or not it was really locust, though I know 100% it is. I guess it's the difference between young/healthy, and old/sick?
 
I'm just busting up kindling for fire starting and when getting it going in the am, not heavy splitting work. I'm fortunate enough to use my buddy's splitter that i helped him build for that task, and when i was sick last winter he even came down and split up an ash tree i had saved so i would have plenty of wood. With a double bit you simply take a round or a stump, sink the ax it in, then while using a half sledge (3 pounder since that's what i have) you hammer the wood over the ax, which keeps your fingers safe. In a couple minutes you have a pile of the stuff all split up, and you can go back to drinking beer :D. I just keep a small tub full of it right next to the firewood tub on the hearth so it's right there ready to go.

I'm finding with this insert, since you have a very small firebox, if you put a good size long in it, it will fill most of the firebox solid. So you have a big log trying to heat on coals that can't really get air, so it will smoulder and not produce heat until it finally gets going. I'm thinking it's because the temps might be dropping far enough down where the secondary air isn't hot enough to burn it, so it smokes up the chimney and loses those btus, cooling it even more. If i toss a couple sticks in front of it, so they get the blowing of the glass air, really get rolling, and will get the top of stove hot enough to pump out heat even when it's on low.
 
For kindling we go and pick up sticks and branches lodged and piled up against fences alongside the river after flood, then cut them up on the sawhorse with the 150.
Ditto the sticks for getting a big chunk of wood going when we've let the coal bed go down a bit too far
 
I need to make a sawhorse thing too, almost all of the firewood i got is too long too :lol: Cutting them in half kinda works tho, having small brick like chunks of wood are super easy feeding and make it easier to pack it full. Anyone got a pic of theirs please? I've never used one so tips or ideas would be cool
 
Alpha 5: 4" cylinder, 13hp Honda, 19 tons. It's under powered for a 2 way wedge in my opinion, though I wonder how honest the specs are on the TSC wood splitters. I've seen "22T" 2 way splitters get stuck in 25-30" oak. I ran a 25 & 30ton County Line splitters, and I don't think anything stopped them, and I wasn't nice to the 30T.
 
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