100 cord by Christmas (?)

[cantoo]

I built this one for even less money. Unfortunately I never got to use it, my wife sold it before I had the chance. I buy and build a ton of stuff and erything is for sale, so she sold it. Said I didn't need 2 trucks, fooled her I had 2 more hidden at work.

 

[T. Mainus]

We use an 8x14 PJ deck over dump trailer. The sides fold down so you could literally set the pallets in the trailer and then cut the netting. The picture is from loading right from the conveyor while splitting. That is a little over loaded but probably a cord plus another face cord.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

Dec. 8th:
Beautiful fall. I should have hit it a bit harder, ain't that the truth.
The weather has turned so I dropped the mast today and pulled it in till spring.
50 cord cut/split/palletized, 200 pallets. I had help a couple days that my son got out for a few hours each time. Mostly we made fun of it. It's a bit of a drive for him in the first place, so first bit of business is going out for breakfast and catching up, and we knocked off around noon, spending time with his mom as well. Hardly enough time for him to get a good feel of the machine. Plan to continue to cut rounds thru the winter so there is a spot for a couple more loads of logs. One hundred pallets are covered with weather protection, and I'll continue with that, catching up on the first ones that didn't get covered as long as the weather permits moving them to do so. It seems to have made a difference and the covers should be reusable.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

Stopped by the machine shop this morning to check on my SS mod project. No progress. Disappointing, as it has been well over a month.

 

[CaseyForrest]

Go get yourself a mig welder and I'll come show how to use it.

sent from a field

 

[Sandhill Crane]

-Thanks Casey. But no mig for me.
After this years changes, which were several, I'm going to need to save my pennies till spring so I can order logs early and get a jump on things early in 2017. Tools are great but I need logs to process to keep the cash flow going. I will need logs and pallets in the spring before money for this years work begins to come in next summer. Everything split this year sells next year, with the exception of yesterday. Also January is sales tax, plates, vehicle insurance as well. I like doing firewood, making it pay off is another thing.
-I've been sold out since Labor Day.
-A regular called yesterday, a regular pain.
-You ever have one of those regulars that think their special? Anyway, calls at 1:00, and says can I come in an hour and pick up the four cord you said you'd save for me. Pissed me off for a second right there, but I was expecting it, and got over it quickly. I changed my policy this year, because last year I did save four cord for him. He would pick up a half a cord every ten days or so. Screw that crap... This year when people asked me to 'save' wood for them the answer was a flat no to everyone, first come first serve, no exceptions. Okay so then he wanted green wood , sending someone else to pick it up. We loaded one and a quarter cord using the conveyor, or five pallets. The conveyor belt doesn't track well when it gets wind blown snow packed and lumped on the lower drum. We fought that a bit as clearing it is very difficult to reach. Told him if he wants more this was the last week, period, and even that was dependent on how much snow we get. Fifteen miles from here they got nine inches of snow the night before last and its been blowing since. Big lake effect (Lake Michigan) is fairly unpredictable. The new wood lot will not be as accessible this year either.
-What was nice, hand loading into the conveyer was that I found the splits had begun to season quite well on the pallets, better than I've seen mine do before. The cleared space for the wood lot is new this year, as are the pallets and netting. Sun and air flow!!!! Yes!!!! I've also begun to cover the pallet tops, but these were not covered.
-It has taken a long time to get set up, and I am very happy with the results so far. I had the stumps hauled off, and crushed concrete brought in and leveled. Guys did a great job. I got four semi loads of logs and borrowed money to imported the PackFix. Each step cost money. I still need to get production up, which for now simply means putting in more hours on the saw/splitter and forklift. The PackFix wasn't really up and running until the very end of July, and then almost a month sorting out how it works, getting decent used pallets in the beginning, and a tree trimmer out to clear a couple small dead limbs 40' up before getting really set up and running. Very, very happy with results.
-Two small disappointments with the PackFix, really hardly worth mentioning.
I should add, I don't know of anyone else in the states that uses a PackFix. The importer mentioned someone in Michigans upper peninsula had ordered one also. I gave him permission to pass on my email but I never heard anything.
One: it takes four pallets instead of three to equal a full cord stacked up in my racks. (no one has said three pallets to a cord, I was just hoping) The drum volume converted from metric comes out to 56.5 cu. ft. (times three = 169.5 cu. ft.) (times 4 = 226 cu.ft.) Four pallets stacked is one cord, often times a bit more, by two, three, four cu. ft. What that means is the expense of one more pallet, netting, and time... to process a full cord. 169.5 cu.ft falls far short of 190 cu. ft. loose thrown volume most people selling firewood go by. 190 cu. ft. in this case is far short when stacking it up as well. 226 cu. ft. is pretty close, being on the heavy side. I believe it's possible 12" splits may possibly be done in three pallets, but I've no call to try it. I doubt people would buy 12" splits, and that in itself would be more cutting/splitting for a cord. Shorter splits seems to be a Euro thing.
Two: The PackFix is powered by a vertical shaft engine that sits on top of the hydraulic cabinet. (you can see the muffler in post #83.) When pull starting the engine after a rain, water spins out of the vented engine combing. I'm afraid, given a chance, that could freeze and really screw things up, which is one of several reasons why I dropped the mast and stored it.
With those two exceptions, this machine is well thought out, quality build is beautiful, and the paint finish is no exception. Everything you would expect from a German parent company, and Euro build, in this case Austria. It does what it was designed to do, and does it well. Specs suggested 50-60 pallets per roll of netting, and I'm getting 50-54, or @ 50 = $2.00 per pallet (using 64 roll pallet pricing for the netting).

