Hey Guys I just can’t take wood working in the heat anymore.
Have to save it until Fall cool down.
My first attempt at a hillside wood carrying box expansion. This load a Max load test:
Tree in the background shows the true plumb.
Made it to the truck having to righthand stack shift for a short side hill travel section:
Another 50-70 toter-cart loads to go.
Life is good if you don’t weaken.
S.U.
And I do limbs cut down to finger sized:
Up, moving, and working-for-a-purpose is the key to a longer better life.
Any wondering . . . outdoors work go for the one step up bigger tracked toter.
Mine only has three track ground support wheels. It was made narrow with a better pivoting track contact for inside buildings and tight around house garden and construction spaces. Traveling across rough ground she sure does pitch and buck.
Go instead for an outdoors/rough ground capable; go with, a wider, longer, four track support wheels system like Daves-in-Oz’s Honda.
Oh well. Just have to make more trips.
S.U.
That’s a big Amen. The older you get, the harder you have to push yourself or else that recliner will quickly eat you and spit out a helpless blob. Since I’m past the average expected life span for the US I think I can speak with some authority. It helps if you try and find something to eat other than the supermarket crap as well.
Well I finally got the Wife’s seal of approval for now getting some fire wood in. And beginning to clear her back deck sightline.
Pallet wall crib stacking is something I tried out successfully cleaning up others mixed bag harvest piles. The limb pile will come out over the top of this first row of stack rounds. First-in; to be next late Springs last-burnt, in late April, May and early June.
All part of my 30 years moving what was once wasted debris piles heats insides to be useable space heating.
Dont mess with Pilates. My daughter asked me along once, the days after it hurts at places I didnt know there were muscles 
. And a friend of mine actually pays for lessons:joy:. Even a bigger joke. Who would have guessed that when we where 16.
Respect Mr Steve, keep it moving. Especially the truck lifting. Perfect place for storing but you have to get up and down everytime.
I look around in our area, and see burn piles growing. Sometimes I see the smoke columns, and wonder how many weeks of heat they represent. But I do understand that it takes a lot of time and effort to get the limbs like Steve shows, into a wood pile, and then into the stove or gasifier. We’re working on coppiced willow as a continuous on-site source of fuel, which means we’re also looking for efficient ways to process the limbs 3 inches/75 mm and smaller. All suggestions welcome. We appreciate the energy density of cord wood, and the relative ease of dealing with fuel using chainsaws and splitters, but in the back of my mind is the possibility that the wonder of dino fuel may someday be out of reach.
Copppicing (spelling?) is a foreign concept for us, but seems more common on the other side of the Atlantic. Now that I’m beginning to understand the idea, I’m seeing coppiced trees in lots of places. Beavers do it along the rivers and ditches. I cut down some weed cherry trees and maples, leaving a foot/half meter or so in the ground to go back later and pull the roots. We’ve got six feet of new growth since spring on some of these little stumps. So the question now is how best to do this on purpose, and put the results to work heating and gassing. Oh, and how to pull those stumps that really are in the wrong places. If I don’t forget. Again 
Well you ask . . . you will receive KentP.
Open up the top tool bar Stacked Paper tool for categories.
Then open up the line “Categories (17 more)”
Scroll down the left hand side listing to “Wood Chunkers”.
Many types and builds there.
For the first to look at open up “JO’s Rebak Chunker”
His; and others of this type are powered self feeding snippers to make quick dry-able; storable; hand-able (use an ensilage fork) chunks of the size you ask for.
I am months dried down limbs chain cutting. These are hard, hard, tough. So hard, I can see occasional sparks off of the chain. I have to hand file stroke dress the chain for every cart load. This years three tree harvest will use-up, wear-out one whole chain and two files.
Danger; dangerous for me for woodland fire hazard doing this, at this time of the year. Not pictured is the water hose down from the house. The shovel, the Polasky tool, and the rake. And I only work it when I will be around for the following 12 hours.
Snip chunking; drum shear chunking and spiral shear chunking; you only want to do on sap filled green woods.
Dried hardened wood and guys tweak-bend, break up, and destroy their equipments.
And to get clean fuels chunks you have to pre-de-twig, strip the growth shoots.
They trade back and forth favorite hand tools for this.
Read on to what others have done.
Steve unruh
Skip to 3:05 to see how an ensilage fork is used. Why it is superior for loose stuff versus a shovel.
New short handle versions available. Long handled; you pretty much have to make up yourself.
S.U.
Well . . . bound to happen
No damage. Except to my pride.
Close to the box van. So hand carry the half-rounds pieces. Tipped her back over.
I was stack overloading trying to beat an expected midnight rain storm.
Tarped the left out. And called it a day.
S.U.
If you don’t flip a machine once in a while, are ya really tryin? 
I, for one, appreciate seeing the undercarriage. Wish it showed how the engine is connected to that differential.
TomH. It is a belt drive from the horizontal shaft engine to the upper transmission horizontal input shaft.
Uses a loose running belt drive tensioned by a pivoting arm smooth faced idler/tensioner pulley.
