Scrounging Firewood (and other stuff)

[Jeffkrib]

The biggest problem facing the world is population growth. For the last 40 years the population has been growing at an unrelenting rate of about 95 million per year or 1 billion every 12 years. When will it slow down, we are diluting the worlds resources and setting our grandchildren up for serious pain.

 

[muddstopper]

Pointing my nose back to firewood and forgetting about the worlds problems. Everything I have touched the last few days has turned to crap. Dang little ventrac keeps blowing hoses. Everytime I crank it up it ends up costing me $25 for a hose and a bunch of oil. Blowed 3 hoses in the last week. Head down to tractor to see if I can find the leak and find a flat tire. I just had the one on the other side repaired last week. Blowed up the tire for a temporary fix until next week. washed all the oil off the tractor before looking for oil leak. Couldnt make it leak a drop. topped it off with oil, worked all the levers dang thing wouldnt leak. well maybe it needs to be hot so I decide to hook tractor to my splitter that hasnt been cranked since May, 2016. Of course battery was dead. Grab the jump box and its dead too. So dragged the splitter back to the shop and hooked up battery charger. While standing there, I look under tractor and see a big puddle of oil, but machine wasnt even running. WTF, so lay down and started pulling apart the hoses. found the leak, but cant get a new hose until Monday. Got to looking at a hyd winch I had traded up a while back. Light bulb goes off in head. Put it on a receiver hitch and mount on the back of the Ventrac. Would be a simple and quick project and the hydraulic connections are already in place. Now this is a 8000lb winch, and my little ventrac probably dont weigh 1200 lbs. Easy to see anything really heavy is just going to pull the tractor and not what the cable is hooked to. Who cares, should work for firewood skidding. Also my brothers Massey has a extra valve on the back and he has a receiver for the 3 point so if I have anything serious to pull, just pull the pin and swap tractors. Only big problem is this is a boom crane winch, so it wont free spool to drag the rope. This will make for slow hookups, but who ever said firewooding has to be fast. Milk goes sour, make butter.

 

[Jeffkrib]

Geez mudstopper, I thought I was being negative with the worlds problems. Hope it all works out for you.

 

[Cowboy254]

Perfect sense, thanks. Cowboy would say it stands to reason.

That sounds like something I'd say.

Leaping lizards! Look what I started, I have a b!tch about our stupid gummint and there's four pages of back and forth. Me, I just want to fire up my saws and the gummint to just sod off and leave me alone. Anyway ...

Mt Cowboy is shrinking now, I've moved 15 cubes over to the shed and stacked outside. Dry stuff straight into the shed, green stuff outside, all de-barked. My guess is that there's at least another 20 cubes or more still to go. Also did a bit of wattle clean-up today with the remainder of what fell over recently turned into fire pit wood. It's kinda green but with the sun getting a bit higher now and the wood stacked on a north-facing slope it'll dry out pretty quickly.

 

[woodchip rookie]

For a second I wondered why you would stack wood on the north side of anything.

 

[Ranchers-son]

Plutonium-ion?

Philbert

RADIOACTIVE CHAINSAWS

 

[Circle B MN]

A chimney sweeps view. View attachment 601803 This is all that ever comes out of my chimney. It's only piece of mind that makes me do it every year. View attachment 601804 It's tough not to channel a little Rick James "He's a super sweep, super sweep. He's super sweeping oouut!" Lol ok too much coffee!View attachment 601805

I get the same out of mine. Just a handful or so of fine black dust in 20' of double wall pipe. Almost does not warrant the effort.

 

[LondonNeil]

I did exactly the same woodchip rookie

 

[muddstopper]

Good News!! after letting the battery charge overnite, wood splitter cranks. I guess that means I have ran out of excuses for getting my wood split. Now if the battery just holds a charge for more than a few hours.

 

[chucker]

Good News!! after letting the battery charge overnite, wood splitter cranks. I guess that means I have ran out of excuses for getting my wood split. Now if the battery just holds a charge for more than a few hours.

lol don't shut it off till you are done ! lol

 

[KiwiBro]

Good News!! after letting the battery charge overnite, wood splitter cranks. I guess that means I have ran out of excuses for getting my wood split. Now if the battery just holds a charge for more than a few hours.

Park it on a hill, just in case.

