Split and stacked more wood last week. The wood was felled 10-36 months ago and the logs were stacked. Still needs more drying. Most of what I split was sugar maple, where I had to remove an old failing tree that was about 36" DBH before it could fall onto my shop. The rest was free wood 2 friends gave me from a logging job they had done, ends and pieces from 3 years ago. I still need to clean up a real bad cherry tree I had to drop back when I took that maple down. Some will be strictly firewood, but I might get a couple of logs up at least 16+ feet that I can saw into lumber and sell. On that one it was about 32" DBH and it had a big hollow area in the lower 12'. It was an adventure to drop it. It had a slight lean and with the condition of the trunk I was not going to try to fall it any other direction. The trunk was like a big letter C with the open side about 20" wide facing at right angles to the direction of fall. With only about 6-7" thickness to work with I only cut the notch about 1-1.5" deep. Then I used my small excavator to put pressure on the tree about 11-12' up. I then did a plunge cut to define the hinge and then cut back towards to back of the cut. As I got near the back side I put slightly more pressure on with the excavator, then I finished the cut. Talk about a barber chair! The tree split up about 8-9' and the back side flipped up so it stood resting on the top of the barber chair. On the excavator it's a good thing I had the blade down and on the end away from the tree because the trunk lifted the excavator about 3' off the ground on the tracks facing the tree and it was resting on the tree trunk 8-9' up buy the bucket and on the blade on the other end with the tracks fully off the ground (the low end was maybe 10" up). Without getting on the machine in case I had to run, I slowly raised the bucket to lower that end of the excavator. As I did, the trunk started to move towards the excavator. Then I very slowly moved the excavator back and lifted the bucket more. After about moving 4' I was able to get the bucket off the trunk. I then got on the excavator, drove around to the side and pushed the trunk off the barber chair. It landed, no people or equipment were hurt. That is where that tree still sets. Part of the top was cut to open a woods roadway that leads to a bunch of the tapped trees to the north.
I won't split it all, but I still have 2 stacks of logs that are about 12-14' high and range from 10-18' long, plus the Cherry and the rest of the sugar maple. All I hauled out of the sugar maple so far is the butt log where most of the rot was, the next log was bucked off at 11' or so and it's still a little punky there, but looked solid where that log was cut off. The rest is not likely to make any lumber, way too many limbs. But based on what I processed so far, it makes very good looking firewood.
Dave Klish, I recently ordered a 2x6 wood fired evaporator from A&A Sheet Metal which I will be converting to oil fired
Now have solar, 2x6 finish pan, 5 bank 7x7 filter press, large water jacketed bottler, and tankless water heater.
Recently bought another Gingerich RO, this one was a 125, but a second membrane was added thus is a 250, like I had.
After running a 2x3, a 2x6, 3x8 tapping from 79 taps up to 1320 all woodfired, now I'm going to a 2x6 oil fired and a 200-425 taps.