Thanks Don; The thumb part, I had forgotten and the internet didn’t say anything about it. I think that will make my knots much faster. My uncle had a flat rack truck so when we combined, everything got bagged. I held the bag under the spout until it was just about full then my uncle would take it while I got another bag. When the one was full he drug it up to the front of the rack and tied a piece of twine around the mouth. The miller’s knot is easy to untie when the time comes. No wonder I forgot how to tie a bag, that was 65 years ago. I was 8 or 9 and I drove the truck around to the combine when the hopper got full.
While fueling up this morning I took this short video.
If there are two of us one can hold the bags while the other shovels but the wife will usually have plenty bagged up ahead.
Each bag will be 13-15 pounds.
HWWT
Thanks Wayne
Great idea, I’m going to use it for all my sawdust that my mill produces.
At the moment I have 2 guys doing it, one holding the bag, the other filling.
I sleep my sheep on the saw dust for a week then spread it on the pastures, and lawn. It really irritates my dad, he has to mow the lawn twice a week because the grass grows so dam fast!
Thanks
Patrick
Got a new toy at Harbor Freight today. Under $15, and very compact. This little fellow is sure handy for checking gasifier wood.
I’m running a little time-crunch experiment to see how wet of wood I can run in the gasifier - a lot of this will be over 40%. “Dry” would normally be under 20%. So it’s not ideal, but we’ll see how it handles the extra moisture. So far so good!
Hello all,
The wood I had outside (pine) I was able to get it inside and will be bagging it up in the next couple of days. I usually use saw mill slabs but this summer I did very little sawing so no slabs. Chunking the wood can go fast when the sawmill edgings and slabs are already sized for the wood chunkier.
I cut some cull oaks and hickory’s and chunked them. Any of the limbs that are less than four inch diameter work out really good but for the trunk of the tree I saw in lengths, spilt and feed the chunkier. If the pieces are straight grained I can leave them wide and use the wood chunkier to split them down to size before chunking. (Picture below)
Once the wood is spit into pieces I waste no time. If there are some juice in the wood the chunkier will cut the oak and hickory easy.
Very nice video Wayne, and that is some serious piles of wood chunks. Do you have to sharpen your chunker blade very often? I think I need a good flywheel to smooth my chunker out, maybe I’ll add a brake disc from my dumptruck to the pto shaft.
Hello Jonathan,
I don’t have to sharpen the chunker blade often. I think it was early spring I touched it up a little with the grinder and have chunked a lot of wood since then.
Yes the brake drum flywheel I use really makes chunking easy on the little tractor .
Thanks Wayne,
I think that my chuncker would run on a very small motor maybe 5HP if I had enough flywheel to power it though the cut part of the turn, it seem like with the gearing down it does not need much HP to do the job well, my tractor is a two cylinder kubota that is rated at like 15hp I run the tractor about 1/3 throttle and it does great. I think that with the right flywheel I could just idle the motor and use a high gear on the pto and it would still do good.
Good Morning Jonathan,
I think our tractors have about the same power ratings and I think with a flywheel five hp is plenty to run the chunker. I run the tractor at about 750 rpm which is just above idle speed with the pto in high gear. The flywheel is being turned at 375 rpm . The flywheel weighs about eighty pounds with most of that weight being on the outer perimeter which helps the flywheel leverage.
The chunker is making a cut per second and will cut oak and hickory up to 4 inch dia ( green wood ) and I hear no strain from the motor , just a smooth idle.
Before I added the flywheel to the chunker I broke the pto shaft on the tractor and had to replace it.
Wayne, was that the external pto or inside the tractor?
Don
Hello Mr. Don,
I should have said the shaft that powers the pto. Seems like it was only about 1/2 dia and about 3 feet long . It ran from the two stage clutch to the rear of the tractor and powered the pto gears . A 2 to 1 ratio and a 4 to 1 ratio
Hello all,
Today I used wood that was cut and chunked four and five days ago. It was left outdoors to dry.
The truck ran great !
5 days! WOW Did you notice an increase in hopper condensate? BTW “wood tea” is good for fire ant hills too!
Good Morning Carl,
It will be a while before I drain the condensate but will keep you posted
I think the chunked wood will dry faster than sawed wood and also faster than the disc and hatchet method ( http://driveonwood.com/forum/1174?page=2#comment-18710 )
If you look close at the chunked wood you will notice how it has been fractured . Also the pressure from the chunker will squirt water from the wood as it crushes it.
Yes the fire ants are tough but they can’t handle much of the wood tea!!
HWWT
Here’s how hot rod guys make wood chunks - very quickly.
Full list:
Best short video (50 seconds):
That is hilarious! I love the sound of chunking in high-gear.
Bundle-Chainsaw chunking method video. If someone could pull some stills for the dialup folks, it would be appreciated since I’m on mobile devices for the day.
I have several dead trees close to the wood pile but one was across a ditch and will be too muddy after this weekend to get to until next summer. Almost too much mud before the forecasted rains. I pulled it to the wood pile and making use of it.
BBB
I just found this article on a cheap/easy DIY solar wood drying kiln. I’m not sure where the folks are from but it gets a lot of snow so probably not Florida…
The second related article is broken (no pictures) but they said after 4 winter months that the wood was burning very well.
I have a friend here that runs a sawmill, and he uses a very similar design, except his are painted flat black on the inside, and have a cheap electric box fan to help with air movement.