Cutting firewood and getting older....

[PA. Woodsman]

Or the really old joke about the young bull and the old bull high on a hill looking down at a field full of cows. The young bull says, "let's run down and **** one of those cows", and the old bull responds, "No, let's walk down slowly and ****em all".

:greenchainsaw:

 

[danrclem]

Like many here have said just do a small amount here and there (if you can) and you'll be suprised how much it adds up. Like an old-timer once told me:

"It's like eating an elephant..a little at a time. You can't do it all at once"!



:greenchainsaw:

I read about a guy that ate a bicycle. He filed the pieces down and ate them a little bit at a time.

 

[myzamboni]

since when do wood poachers pay attention to private land? or signs? same category as copper thieves stealing the copper wire and motors off of farmers center pivot irrigation systems.. they should be hung.

Copper wire for scrap is a little more fruitful criminal venture than trying to sell tree rounds

 

[fuzzybush]

New Bagging system

Could you post a picture or a description of the bag frame you made ? This bagging system looks really interesting , but the manufacutred frame costs $435.00 , which is more than I wanted to spend right now. Thanks.

This year I have switched over from stacking my firewood to putting it in bags right next to my splitter. These bags rest on a pallet. The pallet gets moved around by my tractor. I move it once to my outdoor drying shed and a year later it gets moved into the barn. Once in the barn I just use a pallet mover on the cement floor to get it close to my indoor wood boiler.

These bags are very popular in Europe. Here is a YouTube video that will give you a quick idea what I'm talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2WzrsFKuGk

With the bag system and my tractor doing the moving, I figure I have saved at least a couple of handling times. I bought 40 bags from a Japa dealer for about $8/bag and that will probably be my lifetime supply. I made my own bag frame out of wood that I assemble/disassemble on top of each pallet I use.

 

[clawmute]

Yes, it's harder as you get older but if you grit your teeth you can still do it. I celebrated my 64th birthday this summer. I have gout, arthritis, two fingers missing, high blood pressure, angina and rotator cuff damage/pain in both shoulders, but by God's grace I am still going. Recent hurricane induced floods felled this big Red Oak that I've started cutting up - about three cords. After it's done I have to plant this field. I've roofed our house this spring and summer after winds tore part of it off. 26 squares all by myself (lots of gritted teeth). My wife suffered a heart attack this spring to boot.

Hard? You bet, but I ain't dead yet. This is the Oak before I got started cutting. There was an ugly little cottonmouth on one of the limbs about 4ft. off the ground.

You can do it! Just stop to rest often, or take a nap then go again!

 

[danrclem]

Yes, it's harder as you get older but if you grit your teeth you can still do it. I celebrated my 64th birthday this summer. I have gout, arthritis, two fingers missing, high blood pressure, angina and rotator cuff damage/pain in both shoulders, but by God's grace I am still going. Recent hurricane induced floods felled this big Red Oak that I've started cutting up - about three cords. After it's done I have to plant this field. I've roofed our house this spring and summer after winds tore part of it off. 26 squares all by myself (lots of gritted teeth). My wife suffered a heart attack this spring to boot.

Hard? You bet, but I ain't dead yet. This is the Oak before I got started cutting. There was an ugly little cottonmouth on one of the limbs about 4ft. off the ground.

You can do it! Just stop to rest often, or take a nap then go again!

Congrats on still being able to do all of the hard work Claw. You've got 10 years on me and I hope I'm still kickin' as high as you are 10 years from now.

The only good thing about hurtin' is that you know you're still alive.

 

[clawmute]

Congrats on still being able to do all of the hard work Claw. You've got 10 years on me and I hope I'm still kickin' as high as you are 10 years from now.

The only good thing about hurtin' is that you know you're still alive.

You got that right my friend! The old joke about you would have taken better care of yourself if you'd known you were gonna live so long ain't a joke no more - its reality! Funny part is I never consider myself as being old. I see folks I refer to as old that are probably younger than me. Attitude counts for a lot.

 

[Wet1]

By looking at your picture in your avatar, I'd say you're in damn good shape for 64! I'd say your in about the same shape Arnold Schwarzenegger was in his mid 30's.

 

[clawmute]

By looking at your picture in your avatar, I'd say you're in damn good shape for 64! I'd say your in about the same shape Arnold Schwarzenegger was in his mid 30's.

