Firewood

[Bodidly]

I think there is a lot of misinformation about dry and drying wood on the Internet so I thought I would share with you our experiences of drying wood.

 Liz and me having been dealing with the farms overgrown hedges for the last six years. As a by product of this we have been making quite a bit of firewood. When we realised we would have more than us and my parents would need we started taking drying wood more seriously. The usual practise around here is fell the trees in the winter and leave the lengths leaning up against the hedge for the summer and then log into the trailer when you get orders. This may work in the east of the country, we tried this once but with our wet climate the wood starting to rot and was a long way from dry by the end of the summer. So now we stack the wood in open sided sheds for two years with air gaps between the rows. I think the sycamore and the ash will dry in one year but oak and beech need two.

I do not believe all the wood has to be split to dry well as in my experience as a furniture maker wood looses moisture through the end grain much faster than through the sides but you obviously need to split larger pieces to get good combustion.


These are some things I here said that I think can be misleading.

"Dry wood has cracks on the end" Not necessarily, when the wood starts to loose moisture the end grain shrinks before the middle causing cracks to form on the outer edge but when the middle has also dried these will tend to close up again.

"My moisture meter says it is dry" Again this does not prove the log has dried inside just that the outer edge were the probes are has. If you want to know how dry the wood is cut the log in half and test the middle, this can often prove very disappointing.

Last year I stacked some oak in the spring, during the lovely sunny weeks large cracks formed on the ends of the logs and the moisture meter read 23% on the outer edge but the middle was still at 65%

"the bark falls off dry wood" Not in my experience unless the wood has been left down for some time and started to rot. This my happen on other species though.

"Ash is the best wood to burn" Ash is very easy to dry but if you gave me some dry ash and some dry beech I would take the beech every time. When I say dry I mean 20%-22% moisture content. If you live in the east of the country you may get below this.

These are only our experiences and it will be interesting to hear yours.

Also this discussion on moisture content might prove interesting http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php/topic,4999.0.html

Beau

[stannn]

Beau
I'm pleased to hear your comment about wood drying through the end grain rather than the sides. This always seemed logical. I used to cut logs to about 500m length to just fit in the Clearview, for minimum sawing.
I never have enough wood to log and so I don't store it for in excess of a year as I would prefer. So I now cut to 300mm length approx to hasten drying. Like you I avoid splitting smaller diameters to spare my back. I do stack it carefully in multiple rows to head height in an open lean-to where it gets lots of sun and wind.
It's slow and painful to cut out blackthorn and hawthorn from overgrown hedges but it has to be done. By comparison, ash and sycamore are easy to process.
I like to use a Fatmax 20" 11 tpi panel saw (and rubber gloves to avoid saw rash) for thinner diameters where the chain saw is more trouble than it's worth. These saws last for ages.
Stan

[eabadger]

thanks for info, very useful. do you bring wood inside a few days prior to using? first time with wood power this year, we are using the wood salvaged from our old roof, oak we think, also had an oak tree fall in to garden, now split smaller working fine.

steve

[Bodidly]

Hi

Stan.   Your drying shed sounds perfect, the front row of logs in our sheds do dry in 1 year but the 6 rows behind that don't get direct sunlight need 2 years. I like the Fatmax saws in the workshop but it's Husqvarna power for everything else for me. I have built a saw horse that solves the problem with small diameter logs spinning if that's what you mean by "more trouble than it's worth" I will post pictures of it if the local steel fabricators don't wan't the design.

Steve.   I think it helps if the logs have warmed up before going on the fire but the amount of extra drying I think will be negligible unless you have a conservatory or a very warm shed.

One of our drying sheds


Splitting logs (this machine is frightening but supremely effective even with the most gnarly of logs)

[charlieb]

I agree with all your points except the first one Beau. In my experience (only 3-4 years, and never done any scientific tests) splitting the logs before drying helps a LOT. It may be due the the different surface properties of split wood compared to round (bark) but I find lighting a fire with rounds very difficult and keeping it lit harder than with splits.   

We've recently started selling logs - only  10-20 loads a year - based on similar principles to yours Beau.  I'm usually selling logs that have been dried in a big shed for at least two summers, occasionally just one summer. But I do make sure they get at least a season (ie winter to winter) drying after split.  I sometimes leave cut round lengths stacked in the open to dry if short of space or time to get them into the shed - I'd do this with beech/oak/ash but never sycamore or birch as they rot very quicly.      Previously we'd leave rounds to dry in the shed for a year or two, before splitting straigt into the log basket for our own use - I find splitting a year in advance helped massively though and we now only burn dried split stuff.      Just my experience.  I'm sure there are lots of ways that work.

We sell logs ready-to-burn, so split. So it's not actually any more effort to split early rather than late. (I wouldn't have time to split them directly into the pick-up at sale time. ).   

Will check out that fatmax saw. Cutting small lengths is, as pointed out, a pain in the arse, even with a good saw bench.  And I'm glad to see a splitter that looks even more dangerous than ours!  Ours is a three stroke jobbie, simple vertical ram.  Good and solid and get's through anything but they can ping off to the sides with surprising force, especially if they've had a chance to dry out (another reason I split as early as possible).

[Bodidly]

Hi Charlie

I totally agree that if a log needs splitting due to it's size do this as soon as possible. I admit I have not tested the drying time time of split logs to unsplit (of equal size) but I draw this conclusion from air dried planks that I use to make furniture. The excepted formula for drying planks is 1 year per inch (thickness) plus an extra year, this is for air drying, so a 4" log would take 5 years by those rules this is why I think most of the drying takes place through the end grain. I do like burning split logs but I think they burn well for two reasons.

