DiY: Splitting Logs, and Selling Firewood

Where I live, buying firewood has become quite expensive. A full cord of cured firewood (ready to burn) costs on average $325 for hard wood. On top of that having gone up $125, there are a a lot of swindlers out there.

You see, a full cord should be 4 foot wide by 8 foot long, stacked 4 foot high. I've seen some people selling a cord for $175, but when you ask, or dig around a bit, you'll find out it's the price of a face cord which is a 3rd of the volume of a full cord. They'll also sell half cords, and claim they have a special bucket attached to a tractor that measures out an exact cord. We bought such a cord once, and the pile looked a bit small, but I doubted myself because it was on a hill, and in the snow. I ended upqying the guy his $215, and it took be a couple months to get around to stacking it... turned out to be just about half a cord if that!!!

I was pissed, but now it's just too expensive, and I have a forest full of trees! Luckily, I purchased a homemade wood splitter from someone a couple years ago, and so far I'm going after the trees that have fallen naturally.

A chain saw makes for quick work, but be aware that this is a tool that is very dangerous, and many things can go wrong. If you're going to use a chainsaw please learn how to use it properly, don't get cocky, and try to always wear protective gear.

After cutting down a tree into approximately 16" logs, I loaded them into the tractor.

And on we went to the log splitter. Of course it started to rain, so I wanted to clean up my gear... I don't think the chainsaw should stay out in the rain, it can handle a lot, but not the downpour that was threatening the area!!!

Our little friend Zion loves to follow me everywhere, and it makes driving a tractor very stressful, I'm constantly trying to help him kick the habbit of biting the front tires while they roll... that's not fun at all, but I love him!!!

Here's all the wood I was able to split. It's about half of a face cord, I think, and had the wood splitter been working straight through the whole time, the whole thing from start to finish would have taken me 2 hours. Meaning taking out the tractor into the forest, cutting the logs, loading them, splitting them, stacking them up in their cubbies ready to sell, and put away the tractor and the chainsaw.

Only thing is, I don't take care of my small engines as well as I should, and the wood splitter started acting up on me after 6 logs or so. It stopped running and wouldn't start again. I thought it had over heated, so I had lunch to let it cool down, bought some carburetor cleaner because that's what is usually going bad first on things like that.

I managed to get it going again, by squirting the cleaner into the carburetor, but it kept stalling on me every couple of logs. I persisted and finished what I had. It was enough to fill our self-serv firewood kiosk, and that's all I needed for now. Our vping guests had plenty for the weekend, and we had a wedding to get ready for!!!

At least now I know we don't need to buy wood anymore. Screw you swindlers!!!