 

[Relex]

View attachment 530514 This customer bought six cords of firewood and put to use eight of my old firewood racks. Nice sunny spot for them, and easily covered. Sold two more firewood racks today. Thirty of these to go yet. I've had a lot of calls to deliver the racks but I'm not going there. They are too big, too heavy, and too awkward for me to handle alone without the forklift. Glad I'm not stacking firewood any longer for my firewood sales. Simply too much time and work to be able to do enough volume that way. The loose splits are the last cord and a half delivery doing it the old way.

Do you have anymore pictures of these racks? Something like these would look great in my backyard.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

Wish you were closer as I have twenty five or so to sell @ $50. ea. I do not have build pictures of the larger racks. They have a pallet style base because I move them. Once I came up with a design I made templets of 1/4" ply for each of the pieces to mark length and drill holes, which I did on a drill press. Tack the templet to the piece and drill. This allowed me to make pieces for forty racks, and things lined up pretty well. One important piece is the 3" x 3" x 1/4" angle iron. I bought 20' pieces of angle and cut and drilled them. These were the hardest to make because the holes need to be close to function. The angle iron bolts to the base and flush with the end. This allows the upright to run past the bottom horizontal, and that is what keeps the top of the upright from pushing out. The corner uprights are longer than the middle uprights so that I could get a pallet jack or forks in the sides. You most likely would not need the 2" x 4" spacer blocks. (my forks are 2" thick)
The measurements are inside dimensions 4' x 4' x 6' to top of side legs.
This is the bottom of an empty rack stacked on top of a full rack. I think the tip of the forks is in there also, as my son was screwing around doing the 'what if?' double stacking. Below is side view of base and top cross ties. There are six uprights per side, lagged down through the top, and held by the angle at the bottom. Ground contact is on two sides only. Then I could also use a pallet jack to move them on the concrete.

