Working ahead

Since we’re partially heating the house with the fireplace I really want to be sure that the wood we’re burning is well seasoned and dry. I’ve read that it’s a good idea to store the wood covered for a full year to let it really dry out. Each year cut next year’s wood and burn the wood cut the previous. I’m no where near that far ahead, this weekend Naomi and I spent a bit of time splitting and stacking wood and we’ve got about a month’s worth, depending on how cold it gets. We split about a rick and a half, a rick being a stack of wood 8 feet long and 4 feet high. I have in my head plans to build shelters using old shingles the previous owners left in our small barn, but until I get that done we’ve covered the stacks with plastic (just over the top of the wood, we want to be sure there’s plenty of air circulation).

My neighbor down the street, who repairs welding equipment for a living, built a log splitter back when they used to heat their house primarily with wood. He brought it over to my place a few weekends ago on extended loan. It’s really quite a contraption, it’s got an old four cylinder farm utility engine, uses leaded gas, and starts with a hand crank. It’s built on an old car front end (bolted and welded so the wheels don’t turn) and a steel I-beam for the ram and wedge.

Around the house in the woods are quite a few piles of old cut wood that’s never been split. Last year this is what we burned in the house and I spent a few hours every other weekend chopping this wood with my axe. I’ve learned the hard way to buy good tools, so my axe is a nice Fiskars, it has an extremely sharp edge that expands into a nice wide wedge. I could split all but the largest pieces with one swing. It was good work, a great workout and afterwords I had a nice pile of fresh-split wood. Friends at work kept asking why I didn’t rent a log splitter, I just didn’t think I needed one, my axe and I could handle any of the wood I was chopping. Then this spring one of the large Shagbark Hickories in front of the house blew over in a storm and I tried splitting one of those pieces with my axe. It was rather deflating when the axe head bounced. I didn’t try using a wedge, but I couldn’t get anywhere with just my axe. Needless to say, the log splitter has been great to have around this year, now that we’re burning real hardwood.