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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: Homestead <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Firewood
  • Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:05:18 -0700

I am working my way through a huge pile of old magazines, to lessen the load to Heartwood. I find it hard to discard them. This is from Harrowsmith Country Life October 1995:

Splitting Secrets
Live or dead, ash or birch, all wood dries faster if split. Splitting isn't just to get the big pieces into the little stove but to speed the seasoning process.
Few species are as retentive as birch, but none dry readily through the bark. The bark is there, in part, to keep the sap in. When cut, the log will dry through the cut ends, but slowly. There isn't much surface area exposed to drying winds--splitting exposes a lot more surface for evaporation.
The first lesson is to split sooner rather than later. Although most species of wood need 9 to 12 months to season fully once split, many will dry to an acceptable 35 percent moisture content in as little as 3 months. Those who pile wood in the round to split later, as they need it, have missed the point. The sooner it's split, the faster it seasons.
The best time to fell trees and cut and split them is in the dormant winter season, when the sap is largely in the ground and not in the trunk. Less drying to do. Also, the alternate freezing and thawing of early spring helps to open cracks in firewood, and the cracks expose more of the innards to drying air. Finally, summer's heat speeds the rate of evaporation from all those cracks and, ideally, from all those split surfaces
If you must cut a live tree in the summer, fell it and leave it for a few weeks. It will continue to give off moisture through the leaves until they dry up and fall.
--Charles Long


Gene GeRue
www.RURALIZE.com








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