Firewood redux

All this exercise is starting to get me into half-decent shape. Here's a shot of what was left a week ago. I have since reduced this amount of unsplit wood by half. You might recall from a previous post that this whole area was full of logs. I deliberately didn't do them all because I wanted to give visitors a chance to try their hand at splitting some firewood. You can click any of the pictures to get the full size version.

Y'see, last Saturday an organization called the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association held its annual Green Buildings Open House, and our place was one of two that participated. We had several people drop by to see the radiant heating system, the passive solar system, the woodburning system (I even put up a sign inviting them to give splitting a try. No one did.), and the chickens. Everybody liked the chickens, and some even had seconds of the quiche Val made from their eggs as a treat for the visitors.

I showed them the stack of wood I split, quipping that the wood had already warmed me once. This isn't a very good picture, but if you look closely you can see how deep the pile goes. It's about seven layers. The stack is about six feet high, and a good eight feet wide. This picture shows one split log in the cart, which is much closer to the camera than the woodpile.

Of course, this wood was not all nice easy-to-split straight-grained oak. The pieces have knots galore. Knots, are caused by branches, which usually grow clear to the center of the log. The grain bends around the branch, and a saddle shape across the top of the branch that is impossible to split without a hydraulic splitter. I bent one of my wedges pretty badly, and broke another trying to drive steel through a knot. It's good exercise, but not very productive.

When I finish, I'll get out the chainsaw and reduce them to stove size. Here's the pile of knots so far.

If you do it just right, you can split a knot through the middle, but you can't split it sideways. You can see two pieces split down the middle on top of the pile.

The storm last week knocked down some trees and branches at the Iron Hill Museum down the road, and they asked me to clean it all up. I'll do that this Saturday. After all, I could use the exercise.