The Rhythm Of Firewood: Efficient Splitting and the Bulk Bag Method
Refining the firewood process on Waterfall Farm.
We use a high-speed flywheel splitter and breathable bulk bags to minimize handling and maximize seasoning time. No talking; just the sounds of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the work at hand.
As Wheeler’s father, Doug, has said before, in Ashe County, NC, trees are everywhere they aren’t. We are fortunate enough to live in a place where there is abundant hardwood forest. When trees come down for any reason, we try to mill the large ones for lumber, and we turn everything else into firewood. Because we are surrounded by woods, we heat our homes and workshops with wood-burning stoves. With all of this, plus the 4-5 cords of poplar firewood each year for the sugar house, we spend a lot of time with a chainsaw, and a lot of time with the splitters.
Over the last ten plus years doing this, we have decided that certain techniques work better than others. In this video we are attempting to capture a routine that we have distilled over the many hours each year, laboring and scratching our heads, thinking, “there has got to be an easier way…”. We are certain that we have not invented anything new, but it’s always a process to find out what best works for you and the resources that are available to you.
The first and most important element of our technique is the time of year. You will see that there is still some snow on the ground in a few places; that is because it is the first week of spring here in the mountains. We are starting to split next season’s firewood now. To have hot and efficient fires, this is the only way to do it. Wood simply needs time to season, and it dries best in the warm months. Some people will say that certain species, such as red oak, may need even two summers to season before being ready to burn, but we have not found that to be true, especially if you can have it split early in the spring.
Perhaps the most unusual element of our firewood process is the kind of splitter that we use. When we first saw a flywheel splitter in action, we immediately knew that this would be ideal for the vast majority of all our firewood needs. What you cannot see entirely is the mechanism of this machine. The power behind this splitter comes from the “flywheels,” which are two, 90 pound cast iron plates that are spinning from the power of the motor. The yellow handle engages a rack and pinion arm, which quickly taps into the inertia of those heavy wheels and drives the splitting arm forward. This is a much quicker way to split firewood compared to hydraulic options, and the expanded work table on this particular model is also extremely useful.
The last and most important ingredient in our firewood recipe is the breathable, white bulk bag. Before we started using these, we realized that we were handling each piece of firewood four or five times before it was ready to bring indoors. You throw it to the ground, you move it out of the way to split more, you load it onto the tractor, you dump the load, and then you stack it again in your shed. So, while loading the bag takes a little longer in the beginning, we then have a large amount of wood that we can move with the tractor, without having to handle it again. For many of our spaces, we will leave it in the bag until we are ready to take it indoors to burn. This particular approach really saves us time and lumbar pain each year.
Burning wood for heat is not a viable option for everyone, so we consider ourselves lucky to do it. There are few resources that you can go and harvest from your backyard the way you can with the materials that come from a tree. As woodworkers, we enjoy the information that comes with cutting, splitting, and burning different species. Much of the firewood that we burn comes down on its own, and the endeavor to use this as a resource strengthens our sense of connection to the natural world around us. The presence and warmth from a fire is comforting on a fundamental level, and we are grateful to be a part of this very long human practice.