The fun is just starting! an order for 9,000 bundles!

[Guswhit]

Well, I finally decided on taking some more parks on for campfire bundles. Haven't told the wife yet, going to wait until after the holidays! Have a long way to go to get to the minimum guarantee! Mostly oak and hickory. Anyone want to take a supersplit for a test run this winter, let me know when you want to come!

 

[kyle1!]

Where at in the great state of IA?

 

[Andyshine77]

Well a hundred bundles comes out to about a cord of wood, so 90 cord should do. Best of luck to you!!!

 

[dave_dj1]

I would be looking for a splitter that could do a lot more than one split at a time. I would build a 12 way knife edge wedge for starters. Do they request hardwood? Around here all you can get is softwood at the campgrounds.

 

[Dogsout]

Those look like pretty fresh splits you have lined up by the splitter. Assuming you are selling seasoned Oak and Hickory I would rather come over and look at your 90 cord pile of partial splits that you will whittle done with your Super Split.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

What will you be bundling with?

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

You'll be having nightmares of bundles! I did about 500 bundies this summer and that wasn't much fun.

 

[Andyshine77]

I've done a few thousand probably more, over about a 5 year span.. No not fun, but the money is OK if you don't mind the work and it will keep your upper body in shape.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

 

[Guswhit]

Where at in the great state of IA?

I live in Clinton county, but the parks are just across the river in Illinois ranging from the quad cities to Savanna.

 

[Guswhit]

Those look like pretty fresh splits you have lined up by the splitter. Assuming you are selling seasoned Oak and Hickory I would rather come over and look at your 90 cord pile of partial splits that you will whittle done with your Super Split.

Here in is the catch and the reason I have fallen into this niche. All of the wood for this must be harvested from a particular area within one of the parks and processed on site. No one else was interested in doing this, so basically I won by a default bid. All of the trees have been or will be taken down by the park employees. MY job will be to buck the wood and get it split at a staging area and the park people are taking care of bundling it. I have approximately half of it bucked laying through out the parks back areas and have been using my large hydraulic to quarter the larger pieces, or noodaling for transport to the staging area. Since it is bundled wood for firepit use it only needs to dry down to the 20-24% area and I haven't had any issues the last few years getting there by just splitting in the winter. If I was splitting for personal stove use, I would want much dryer. Of course splitting such small pieces and stacking in the full sun and air spot I have really helps get the wood dried down fast.
It was a rather unique year around here with all of the rain. The soil was so saturated and being that close to the river, trees tend to root out instead of down, and we had a tremendous wind storm in June that toppled over monster oak and hickory trees in the 30" plus range. Also, the ash borer has finally invaded the park so they are starting to remove them as well. Wood supply will not be the issue, I need the temp to drop under freezing for awhile so the ground will get hard enough to get back into the areas without getting swamped in.
I put in a bid to get them all bundled as well, but they weren't interested in that at this time. Not sure why. I think they could better use their time doing park stuff instead, but hey, that's the gov't for you.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

That's a lot of wood to move, let alone bundle. Once they start bundling, they may beg you to take that over as well. You do have an interesting situation.
I cut up thirty cords worth of rounds while waiting for the Posch to ship from overseas. I staged them in racks that I then brought the racks to the splitter when I got the Posch set up. Each row in the first picture is three racks deep, or one cord. So what you see is only fifteen cord or so.
These last two pictures were when it was staged two rows deep.

Edit: Now I'm set up like this but for much smaller dia. stuff than what your doing.

 

[Guswhit]

Well I can tell you for sure that I'm not wrapping it now. I would have come up with a different way of letting the splits come off the end so it would be easier for me. I'll try and sneak out of work and get some more picture today, boss is gone for a few days, so shouldn't be an issue.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

This worked well for stacking and seasoning. It was however somewhat dangerous because pulling splits from the pile created a cavern. Pieces would come shooting out the front when the load dropped. I used a pick-a-roon to dislodge jambs but mostly it was luck not getting hurt. Adding the side doors helped immensely, but not entirely.

 

[TeeMan]

What is your standard bundle...I assume 0.75 cu ft? If so that's almost 53 cords of firewood!

0.75 cu ft. * 9,000 = 6,750

6,750 / 128 cu ft. per cord = 52.7 cords

 

[Guswhit]

What is your standard bundle...I assume 0.75 cu ft? If so that's almost 53 cords of firewood!

0.75 cu ft. * 9,000 = 6,750

6,750 / 128 cu ft. per cord = 52.7 cords

I have to confess again, that I don't-they haven't wanted me to bundle. I would say from looking at the ones they make that they are real close to the 1 cu. ft. size, so I am shooting for the 90 cord #. At the risk of getting drawn and quartered I will explain my thinking to you. I have been averaging between 75-82 bundles from a thrown truck load of splits( full size chevy-8' box). So 110-130 truck loads hauled out to the staging area. My cutter says he could have it all cut and hauled in 4 weeks if the weather cooperates somewhat. Lots of if's, but I don't need to have any ready until May 1st so we should make it without having to kill ourselves. Basically 3 weeks of 40 plus hours of just splitting if everything goes well, which there will be hiccups. Before I got this nice area to utilize in the park I would cut, split and then deliver the load full of splits to the area the bundlers/sales took place. I then used that "time" calculation for the splitting portion to arrive at how many bundles I could produce per hour. With this amount known, I then have determined what my split pile looks like so I am relatively close to what I need to keep them supplied. Now I know that a lot of you probably think that the wood won't be seasoned enough, but you have to remember that August, September and October are the biggest sales months at the parks historically so there will be plenty of wood split small that will have ample drying time to get down to a M.C. of 20-25%. Haven't made it out of the office yet today for some wood pic's, damn real job!

 

[Guswhit]

I snapped a couple of pics of some we have down. This is just one spot to show what I'm dealing with. These trees are nice, too bad they went down!

 

[Andyshine77]

What is your standard bundle...I assume 0.75 cu ft? If so that's almost 53 cords of firewood!

0.75 cu ft. * 9,000 = 6,750

6,750 / 128 cu ft. per cord = 52.7 cords

That's quite a small bundle I always tried to to keep them around 1 cu ft, sometimes a little larger.

 

[Sandhill Crane]

Are you cutting rounds in place, quartering and hauling? If so, would a log arch work here? Cut at 13' 6" pick them off the ground to get them out using a quad. I hauled some similar blow downs years ago. Minimum impact as well. The arch came with a ratchet strap for the front of the log. Replaced it immediately with a strap come-a-long, and shortly after with the chain and slotted keeper welded to the top of the arch. It is not super fast but depending on the situation it is a possible option with minimal equipment.

 

[Guswhit]

Park boys want paths cut. They are giving us quite a bit of free reign. For the places they don't want us, I can reach in with the winch n the unimog and pull them to the paths.