 

[muddstopper]

I got it hooked behind the tractor with the leaking hose. I'll fix the hose tomorrow and then see if I can bust those 40in dia whiteoak knots. Most of what I have scrounged this year doesnt need splitting, pecker poles I dragged from my brothers house. Couple of hrs and I will be done for the 2018 season. Then I am thinking about getting back to work on my processor, it hasnt been touched in over a year. Found a piece of 2in sq tubeing in the scrap pile, more than enough to make the hitch to mount that hyd winch with. I think I have some QC saved up and some odd ball hoses to hook it up with. I'll have to take a pic when I get it going, just to outdo Cantoo's "Steiner" logging.

 

[dancan]

On the way to the powerline cut I passed by my green charging station

It wasn't working too good , hardly any wind .
Since I knew this would be 20 some odd miles from home one way and was maple and spruce I called a friend that lived closer and gave him this scrounge .
When I got there ,,,

FFS , OAK !!!
Had I known , I'd have drug my trailer
But hey , I have a happy friend

 

[MustangMike]

There is a huge wind mill (private) up on a hill near me (Quaker Ridge). The blades have not turned in years! Guess they need maintenance, the guy must have lost a fortune on this thing. Just sits there like a big eye sore!

 

[dancan]

The ones here turn for money , Cantoo has a big windfarm in his view plane .

 

[woodchip rookie]

I knew I shoulda saved the first batch of 5 or 6 cans I just threw away. 100% cotton shirt as a wick, empty Husky feul can and diesel mixed with used engine oil. Its a little rich because of the wick being up too high but I'll have some new lanterns shortly.

 

[JustJeff]

Moved a load of silver maple over to the splitter tonight. Think I'll wait on some cooler days. 82 here today so this afternoon my daughter and I drove over to Lake Huron for a swim. As for the silver maple, a lot of guys scoff at it but I burned a fair bit of it last year and found it coals up really nice and the coals give off heat for a good while. I'll never turn down silver maple.

 

[Haywire]

Out thinning today, I stumbled upon this beauty! Had to be a foot and half from top to bottom.
I gave it a nice wide berth

 

[rarefish383]

Pointing my nose back to firewood and forgetting about the worlds problems. Everything I have touched the last few days has turned to crap. Dang little ventrac keeps blowing hoses. Everytime I crank it up it ends up costing me $25 for a hose and a bunch of oil. Blowed 3 hoses in the last week. Head down to tractor to see if I can find the leak and find a flat tire. I just had the one on the other side repaired last week. Blowed up the tire for a temporary fix until next week. washed all the oil off the tractor before looking for oil leak. Couldnt make it leak a drop. topped it off with oil, worked all the levers dang thing wouldnt leak. well maybe it needs to be hot so I decide to hook tractor to my splitter that hasnt been cranked since May, 2016. Of course battery was dead. Grab the jump box and its dead too. So dragged the splitter back to the shop and hooked up battery charger. While standing there, I look under tractor and see a big puddle of oil, but machine wasnt even running. WTF, so lay down and started pulling apart the hoses. found the leak, but cant get a new hose until Monday. Got to looking at a hyd winch I had traded up a while back. Light bulb goes off in head. Put it on a receiver hitch and mount on the back of the Ventrac. Would be a simple and quick project and the hydraulic connections are already in place. Now this is a 8000lb winch, and my little ventrac probably dont weigh 1200 lbs. Easy to see anything really heavy is just going to pull the tractor and not what the cable is hooked to. Who cares, should work for firewood skidding. Also my brothers Massey has a extra valve on the back and he has a receiver for the 3 point so if I have anything serious to pull, just pull the pin and swap tractors. Only big problem is this is a boom crane winch, so it wont free spool to drag the rope. This will make for slow hookups, but who ever said firewooding has to be fast. Milk goes sour, make butter.

Dang Mudd, the way things are going, I think you should pack up and head to Florida for a week or so vacation. You need the break, Joe.

 

[woodchip rookie]

View attachment 602106 Moved a load of silver maple over to the splitter tonight. Think I'll wait on some cooler days. 82 here today so this afternoon my daughter and I drove over to Lake Huron for a swim. As for the silver maple, a lot of guys scoff at it but I burned a fair bit of it last year and found it coals up really nice and the coals give off heat for a good while. I'll never turn down silver maple.

Lotsa good things about silver weeds. Light, dries fast, splits easy when dry, easy to carry in, lights easy, burns hot.
Only bad thing is it doesnt burn long, but depending on what region you're in thats not so bad sometimes. Most of the time during the day I could burn silver maple as a primary feul and use sugar maple over night then switch back to silver in the morning. But I have mostly ash, so I burn ash during the day, then switch to ash at night. Then switch back to ash. Then mix in some ash with the ash and burn more ash. Ash is my spirit tree.