Our old house is quite large and we heat it almost completely with a wood burning furnace. A pickup load of wood generally last about 10 days depending on outside temps. Some days when I start chucking wood in the furnace it about kills me to do it.
We burn some really nice "turning blocks".
I have a few nice pieces of hedge laid back that I want to use to turn a batch of file handles and some handles for some old style socket handle wood chisels, some of which I have bought for almost nothing at garage sales etc.
Right now I am cutting up the tops of 4 large Chinese elm trees that were dying badly. They were across in front of the house and near the power lines at the road. We planted them in about 1952. I'm saving the logs for the little Woodmizer LT-10 sawmill. Since I no longer climb trees I had asked the power company to drop them. I used to be a lot braver about trees I took down near houses or power lines but I have become a lot more cautious as I have aged.
The tree service the power company used of course used a bucket truck and dismantled them from the top down. One of those deals where They only got the limbs on the ground in bigger pieces and we are responsible for all cleanup. I'm about at a standstill this week as there is heavy ice everywhere and on everything. It will all melt today thankfully.
When I was ready to start cutting them up I was finding that my chainsaws which have not had much use in recent years were needing work so I bought a new Stihl saw (love that easy start feature) as I have a lot of cutting to do this year. While I was getting started our 42 year old son (lives just down the road at the end of the farm) just showed up with his saw and cut up the tops of 2 of the trees by the time I was getting a solid start. Yes, I have slowed down a lot.
Still, I was doing OK for an old guy with a dicky ticker...
Right now we are just burning the dead parts which was maybe 20% of the wood. Very hard and dry. The rest I will stack and cover to dry. It will be fine to burn by next fall. I have enough big dead trees just here on the farm to take down to keep me supplied with dry firewood the rest of this winter just burning the limbs.
I'm just finishing the installation of a new wood burning furnace I bought last spring/summer. It is larger and a lot more convenient than the old one. The old one is moving to the farm shop next week. I should have the new one finished up by tomorrow.
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We had been buying all of our wood for the last few years because of my health issues and I was thinking about that today. I know that a lot of you are turners and that some of you spend quite a bit of $$$ to get wood for it. It occurred to me that for some of you might save a good bit by contacting someone in your area that sells firewood regularly. Most of these guys would be happy to sell you wood for turning especially wood from tree crotches etc. that is highly figured. They don't like splitting that stuff. Depending on what you want you might even find an advantage to just buy a load of fire wood (about $60 delivered here) and sort through it and save nice pieces and then sell what is left to someone that burns wood. Many firewood guys would be happy to bring you un-split wood in bigger blocks if you preferred. I've found most quite willing to work with you.
Just a thought...
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