Over in the "odd weather" thread, Musher (Brian) told us that he'd paid $50 per ton. The way I understand things, he bought a truck load of pole-length logs. At $50/ton, that's high compared to our local prices.

Here's a link to the weight of wood per cord. Green wood.

http://www.firewood-for-life.com/firewood-weight.html

Around here lots of folks will buy a "tri-axel" load, it's basically pulp wood. Logs that won't go for saw timber. It's almost always oak. I'll check, but the last I heard a truck load was selling for about $400. Just a good guess, a good load would weigh around 20 tons.

I'll add more later. Just curious what does firewood sell for in other areas?

We pay 6-700.00 dollars for a tri axel load in northern pa.
Most of the wood is ash.

I talked to a man last evening that cuts timber for a living, he said that a tri-axel load is selling for $600. He said usually between 18 and 20 tons.

The local sawmill will custom saw what ever you want, but their main business is sawing rails and posts for building rail fence. For posts they'll use black locust, all of the slabs, posts that don't meet the standard are scrapped and sold in bundles for firewood.

About this time last year, I bought 9 bundles. I could only haul 3 bundles on our dump truck, my last load of 3 bundles weighed 6,560#. The mill sells each bundle for $30.

I've sorted through each bundle, and picked out a bunch of "good" posts, good enough for a field fence. A good locust post is worth 4 or 5 dollars. Some bundles, I'd do pretty good, others were mostly firewood.

But I think a full sized pickup load of split oak, is selling for $60 to $70 now. Not a very accurate way to measure wood, but when it's cold that's the way it's sold around here.

I didn't buy a load of pole length logs. What they sell you is the butts/gnarl that isn't good enough to use. So you have some rot, lots of stump pieces and twisted stuff. Most pieces are less than 4 feet long. They range from 8 inches to 30 inches in diameter.

It's tough on the saw as you get some dirt due to the skidding of the tree lengths.

The wood sells for $43 a metric ton. That's 2200 pounds. Delivery cost me more as I am about 40 km. from the mill selling the stuff.

Good firewood sells for about $95 a face cord here. In comparison 4 foot pulp wood sells for $107 a cord.

My brother has bought wood by the tri axel load, I've helped work up some. Never did measure the logs, but they would be somewhere around 18 to maybe 24 feet long. About all of that pile you could buzz through with an 18" or 20" bar, some of the butt ends would need another little cut on the backside.

When the timber man unloaded, he laid down 3 or 4 poles, cross-ways, (more or less as a foundation) and stacked the rest of the load on top. Sure made it handy for keeping your saw out of the dirt, on those lower logs.

I agree with what Frank said over in the other thread, when you first look at a stack of logs piled up over your head, you've gotta think that's a helluva pile of wood. And it is. Burn out a tank of gas, split for a while, and repeat.

I'll quote my buddy Wardney: I like to cut wood, I don't like to HAVE to cut wood. Anyone that's ever had a small wood pile, when you need a big wood pile will understand exactly what he means.

If you calculate the exchange rate of one Canuck buck being about .71 U.S.and the extra 200 pounds per ton, prices are fairly similar.

redsnow: Wardney forgot about the stacking part. He also skipped the sharpening the chain part, too!

Buddy had a dump truck. It was "watch the wires' and dump. No laying of skids but there is a solid snow base. I haven't hit dirt yet. I burn 2/3 tanks before splitting and stacking. Otherwise, I don't have room to work without stepping on wood..

Here at work I've been taking Canadian coins at face value!

Talking about Wardney, he's got enough wood to do him for the next 2 winters. He only has one little stove in his building. He heats the house with oil and electric.

Wardney pulled a smooth one a few weeks ago. He was taking down a locust tree, he said it'd been 20" across the stump or so. He cut his notch, started in on the backside and it started to split, he dropped his saw and got the hell outta the way. There was a guy with him, I've heard it from both. The tree split, snapped off up 15 or 18 feet, and kawomp. It smashed his saw, that was a $400 Stihl. If it would have hit him it would have smashed him too.

I wasn't there, but it sounds like he didn't cut his notch deep enough. I've watched him drop trees, it seems sometimes he'll get his cuts a little bit out of kilter. A little bit high or low or at an angle. It's a dangerous job.

That's called a "barber chair". I think it's just a random thing.

I'd never heard of a barber chair, not in tree lingo.

From what I've been told, this is about what happened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YAf61zz5VU

There is another link or 2, that shows what happens. Very dangerous and I'm sure it happened fast!

Wardney's incident shook him up, I'm glad that it did, he could have been killed. Figure a locust tree 20" at the stump would be 40 feet tall or better, and weigh a ton or more. I'm sure it made a thump when it hit the ground.

I'm going to try and explain what happens when a tree "barber chairs". we will see how I do before my finger gets tired.

When I was doing such things 50 trees a day was the norm. That was between 15-20K bdf. Trees averaged a bit bigger and I was a lot younger than now.

Barber chair is caused by too much pressure being exerted on the side of the tree opposite the notch, when cutting standing timber in normal conditions. There are multitude of reasons it will happen when things "aren't right".

A small notch is not a bad thing. Using one does not add any significantly more stress to the standing tree. Too deep a notch will and promote bad things.

When cutting a tree with a hinge,like most people are taught.The main reason people experience barber chairing is because they don't have a saw that will cut fast enough. Once a tree starts to fall you must be able to keep up with it(the tree). Relieving the pressure opposite the notch as the tree falls. You stop cutting when the hinge is narrow enough to snap but not strong enough to allow more energy to be transferred to the tree stem than it can withstand. Failure to do so will result in it splitting and a whole host of other bad things


And Tim....Fast? you don't recognize what happened till it's all over