I wouldn’t mind picking up the “waste” this stump grinder leaves behind. Just tell him to take a break just before he hits dirt so you can clean up a little!
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Hey Billy B,
I think I have personal experience with that drill. The last distinct visit and filling I think he used the same drill on me .
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I am thinking of borrowing this machine next weekend so I can cut enough wood for the rest of my life!
Last year I went to an Amish saw mill that made hardwood flooring and was able to buy 55 gal drums of kiln dried scrap for $5 a drum and each drum weighed 150#. It was worth the 20 mile drive for when my gasifer is done. But alas my hopes were dashed when this winter I drove by and found it to be no more. So today on my way home from working on the mixing air cleaner and starting blowers I thought I would stop in at a Amish saw mill that is 4 miles from my house. Low and behold they have a dry kiln and produce hardwood flooring too. I told him I was looking for scrap pieces of which he showed me (2) 55 barrels full and said it was free for the taking. So I took one barrel and put it in 2 of my 30 gal drums. If I leave my drums there he will fill them. I told him what I was up to and he warned me it was pine. I said thank you, and he insisted in seeing the truck even though its not functional yet. I’ll take the free wood.
Welcome to the gravy train Wes. Gotta love these places, they trim their ends to improve their quality, and we reap the “quality” benefits too. Win, Win!
Good score Wes …
The wife and I bagged about 40 sacks yesterday. The pics below show what should be dry by the end of the week .
Would hate to buy the equivalent in gasoline !
BBB
Is that regular or ethyl fuel…lol. By the way…do you notice one kind of wood performs better than the other. I have a lot of cottonwood and oak. I would like to use the cottonwood because I have about two acres of trees about 4 to 10 inch diameter that are as thick as can be an 30 to 40 feet tall, that is in a flood area by the creek where I haul dirt, and need cleared out anyway.
Gary
There’s an excellent Firewood comparison table available online at Sweeps;
https://chimneysweeponline.com/howood.htm
As you can see, Cottonwood is nearly at the bottom of the chart. It’ll burn fine but we call that gopher wood. Dump in a sack and go-fer another… If you need to clear it anyway, I’d say go ahead and burn it, but you’ll burn thru it FAST and will have to dump your char much more frequently than with other hardwoods as Cottonwood produces a high quantity of ash when burned.
For lots of reasons why you might not want to burn Cottonwood check out this forum;
As for the Oak, it burns great, however it is highly ACIDIC - See Carl Zinn’s thread. He burns primarily Oak and it’s pretty much destroyed his hopper. Oak is great fuel but after following Carl’s story it’s pretty clear it should be mixed with something else, preferably a softwood to mitigate the effects of it’s acidity.
Good Morning Gary,
Usually the best wood is whatever you have available.
I have used all the woods that grow here in Alabama but not sure if I have used cotton wood. I haven’t been able to tell a lot of difference in power with different species of wood. I have been using about 80% pine because I use saw mill scrap and it seems that is the ratio when sawing logs. I know when I am using oak I can drive further per hopper of wood and it seems the fire will hold longer between shut downs. When I have been running on oak and hickory a while I notice I have to use the grate shaker some to avoid the burn tube from plugging .
It seems the pine is easier to work with as far as chucking and seems like it flows through my gasifier better than the hard woods ( don’t have to shake the grate ) . With the pine there will be a lot of tar collected that will need to be drained off. That may or may not be a disadvantage because it has a lot of use around the farm.
I think if I have to chose between oak and pine from the observation over the last six months I will go with the pine . I think in the future if a oak strip / slab from the saw mill happens to be a good size for the chunker I will use it for gasificsation other wise it will go for home heat . If I have to prepare any wood to be chunked it will be pine.
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Anybody burn much cherry in there trucks? I just got a deal on scraps of cherry and birch from the mill, I’m hopeing to use as my fuel as soon as I get my gasifier done. I was told the cherry burns clean with almost no ash.
Henry,
Thanks for the link to the list of BTU content of various trees.
