First slab wood load.

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Fred Wright

Addicted to ArboristSite
Joined
Feb 26, 2012
Messages
1,054
Reaction score
628
Location
Delaware, USA
Got out to the mill early this morning and rustled up my first load of slab wood. What a bonanza. $20.00 a pickup load, it's mostly oak with some soft maple and a bit of tulip poplar thrown in for good measure. Clean, recently cut and already firewood length. Pull it off the truck and stack. I see a hookaroon in my future. :)

Was expecting dirty junk, more toothpicks and bark than wood. This was a pleasant surprise. Not all of it is thin ~ most is about the size of a regular split. Grabbed a few big oak chunks and split 'em here at home. A few stragglers are too long and will have to be cut.

Am on vacation all week, will be making a few more trips to fill a woodpile extension. This is my start on the '17-'18 fuel stash. As this season's wood is used I'll replenish the stacks with sawmill wood.

100_0156.JPG 100_0157.JPG 100_0159.JPG
 
Got out to the mill early this morning and rustled up my first load of slab wood. What a bonanza. $20.00 a pickup load, it's mostly oak with some soft maple and a bit of tulip poplar thrown in for good measure. Clean, recently cut and already firewood length. Pull it off the truck and stack. I see a hookaroon in my future. :)

Was expecting dirty junk, more toothpicks and bark than wood. This was a pleasant surprise. Not all of it is thin ~ most is about the size of a regular split. Grabbed a few big oak chunks and split 'em here at home. A few stragglers are too long and will have to be cut.

Am on vacation all week, will be making a few more trips to fill a woodpile extension. This is my start on the '17-'18 fuel stash. As this season's wood is used I'll replenish the stacks with sawmill wood.

View attachment 463135 View attachment 463136 View attachment 463137

More than worth it! About as good as it gets for scrounging, even better than dropped off log length.
 
some years back..i was using the gas furnace,,when it was cheap... that changed the next year,,when I got my first 2 1/2 week gas bill!!!! had the wood burner,,but quit when gas was cheap!! went to amish sawmill, and got oak for nothing!! they had stacks of it!! loaded truck with one bundle,,and came home. ax and circular saw took em down to length...this stuff was stacked all summer,,and was DRY!! went back three days later,,with trailer, got bundle on truck again, and 4 bundles on the trailer....had to get one more load like that that winter. luckily, it was a mild winter, or there would have been many more trips!! have reinsulated the house, and new windows, so wood consumption dropped!!
 
Drove out to the well again this morning. They'd recently tipped a lot of red and white oak tailings. While I was picking through and loading, an Amish kid drove a loader with a skip full of just-cut oak tailings, dumped it next to where I was working.

What a bonanza... small stuff, rough timbers with some partial rounds. All cut to firewood length. Had to split a few but not much. This load is all oak. :)

100_0160.JPG 100_0161.JPG
 
A lot of People frown on slabs but to me they are foolish for doing so ! I love slab hardwood .. Slabs burn hot ,you can pack a firebox tight ,they season quick and they are practically giving the stuff away at sawmills
 
I would buy them precut, but not in bundles. I made the mistake of purchasing a couple bundles a few years back, and it wasn't worth the time. But at 20 dollars a truckload precut, I'd do that. That's about the going rate around here.
 
Yep there's a lot of meat on this stuff. A lot of bark and toothpicks there, too and a lot of lesser wood like soft maple and poplar. Takes some time to scrounge through it and pick the good stuff. Time I got, am on vacation this week. :)

Went back to the well for a 3rd load early this morning. By the looks of it one more load should wrap up this stack.

Got there and started across the lot as usual. The ground was pretty rutted and either frozen or covered with frost, or both. Went in a rut and the tires turned. Shifted to reverse and they turned again. Well hell. :eek: Guess I'll have to put it in 4WD today. That took care of that.

Took 2 hours and 3 stops altogether. Mined all the oak from a couple of recently tipped areas and still didn't have a full load. So I drove over to where a conveyor was dumping fresh tailings from the mill. Used the new hookaroon to pull some nice oak slabs down the mountain and finish the load.

This is gravy. For some years we dropped trees, limbed, bucked, loaded out rounds, split and stacked. Now, others do the bull work. I just drop a 20 in the office door mail slot, drive around to the piles and load up with prime oak that I pick out myself. Life is good. :)

100_0162.jpg 100_0163.jpg
 
One time I bought 10 full bundles (300$)delivered on a massive log truck . After they stacked them in my front yard it was enormous piled up a good 15 feet ..I must have got 8-9 solid cords of slabs out of it . It was a great value but way too much work . I spent most of my summer evenings running a saw and stacking , I busted my hump and missed out on doing fun stuff to wrap up that project . I don't believe I'd do that again unless I was laid off . Nowadays I get it already cut to length.
 
4th and final load for awhile. There's no more room on the stacks and I've still got the long stuff to cut and split yet.

Was chatting with the SheWolf after I got home... we sat on the tailgate and burned one before unloading. She said we're getting more wood and better wood for a lot less money this way. Over summer we'd been buying pickup loads of rounds from a local tree company guy. $75.00 per load, it was a mixed bag of soft maple, punky wood, knotty stuff no one else wanted. We're glad we don't have to rely on them again.

100_0164.JPG 100_0165.JPG
 
Looks good Fred. Those pieces are going to burn hot.... When we sold logs for rail road ties, we got a lot of slab wood in return. Some of that is the best wood you'll ever burn. I had an inside wood furnace and cracked the cast top because it got so hot.. My supplier now sells camp fire bundles on the side, they get those slab wood bundles, wrap them in several ratchet straps and cut the bundles with a 40 inch bar on a chain saw. If I could get the oak or maple, I'd burn them in my OWB during the warmer seasons.
 
That's a great source of wood. I'm wondering why the slabs are cut to firewood length? I figured the slabs would come off the mill and they would just throw the long slabs off to the side. Anyway, it's a bonus that they're already cut to length.
 
Those are nice looking slabs. My experience with the slab wood in this area is mostly thin pieces and mostly bark.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Sorting thru the pile and hand loading makes a big difference. Around here they load with a pay loader or backhoe, lots of small stuff that way. We used to have a company here that made shovel handles, you could buy the 2nds from them. Kiln dried hardwood that was about 8' long and in bundled with steel bands around it. Bundles were about 4' diameter and about all a pickup could haul for $5 cash. Great stuff for the shop stove, quick hot heat and burns to nothing. Used to put extra tie down straps on them to cut to length with a long bar. Ended up with wood that looked as clean as this. Wish they were still in business.
$_27.jpg
 
Amish mills around here couldn't get rid of the long piles of random length slabs. Now most of them cut them to stove length now, just drop a radial arm or buzz saw in the line and cut them up. Might even be less handling that the long stuff was.
One of these is floating down to NZ as I type. Looking forward to its arrival and learning what it can and can't do.
 
Back
Top