1. If you have a large piece of wood that needs splitting there is a much larger proportion of heartwood to sapwood and I don't think sapwood burns very well. I say this about sapwood because recently I have been burning some very small logs (1"-2") diameter they are totally dry but leave a lot of a ash in the fire in comparison to the amount of heat they give off.

2. In splitting a log you tend create splinters which help the log catch quickly.

Both these are only theories and I would like to know exactly what is going on.

[Baz]

Under a microscope wood is mostly air and looks like a bunch of straws. However there are lots of holes in the sides of the tubes to allow sap to flow sideways between them. The number of holes probably varies a lot with species but does provide a substantial path for drying through the side. The bark is a different structure and probably slows the drying as it is by nature waterproof (hence bark canoes) and is normally removed soon for joinery timber.
The burning characteristics of wood will vary with position in tree and 'lifeiness'. The twigs are very alive and so contain much more diverse substances on top of the basic celullose of wood and many of these burn better hence the flamability of twigs over and above equivalent cut up heartwood sticks.
I think log size needs to correspond to the stove size and is best not above 1/3 of the grate. Some of the reported poor output from stoves from newcomers may be due to using too large a feedstock.
Nice stocked shed in above pictures. I'm planning another similar to that but will need fully boarded west side to stop the windblown rain and undecided about the north side. Winter will see a tarp across the south side too.

20% is the accepted norm in the UK but I wonder what it is in France and south of Spain with so much better weather.

[stannn]

As regards bringing wood indoors early, I am ultra cautious about leaving anything near the log burner that could start a fire whilst we are sleeping. So you will not find logs stacked up and warming by my Clearview, even though it looks so appealing in the brochures.
I use Fatmax saws for woodwork as well as firewood. They are so easy to use and I enjoy sawing. Sometimes there will be an offer online and I will buy 6 for say £6 each. I know that its wrong to use throw-away tools but sharp tools save a lot of wear and tear on your body. When these saws are blunt in the centre section, the ends are still quite sharp and good for cutting at ground level in the hedge where damage will definitely occur.
I heard a tale of one joiner who would use his saw until only he knew that it was just losing its edge. That saw would join a pile to be sold on to the unsuspecting public.
I use a Macculloch chainsaw, about 15 years old, but it does PMO when it doesn't start first or second pull. Usually, after say 10 unsuccessful pulls, I leave it for a few minutes and it seems to be more willing then. It has you wondering whether a new chainsaw would make life easier.
Beau, that tractor-mounted corkscrew is supposed to be the easy way for logs where the grain goes every which way but I don't like the idea of you having to react the torque with your body.

[clockmanFR]

Baz, Munch munch go the termites. Don't have any here yet but the termites are coming north.

Have you heard how much noise termites can make on a log pile?

[Bodidly]

Hi Stan

The screw type splitter is the Bees Knees on twisted logs but I have just bought a Fiskars axe and I think the easy stuff will be quicker with this and cheaper on fuel unless you include bread and cheese

If the log splitter starts to twist the log you have to let go because there is no stopping it with 55HP behind it.

Let me know if you see a Fatmax saw for £6, I spent £8 getting my old Disston resharpened!

[wesnet]

Baz
Most bark is not waterproof, Birch is, which is why you can make canoes out of it and unless you score the bark tends to rot before it dries.
Logs do dry quicker when split even in lengths of 2metres which is not what you would expect to happen if the reasons given for using cleaved wood for shingles and split rail fencing were correct.

It is usually held that if you cleave a piece of timber it will split along the line of cells leaving the cell walls intact and as cells held water in the living tree will present a waterproof surface. This is why when making split oak or chestnut shingles any cutting required to make the shingle lay flat is always done on the underside, with split rail fencing the bark should always be on the underside or the rail will rot in a few years.

Interestingly we have, in our wood, a number of oak buts, from trees that were blow over in the 1987 storm but were not taken out as the market crashed, these are still green enough to be used and are going for shingle making whereas a number of oaks that died and are still standing are dry enough to burn when they fall over.

John

[Bodidly]

I have been reading through my old books on drying wood (for furniture). Drying time for planks is a year per inch but if cut into smaller sections this can be sped up, backing others views that splitting will indeed help drying. Apparently softwood dries much quicker than hardwood.

Here is a paragraph from one of the books which I thought was interesting.

 "the water in a tree is contained in the actual fibres which are saturated (bound moisture), and in open pores or vessels which are filled with a mixture of water and water vapour. Immediately the tree is felled  the vessels will start to dry. The process is very slow in whole logs , but can be speeded up by converting the log into plank form, when the water-level will fall steadily until a fibre saturation point is reached (usually about 30% moisture content) in which the vessels are empty but the fibres remain saturated. From then on the water loss will be at slower rate until the board has reached an equilibrium with the surrounding atmosphere."

[clivejo]

Splitting logs (this machine is frightening but supremely effective even with the most gnarly of logs)

Oh I have one of those, haven't used it since my dad lost part of his finger using it!

[Bodidly]

I have just taken some pictures of drying logs to emphasise my point about cracks in wood not being evidence that the wood is dry.

These were cut and stacked this winter.


These have been drying for 2 years.


Beau

[stannn]

Beau
Here is my Fatmax supplier though they only have 18" & 22" on special offer now. They are called Jetcut, the old name. The postage is £5.95 whether you buy 1 or 6.
Stan
http://www.tooled-up.com/Product.asp?PID=169199&Referrer=froogle