These are six foot from base to top of side/bottom of top plate. Overall height add base and top plate/cross tie. I made forty of them, or thirty cord. Weather protection: covered top with osb and tarp, two strips of lath. Good luck with whatever you build.
Base:
-bottom plate (2) 4'
-spacer blocks
-(4) 4' timbers with 2" x 4" plates
-(6) 4' timbers with angle
-(12) angle

sides:
-(12) 6" longer than height (2 x thickness of timbers (2 1/2") plus 2" x 4" thickness
-(2) top plates @4'

Cross ties:
4' + 7"

32 bolts?, 12 lags and a million holes to drill.
Materials: cross ties 2
top plate 1
sides 12
base 6........ 21 8' pieces of cheap landscape timber; 2 2x4's

 

[Sandhill Crane]

Relex: If you go with the cheap landscape timbers, be sure to use some ground contact treated material on the ground, which the landscape timbers are not. You have to read the fine print. When I bought them they were $0.97 each, and last summer they are as high as $3.97 I used 840 8' pieces on these racks and 500 more to build one hundred smaller 1/3 cord racks, along with 880 pieces of 3" angle, or 220'.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

What is the reason to not work year round? I do wood all year. It doesn't generally get that cold here though, about -25* is the coldest.

If I'm not processing wood I'm out in the woods logging.

Lung issues suck. I almost died this spring from a lung infection. Right lung was collapsed and left about 50%. I can't hardly walk a few hundred ft some days without needing to stop to catch my breath.

 

[Whitbread]

Stopped by the machine shop this morning to check on my SS mod project. No progress. Disappointing, as it has been well over a month.

If you want to come up to Gaylord, we can do anything you need while you wait. Happy to add to the frankenstein SS family!

 

[Sandhill Crane]

I'll be out doing wood most days this winter cutting and staging rounds. The lift has industrial tires. The snow gets hard packed and glazed. Those tires even with all wheel drive, the steer wheel in the rear get light and little control when lifting in front of the wheels. (It will pick 6,500 between the wheels measured mid forks, with the extended carriage, it gets light traveling with a load, which I do with logs. The option is to pick higher, above the wheels, and boom in. I doubt I would ever get the forks in a pallet on the Posch machine as I do not have a truck plow to keep it scraped clear. As the snow gets packed down the lift slides sideways off the high spots and into the ruts.

Good news on the lungs. For six to eight weeks my dry nagging cough was getting worse at the end of each day. Never bothered much during the day, but over time, slow down hill slide. Ignoring a similar situation two years ago put me in the hospital, so I went to the pulminologist. Lungs are fine. My acid reflux is irritating the adjacent airway. Solution: Take acid reflux meds (which I was not doing) and use inhaler twice a day. I was skeptical...but they were right. Huge improvement, and my lungs, although one is full of scar tissue from pneumonia, are fine.
I love doing wood in the winter. Just came back from walking in the Dunes State Park this morning, a beautiful wood stretch of sand dunes on Lake Michigan, with 4"-6" of fresh powder. S.W. Michigan is a beautiful place in all seasons.

Whitbread: Thanks for the offer. It would be worth the trip just to see your SS in person. You may have to beef up the axle on your SS, but hinging the rear leg may cover that. I'm learning to be patient with these guys, a father/son team (the fathers father died a several years ago so no longer there). Dad is retired now, so he only works seven days a week. (For real. I guess that meant he turned 65 is all.) These guys do a wide range of work, much of it boat building for a large marine construction/dredging out fit. Last time I stopped he said he will be changing out a six inch rudder shaft on a tug boat in Muskegon this winter, fifty miles away. They are machinists, millwrights, boat builders, magicians and wizards, and I've know them as neighbors for thirty five years. (Our daughter took piano lessons from his wife for years.) They will fit me in some Saturday/Sunday morning. It is part of doing business with friends, and not unexpected. All is good...

