Firewood production w/o splitter

[eudaimonea]

Hi there, the purpose of this thread is to poll people about how much to pay your friends when they help you split wood


Been getting a lot of free firewood, about 25-30 cords in 2013 (scrounging hard) and this year we have an "in" with a caretaker. 3 poker buddies want to help split wood with maul. Normally, i would just think they were humoring me, but one of them was my workout buddy, etc. At least one will probably show up. BUT HOW MUCH SHOULD I PAY THEM? I have no idea, and to make a long story short i just want to treat them right.

My problem is this: how do i pay them? I dont suspect that 2 of them really swing a maul well, i dont expect anyone will work more than two hours of hard spitting, and i could really use a wood buddy.

Bottom line is ill have some help splitting and dont have any idea how to pay them. I think the only fair way is to buy i splitter, and i dont want to buy a splitter

 

[Marshy]

25-30 cords is a lot of wood. Are you sure you dont mean face cords? A face cord is stacked 4' tall and 8' long by whatever length (16" typically). There a 3 face cords in a cord (when cut 16" long). 25-30 cord a year with a maul would be a full time job for 2 people, let alone one person.

Pay them in beer. I dont see this working long term lol.

Let me put it this way. I can buy firewood rounds cut to length that need to be split for $40 a face cord. I can buy green firewood that is cut an split for $55 a face cord. Therefore I would be paing $15 per face cord of wood for splitting... You could offer him $10-15 per face cord for splitting assuming thats all he was doing (no saw running, stacking etc). I think that would be fair money per hour when it boils down to it because I could probably split 1.5 face cords per hour if its not knotty crap or Elm. That $15 per hour if hes a good aim.

 

[eudaimonea]

I think you are right: it just wont work. Theyll be breaking handles, calling it quits, just wont make sense.

But i think flat rate is the way to go,as you mentioned. Probably just get a cord ready, and work with them side-by -side until its done, for a agreed upon price..."ill pay you each $25 to help me split this cord" or something like that, that way they can bust ass if they want, and i can pick up the slack if needed. If i get anyone to stick with it ,ill be happy to have a wood buddy

I should of course say that not all the wood i sold was split, some was limb wood. and there was a pickup load of cherry i had that i needed to borrow a splitter for. I didnt exactly sell it by the cord, so that makes it hard to gauge. I will say i sold 28-30 pickup loads after january that year, 4 measured cords, and 3+ neatly stacked cords for the house and a heck of a lot of "chunks" i made out really knarly knots ("split" them with the chainsaw!)

but i would agree most people dont know how much firewood was in a cord. More than one person tried to convince me i had over a half cord of wood when i heaped it in my 8ft bed, which is (of course) ridiculous.

 

[Brush Ape Everlasting]

We don't have splitters where I come from. We use primitive tools for gathering our heating wood.

 

[Marshy]

Ape cant start fire.

 

[eudaimonea]

It seems as though a banned member has created a new profile.

 

[Marshy]

We will never know so dont try and figure it out. People like to play games.

 

[lknchoppers]

$35 to split a full cord and you can still make money. Maybe $10 or $15 for a face cord. Splitting large amounts of wood by hand for a firewood business is not practical for most unless you just sell a couple cord.