On Jul 10, 7:52*am, RicodJour wrote:
On Jul 9, 4:50*pm, Harry K wrote:





On Jul 9, 7:47*am, arkland wrote:

On Fri, 08 Jul 2011 20:44:07 -0700, DD_BobK wrote:
Did you consider that maybe that tree had value as timber / lumber
rather than fire wood?

Not until now. I have other trees that need felling. How does one find
someone willing to buy a standing tree?

Forget those silly cone wedges, they don't work.

Thanks. The "advertisement" makes it look all so easy. But, that point is
very blunt. It barely dents the center of the 20-inch long oak log!

cut them down to 10" and get busy splitting.

That's half the current size! I didn't know 10 inches was the right size
for splitting. I'm sure the length makes a huge difference!

the smaller the piece of wood you add to a fire,
the closer you come to wood pellet behavior.

I'm not sure what 'pellet behavior' is, but, for a campfire, you kind of
just want it to burn for a while as you sit around it drinking a beer..

Dumping a huge log (20" long, 1/4 split?) on a fire will nearly kill it.

Hmmmmm... Not the campfires we make!

at least split ALL of the logs in half.

Makes sense. But that first split is also the hardest one!

If you wait until the wood dries you will be amazingly unhappy. As
others have said, green wood splits WAY easier than dry wood.

I'm surprised. Mainly because dried oak is cracked while wet oak is
seamless. But, it must be (for some reason) that wet wood is easier to
split than dried wood as someone would have said otherwise by now.

I could get a unit of 2x4's down into the 12% moisture content
range (from 30%+) in a couple weeks.

I wonder how we measure moisture content in percent at home?

Split dry or wet? *It depends on species. *I have never worked oak but
for B. Locust cut it green but split it dry. *It splits with wedge/
sledge (10 lb) green fairly well but willa lmost fall apart with a
maul when dry.

I agree with the "depens on the species", but your example is a horse
of a different color. *Locust was always split when wet. *It's hard
work, but it splits fairly readily along the grain. *The older trees
frequently drop limbs and split along the trunk.

Firewood charts list the splitabilithy as "easy". I would rate it
'moderate'. Splitting green 4-5 smacks with wedge/sledge will halve a
2' round then a splitting maul will reduce it to splits.

I am harvesting and stockpiling B. Locust, every stick I can lay my
hands on. The Locust Borer is killing it off around here. My stock
currentlyi is around 40 cords and that doesn't count the 6 I burned
last season. Most of it split by hand. Makes for good physical
excersize. My hydraulic splitter only comes out for the knotty/
crotchy stuff. I alos split fence posts out of it years ago - not a
hard job at all, time consuming though. 3 wedges, sledge, start on
one end and chase the crack down the length of the log.


Hazard of quoting wikipedia. That article is fairly accurate but does
have some things I don't agtree with and one major error. See below:



This from Wikipedia:

Uses
The wood is extremely hard, resistant to rot and durable, making it
prized for furniture, flooring, panelling, fence posts and small
watercraft.

Dunno about it as finished lumber. It checks extremely badly as it
dries and is very splintery. I have never seen any of it after
planing. Won't say it isn't done, but I hae never seen it.

As a young man, Abraham Lincoln spent much of his time
splitting rails and fence posts from black locust logs. Flavonoids in
the heartwood allow the wood to last over 100 years in soil.[6] In the
Netherlands and some other parts of Europe, black locust is one of the
most rot-resistant local trees, and projects have started to limit the
use of tropical wood by promoting this tree and creating plantations.
It is one of the heaviest and hardest woods in North America.

Black Locust is highly valued as firewood for wood-burning stoves; it
burns slowly, with little visible flame or smoke, and has a higher
heat content than any other species that grows widely in the Eastern
United States, comparable to the heat content of anthracite.


Wrong! It is highly valued as firewood because it is very dense.
Truth is that _ALL_ wood species have approximately the same heat
value pound for pound. A pound of balsa wood will produce
approximately the same BTUs as a lb of locust.

snip remainder of interesting article

Harry K