On another note, I've been having issues with a 357XP. Had a guy work on it twice with the same issue. Not sorted out, so took it to a Husky shop someone recommended in Grand Haven, thirty miles away. Did I tell you guys this before? Maybe it was my buddy. Anyway the shop called. Original issue was it ran strong but had a gentle lope. It was very subtle, a sound more than anything, but a change none the less. These saws have had bulletins on a plastic clamp on the intake, and over time it can leak when warmed up. I thought perhaps it was beginning to suck air. Tricky issue apparently to diagnose. A good guy replaced the carb. But I couldn't keep it running when I got it back after a tank of fuel. He took a second look. Any way this shop called, and the brake/clutch something had failed, or melted something, so they are sorting that before going further. I thought that was great news, because it is truly a beautiful mid range saw to use. Being my first Husky it was beginning to sour my thoughts of Husky's in general, having this trouble after only seven years of use. I have a small 021, the 357 XP, and recently replaced an 066 (which I sat a 28" Oak butt on in March) with a MS661 when the Husky went down later last spring. I'm ready to get back to the mid-size Husky for day to day cutting rounds on the log cutting table. One thing that I'm not crazy about the Husky/Stihl line up I have is a 20" chain for example doesn't fit either/or saws. The bars are shaped different so different lengths, and in my case the gauge is different too, 50/58. Oh well... small bumps in the road really.

So in short a double dose of patience lately with the 357XP and SS mod.

 

[lknchoppers]

How many cords have you sold so far this year?

 

[Sandhill Crane]

Forty is all I processed last year and sold as seasoned this year. With the scaffolding made into a bin, I cut and split and stacked a half cord. If I did not stack, it held up the rest, and I got burnt out on stacking. Also put about 10-12 cord in our wood shed for ourselves last winter to keep a three year rotation going. In short, the amount I sell, which has been forty to sixty cords per year, has not paid for equipment. Lots of out-of-pocket to date.
The challenge is to produce more. Splitting is not the issue. Material handling and seasoning is, and cash flow.
This year I did fifty cord since late July with a goal of one hundred. I simply need to put in more hours at this point. I am now set up pretty good. I have the equipment and logs to get a good jump on spring. I ran the PackFix with two people on two occasions for about three hours each. One pallet needed cut open and redone, rewrapped, during our 'training' session with my son. His situation has changed a bit, shifting from a four day work week to five, newly married, and moved thirty miles away. I have yet to see what full capacity would be for a day with two people with the packFix, one wrapping/loading log deck, one continuing to cut/split. It is possible may be possible to keep three busy. It is still man hours per cord at the end of the day. My best day so far working alone, log form to pallet, was seven pallets. That is loading the log deck, cutting rounds, splitting, wrapping, and moving to season, repeat, about one half cord per log deck, or two pallets.
Edit: A friend told me his brother splits one hundred cord by hand each year that he harvests off his dads land. Used a chainsaw, and his dads small tractor and trailer. Hard for me to believe, as this photo is of one twenty cord load of 8' logs that I had delivered. I know my cord numbers because of the racks I have used/use, and this year to check the pallet loads the PackFix wraps, running stacked wood up the conveyor onto pallets, and stacking wrapped pallets into racks.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

What about selling it not seasoned? I don't sell seasoned wood, no commercial outfit does here. I average about 500 cords a year, mostly by myself.

 

[sirbuildalot]

100 cords a year by hand is possible. There are a lot of variables. Is this his main job or a side thing. If he cuts off of his fathers land, I'm assuming he picks and chooses trees that are most optimal to turn into firewood. If he could do a cord a day from felling of tree to firewood, that would only be 100 days out of 365. If he has a 40 hour a week job, then I agree it would be tough. Do-able, but tough.

 

[jrider]

I give you lots of credit because its obvious you have been working off a well thought out plan and you have certainly put the hours in. Your set up is pretty slick but as you've mentioned, you still haven't made any money yet as you've been covering cost of all of your equipment. Hopefully if you stick it out it will pay off for you in the long run. For me, I like to keep it as simple as possible with the least amount of overhead possible to maximize my profits. Through the years, I'm sure it has created more work for me but I just can't justify spending any more money than what I have to which is why I like to throw my splits in long windrows. I do have the luxury of an open field though to allow wood to season like that. One year, I put a 12-15 cord pile of oak in a small opening in the woods where I thought it would get enough sun and airflow and I couldn't have been more wrong. Best wishes to you though and keep the updates coming.