My wife keeps telling me to get my hair cut but I say it's a sign of my virility!

This is my real, untouched photo

 

[dolmen]

After the wettest summer in over a hundred years, I finally got all my firewood in the woodshed today, and its in surprisingly good condition

But I will be making big changes for next year, there is no way I'm going to be handling it quite so often... cutting, splitting, stacking, unstacking, putting into woodshed and then burning.

I've read somewhere about the 1000litre IBC cubes, and I believe this is the path I'll head down. I can see the cubes with the tank removed leaving a nice strong and airy cage to put the firewood in and place the top only of the plastic tank back on top as a roof. This gets me down to cutting, splitting, putting cubes in the woodshed, and then burning. This method cuts out two of the very labour intensive steps and makes life easier as I grow older.

Just need a something with forks to lift them now

Cheers

 

[clawmute]

I've got plenty of firewood but the recent heavy rains from the hurricane that swept up over Arkansas after it landed in Louisiana, felled a lot of trees. So I'm still cutting to take advantage of the wood.

The river fork we live on rose up about 16ft or so and nearly took everything with it, including my tower type deer stand.

 

[chuckp]

words of wisdom

You can do it! Just stop to rest often, or take a nap then go again

thanks, clawmute

 

[air19]

Could you post a picture or a description of the bag frame you made ? This bagging system looks really interesting , but the manufacutred frame costs $435.00 , which is more than I wanted to spend right now. Thanks.

Here are a couple pictures of my wood frame that holds the bags over a pallet. My four-sided frame consists of two sections. The first picture shows one section folded up. The second picture shows one section folded out, standing nicely by itself. Just a couple of hinges between the two sides. The last picture shows the two sections standing together to make the four sided frame.

I have bolts that allow me to tie both sections very tightly together, but I never use them. Each section stands strongly enough by itself. On the top of each section I have a couple of screws that I pin the top of the bag to. Takes less than a minute to setup and take down.

 

[Sawmill]

What size bags do you have and where did you get them from? Thanks

 

[air19]

Refer to my previous posts #17 and #29 of this thread for my source.

The bags fit on a standard 40 inch by 48 inch pallet and you can fill them with wood to 36 inches easily.

 

[Sawmill]

This is something that I am going to check out. Do you just keep the wood leveled off in them when it comes off the conveyer or do you stack it in them?

 

[air19]

I don't have a conveyor. That would be nice. From my splitter I hand stack into the bags. I figure that I am saving two major handling operations so it's OK to spend more time up front to get the bag packed as tightly and solidly as possible.

My storage shed is a tight fit for the pallets so it's important that the bags aren't overflowing off the pallets. I also stack my bags/pallets two high so they need to be rock solid.

I'm sure it takes me twice as long to fill the bag as the video shows with the conveyor just dropping the sticks in, but I'm working by myself and bag filling time is sort of a break for me compared to loading big rounds onto the splitter and keeping up with it.

I think your storage options will dictate how you handle the bag packing operation. In the video that operator is obviously running a large operation and just storing the bags/pallets outside so speed is the driver. I'm at the other extreme where storage space is the driver.

The bags are interesting, but I have also at times thought about just building up wooden sides to pallets or even looking at other storage options to hold the wood in place. My main criteria is that I can pack it once at the end of the splitting operation, store it tightly, and finally be able to lift it with my tractor.

 

[ken45]

The bags and pallet frames look interesting.

Has anyone ever nailed field fence around a pallet to form a container? I wonder how that would work.

Ken

 

[dsm382]

wow that's alot to read.
I, just joined last night.
a few pages back someone mentioned they purchased a new tractor to help with the wood hauling/cutting.

I borrowed a buddies year old BX24 last weekend to dig some stumps.
We are purchasing a new tractor in the spring, but he took it back before I could hook a chain to the Hoe and test it on picking up some LOGS….
Just how strong is the loader and hoe?
I trailer home 18” to 40” logs and have to cut on trailer (metal) and want a loader or hoe strong enough to pick up, even a little to cut pieces off.
What’s your thoughts?
i know there has to be more threads on this question, so i will keep looking but a few points, will be appreciated.
Thanks.
dave

 

[eric shaw]

Anybody want to take a guess how many chords of wood I have here. It was almost full 20 foot truck dump.