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Sawmill secondary processing firewood and kindling
I mean really, how much work can it be making firewood kindling? Grab a few boards and an axe, chop it up and done. Well that’s the condensed summary version.
Racks of firewood kindling set to the side for seasoning. -
Shiver me timbers
Shiver me timbers. It was going snow well. I won’t pine about it. I’ll just lumber on.
Snow on deck. -
Spring saw milling
We had a fairly mild winter so far as snow depth is concerned. Nowhere near the brutal amount that northern New Brunswick got. The lack of snow though has meant that with the cold air, the frost has gone deep into the ground. Which is ok if you are walking and driving machines over the ground but eventually the frost has to leave and it ill make for a soppy, wet mess to deal with. This year’s to do list will involve a lot of water course management.
Monday morning blues. -
Fireplace Digital Thermostat
We have been using a spring loaded thermometer in our wood stove flue since its been installed. Typically we replace it with a new one each year because the probe that is in the flue bends from overheating. We don’t always catch the wood stove in time to close the damper when trying to bring it up to heat. With a little bit of research online and reading some reviews that appeared to be honest, we purchased a digital thermometer from a web site that specializes in selling high heat thermometers.
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Skidding Firewood
I had this idea for measuring and crating firewood that would not involve as much lumber as the previous crating experiments I was trying out. This new method involved pallet strapping. I built a “jig” that holds the supplies and the 32 x 48 ” pallet that will hold the split firewood. The idea was to stack the wood 36″ high, resulting in 32 cu ft of spit firewood (1/4 cord). Sounded like a good plan.
Trying a new way to crate firewood. -
The Firewood Process
Remember a few weeks ago I showed you the pile of hardwood we bartered skidsteer hours for. Well we spent the weekend working on it. First thing Saturday morning we loaded up the truck and headed out to the location about 10 minutes from home.
Ready to go -
We Bought A Truck That DUMPS!
The last few years, on countless occasions, one of us has said, “It would be so much easier if we could just dump this.” We considered buying a trailer that dumped, but already having two trailers for different uses, we thought three would be overkill. Then we mulled over the idea of converting our current truck by buying an insert that dumped. Didn’t really want to do that since it is our only vehicle. Like a dog with a bone, Jim searched online and finally came across this truck for sale.
New to us one tonne dump truck -
Finishing our cleanup.
We didn’t waste any time getting back to operation cleanup!! The next morning we headed out and first up was loading the newly re-built wood bin with the pile of maple firewood we picked up for free in Guysborough. We had to cut and split them. I just set aside any that were too large and they would be split smaller later.
Back breaking work. -
Cleaning the yard
Before we move on to the other side of the shipping container we decided to do a much needed cleanup of our work area. In the background of this pic you can see the 2 large piles of logs that need to be dealt with.
Pic from Monday. -
Firewood splits storage racks
wood storage I’ve been cutting up the mixed wood slabs from the mill for firewood splits. I built wood cribs 4ft x 4ft x 16 inches. The skid steer pallet forks allow me to pick up three cribs at a time when I need to move them.