 

[lknchoppers]

As my business grew, I started making wind rows in my open woodlot like jrider does. Piles are 5 ft high and 50 ft long. I put sides on my trucks and on my dump trailer so each would hold a cord tossed in. I don't stack anymore unless it's at the customer's site and they pay. The firewood dries good here, the wood lot is on top of a hill in a cleared area, it gets sun and a breeze all day. The summers here are brutal so fresh cut oak gets to 25% MC and burns good. Unseasoned wood does not sell here or burn for my customers, they all are ready to burn it as soon as it leaves the truck.

 

[muddstopper]

I give you lots of credit because its obvious you have been working off a well thought out plan and you have certainly put the hours in. Your set up is pretty slick but as you've mentioned, you still haven't made any money yet as you've been covering cost of all of your equipment. Hopefully if you stick it out it will pay off for you in the long run. For me, I like to keep it as simple as possible with the least amount of overhead possible to maximize my profits. Through the years, I'm sure it has created more work for me but I just can't justify spending any more money than what I have to which is why I like to throw my splits in long windrows. I do have the luxury of an open field though to allow wood to season like that. One year, I put a 12-15 cord pile of oak in a small opening in the woods where I thought it would get enough sun and airflow and I couldn't have been more wrong. Best wishes to you though and keep the updates coming.

Speaking of Piles, I mentioned a while back I was doing a little testing between pileing and stacking. My thoughts where if I kept the piles turned using the FEL that they would dry as fast or faster than the wood in stacks. I am sad to report I was wrong. All the wood tested was cut, split and piled or stack at the same time and mostly whiteoak. Harvested 1 year ago this week, bucked and split during the early spring, Half stacked late May, rest I left in one big pile. I turned the piled wood about once a month June to Oct. I noticed the wood on top of the pile seemed to be drying very well, of course it was hot and we where in extreme drought most of fall. I also noticed the wood in the middle of the pile dried very little. I finally gave up and stacked the pile under a shed right before Thanksgiving. The stacked wood has dried very well, all the way down thru the stacks, altho I havent checked the bottom layers. Not really ready to burn but I have been throwing on a few of the top sticks on my wagon as I load my dry wood for the stove. Anyways, I have satisfied myself as to how well the wood dries in stacks as compared to being stacked on pallets with no cover. I dont really see a change in how I process my wood, I cut when I can, buck and split when I can and stack when I get around to it, but If I can stay a couple years ahead, I dont see a problem with leaving the wood in piles for a while, it just wont dry as fast as the stacked wood does.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

Kept the forklift tubes for now. Presently I'm side tracked cleaning it up. Pulled the rack, etc. I like to tooth brush the corners and crevices, rack tube once a year and get some wax on it to keep rust at bay. Anybody know how to ballast tires if need be? I know it is hard on rims but tipping over isn't good either.

I'm going to love having a hitch on the proper end, and hand push it up to the conveyor. Still need a couple things, a 2" coupler, a hole drilled and tapped, some primer and paint, and of course, (off) road tested to see how it tracks behind the quad when turning. Didn't get that right on one project. The axle has a pivot for uneven ground when splitting, so it doesn't rock like a four legged chair or table sometimes can.

This could be a simple factory bolt-on option. Remove leg, move leg with wheels to wedge end, bolt-on steer axle. Grin... Hitch it up and split wood in humungous pile, drive it away having never unhitched it.. Grin some more......

Edit: I'll be using the SS with the conveyor. I'll unhitch it to push it in place, pull the clevis pin connecting the tongue so I don't trip over it. I wanted to chain the tongue in a vertical position but the fork tubes are in the way (and the rack too), leaving it angled and about chin height.