In the first on-it’s-side picture on the end of engine is a large rounded cover with the two rows of warning stickers that covers the engine shaft drive pulley.
In the second undersides picture; is the lower grey metal belt cover showing between the upper track and the trans/differential in the ~10-11 o’clock position. Off of the lefthand end of that cover is an open appearing dark space. That is actually the drive belt.
The shift rod shown in that picture out of the 9 o’clock postion on the transmission only rotates. Does not also go in and out. Internally fork shifting the straight cut gears between the upper and lower internal transmission shafts.
The upper gated black shifting plate is an improvement added on to prevent knee or foot bumping; or engine vibration shifting out of the selected gear.
Slack belt driving systems should not be left unengaged running for extended times. The drive pulley will wear divot the drive belt. Not this one, but some loose drive belt systems are designed to run slipping the belt for variable speed.
Their special (expensive) bonded wrapped belts being sacrificed for variable drive speed.
Honda and other walk behind mowers.
Hope this helps.
Steve Unruh
Well; time to use up some of the wood supply I’ve been putting in:
Ha! Ha! Here with our many, many wood eating bugs; and the bugs (wasps and spiders) that thrive eating the wood eating bugs, it is not wise here to overstock on the stored wood.
Use it up; replenish it annually.
Regards
Steve Unruh
What a coincidence, Steve. First lightup today 
I’ve been feeding the radiators luke warm solar heat for a week or two, but it’s no longer enough. Seven months of wood burning ahead 
Here trying the new boiler. Better have the pipe connected to a generator. Thick yellow smoke. I dont dare to light it, rocked effect.
No patience, it can eat chips. Well eat it then without heating up. Today was a better run. New tool new tricks.
It begins. Daily wood splitting for heating:
Maybe three more cart loads out of the tarp’ed off limbs piles I can get to, when these storm fronts pass through. And I buy a new chain for the small saw.
I’ve only been able to live-cut, then burn in any way effective, Red Alder here.
Hoping now Weyerhaeuser now cuts their alder patch next property over beside us. I can then firewood cut tops; butts and culls; harvesting up to four half-cords of their post commercial harvest with our bought access permit.
Steve Unruh
It sure takes some extra planning with firewood, living in the wet wet pacific northwest.
We lith the first fire for the season in the hearth last night for heating purposes, winter is creeping up on us and it is getting chilly. Soon time for the boiler to deliver the heat, had a few frostnights two weeks ago.
I haven’t heard about purchasing an access permit before, is it bought from the landowner or the harvesting company?
To my knowledge this does not exist here but most people I know that use firewood has their own land to harvest from, as a firewood gatherer you can have an agreement with a landowner to get firewood but it usually does not end up on a piece of paper. One friend of mine harvests all his primary heating firewood this way.
Weyerhaeuser is a huge lumber company, and they own the property. It is a combination of permission and liability waiver typically. They don’t want to get sued if you hurt yourself. It is pretty common in North America. It is done on state property as well. Usually the main problem is you have to stay on the logging road which is a 2-track, so you have to haul it back to the truck. Maybe Steve’s cart is allow which would make it really nice. Hauling wood 50-100m sucks when you want to get a truckfull. 
What SeanO says is all correct.
More details. Our western U.S. States when formed developed the idea that forest lands would be set aside and State managed to generate ongoing revenue to allow for a free public education for all kids grades 1 thru 12.
National Forest lands within our State have different management and for-firewood regulations.
These; and the big private forest lands do change their firewood for personal use regulations year to year.
None will allow harvesting in the good roads dry times due to wildfire hazards.
Nope. You get rainy season potholes, muds and ruts to struggle with.
Very, very hard on vehicles.
JohanM. as difficult as it is getting fire wood dry outside of our hot dry season we are blesses with quick drying conifer trees.
A fellow can drop a live tree in May, work it up, outside dry it in July and August and be burning out of a dry covered woodshed in October.
No having to “season” it for two years as with most hardwoods.
In July and August you can hear the open air stack conifer splits popping as they dry and contract.
Only with quick drying conifer wood can I do, as I do:
And where, some may ask does all of those pounds and liters of wood moisture go??
Woodheat is correctly said to dry out too much the inside of the house. So the insistence to have a humidifier stove-top cast iron pot.
I forced the removal of these humidifier pots out of our houses back around 2007.
The moistures was always being air intake drawn into the stove; then up, and out the chimneys.
Clean fresh split wood final drying smells so much nicer than a humidifier steaming kettle pot. (They would add scented poperie leaves and bits to the water. Hence, my wife’s defiant scented candles.)
Regards
Steve Unruh
Thank you Sean and Steve for explaining how that works and giving some context too.
I have pretty much only used conifer wood the last 10 years and I usually cut and split coming seasons firewood in april depending on weather and snow melting, loosely chucked on those wagons I showed before to dry uncovered till midsummer or longer (until heavy rains come). Then move the wagons under a roof to continue the wind drying till fall and then dumping the loads in the woodshed for fall/winter use. So only one summer dried and that works fine.
These last couple of years after the woodshed extension got done I make a few cords extra each year to build up to two seasons stored in case it is needed for some reason.