I am particularly gratified to learn that honey locust has such a high BTU/cord ratio. This loathsome tree is one of those plants in nature that I believe have to be a part of the “curse”:
“cursed is the ground for thy sake; … Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee”
Genesis 3:17-18
Does the mbtu rating on the wood charts, have a direct relation ship with the amount of gas that particular wood will emit when used in the gasification process? I assume it is actually the same thing actually rating the gas released during the burning process. I have a lot of hedge {osage orange} that I usually burn on the coldest winter days and save the oak and other native timber for the not so cold days. What I am wondering is will the hedge burn to hot in the gasifier, I know it will melt down a 55 gallon drum and burn your shop down when your son is told to clean the shop while your at work and he goes to see his girlfriend after stuffing it with hedge. {true story}. That was back when I was running my saw mill and building pallets. Lost all my pallet equipment , air nailers, pallet jigs and large swing saw used for cutting slats to length. And everything else in the shop. Wife called me at work saying the shop was on fire {before cell phones} When I got home the shop was already collapsed and the fire trucks was trying to put it out. I didn’t see my son, who was 16 at the time and my thoughts was he might have been in the shop trying to save some stuff and didn’t make it out. Just about then he came pulling in with his girlfriend in the car. I was so glad to see him I just really didn’t care so much all of a sudden about the devastation of loosing my shop and belongings. He was way more important to me than those material belongings. And life continued on…Sure wish I would of had insurance though…
Wayne would be much more qualified to answer this than I. Here’s my understanding and hopefully he can confirm this or correct me if I’m wrong.
It sounds like you’re asking will it go farther? I believe the answer is yes. Since we calculate wood in lbs/mile the heavier woods should travel more miles per hopper as they have greater density by volume.
Yes Henry .
I think you are correct. Using the dense wood you are able to put more pounds in the hopper. With the dense wood I haven’t noticed any increase in speed or performance but can travel further. Last year coming back from Argos I used a hopper of Ron Lemler’s kiln dried oak and it took the dakota pulling a small trailer 107 miles. I would expect a hopper of pine to take me about 60-80 miles .
BBB
Thanks guys that is kind of what I was hoping for. It sounds as if you have a lot of a particular amount wood and don’t mind refueling more often, that the performance is mostly the same just uses more fuel. I would guess the cotton wood is similar to pine as far as weight when dried, maybe a little lighter, but also probably not as acidic as oak. So kinda like burning the hedge in my wood stove on the colder days, I could use the oak on the longer trips {less refueling}, and use the lighter species ,cottonwood, and sycamore type woods on my daily commutes back and forth to work. I’m sure once one starts driving on wood it is a learning curve that is different to most depending on driving habits and types of wood one uses. Seems like the more you understand the operation of the unit the better of an operator you will become. I feel I have learned a lot from all the guys on this site. I feel confident that with what I have learned during the build process that things will go smoothly, {If I ever get done…lol}, hoping by the end of this weekend I can be getting close to putting some miles down.
Gary
Im envisioning a stationary setup kinda like this. 90% of my wood supply comes from one of our mills as the cut offs from our crossties being cut to maximum customer length. I get them by the truck load for free. The rest are board ends from the trimmer. Everything is hard maple or oak. So should be good fuel.
Wood Cutting & Splitting Attachment:
Attached is an image of my wood supply.
The controls I have covered. Does anyone have any recommendations for hydraulic pumps, or fabrication advice for the splitting wedge? The idea is to cut the blocking at short intervals then press them all against a 5 or 6 point star style wedge. I have no idea how much pressure it would take to split that. The more wedge points I have the more pressure I would imagine id need.
Hey Ian, welcome to the site.
I guess it would depend on how big of a stationary unit you want to build, what is it going to be used for for the size of blocks to make.
It’s hard to judge by the picture here how big those blocks are.
Hello Ian and welcome aboard .
When I first looked at the picture I thought the wood was 2x2 but then looked closer and realized they may be 4x4 . For most application 2x2x2 should be about the right size .
Thanks for the welcome.
They are 7x9 and range from 10-30" long. All of our crossties are for railroad use and must meet a certain margin of size. The most our mills cut are 16’ to fit through our trimmer. The most our contract customers can take are 12’ so we cut to size by the bundle. Im wanting a more efficient way to process gasifier fuel from the blocking. Im not against a good days work but id rather work smarter than harder producing fuel for the week than by chainsaw and axe. Which could range anywhere from 50 to 110 miles a day on a 318. Hopefully soon a swap for 360. The supply is not in question as when I travel its from mill to mill. Collecting a surplus I could even share and still be over stocked. Just processing efficiently is my goal.