Plan B at the woodshed, Episode I

I probably mentioned that my woodshed -- the original "lash-up" collapsed this winter. I really have to rebuild it, and this time let us try something a bit more permanent. So there was plan A. It is (was) a timber-framed structure. But it is already late July. There would be many, many mortises and tenons to cut. Tenons are no big deal, but mortises are a horse of another color. So I evolved plan B. There are six tall poles in front and three short ones in back. Over these go two long plates. A plate is the top beam in a sturcture (as opposed to the sill which is the lowest). The poles will go straight into the ground. I plan to set them in concrete. So I had to do six holes.
The extreme holes (should) form a rectangle 1.20 meters by 4 meters. This is about the dimension of the eye-built lashup. While toolroom precision is not the order of the day, the holes do need to be aligned and the same depth. For alignment, plain old string is your friend. At hardware stores all over Alaska, they sell a pink nylon string which is ideal for this purpose. For depth, observe my invaluable clamshell digger front and left. Mark it to the correct depth. In my case this is 60 cm which is probably below frost depth. I say probably because that depends a great deal on how harsh the winter is. You should go below frost depth because otherwise the structure will heave. The string is stretched between nails pounded into temporary stub posts.

Digging these holes is both easy and difficult. It is difficult because the upper 10 cm or so are a wild tangle of roots. Once you get past the roots, it is easy. I used a short pruning saw to cut out the roots. So I got five out of six holes dug. The sixth involves moving a whole lot of firewood. I left it for later. I don't want to deconstruct the ex-woodshed because it is protecting about a cord of wood. Do that later.

On to the next step. One could go to Lowe's and buy 4x4s, I suppose. Most people would. But not I, said the little red hen. There is enough dead spruce around Alaska to build a mansion, let alone a woodshed. So allowing for all the allowances, the front poles should be 2.5m x 10cm x 10cm. OK, a spruce log was bucked today to 2.5 meters. Easy. Then it was marked out. This is worth a post all by itself. Now we square the log. I am doing this log freehand. Many reasons. I'll try to explain in another post. First job is to run a guide groove down the log. Snap a chalk line and go.
Now make very sure your horizontal marks are level. For this you need a level! The bigger the level the more accurate. Spike the log to the stumps with homemade log dogs (which keep the chainsaw from hitting the ground, a disaster). Now start ripping. Hold the chainsaw absolutely vertical. One reason I did it this way is because I can use Parsifal the Stihl MS 170. It has a very thin bar and does a nice job of ripping without a ripping chain. Every meter or so drive a wedge into what you've ripped. Turn off the saw. Let it cool. Let your back recover. Drive a wedge in every meter or so. After some minutes...
you have done it. We have one flat side. And a slab that may be useful. The guide groove, of course, it to guide the saw. There are lots of practical details. But basically it comes down to being very careful and not expecting perfection. Keep the saw plumb to the cut. I think next time I will tape a small level to the saw.

The rest is a repetition. Level. plumb the log. Guide groove. Rip. And at the end of the day I had a very reasonable 10cm x 10cm.

A lot of stuff left out. But stay tuned. More is coming.

Stihl Life II, or my aching woodpile

Well, Lysander the tractor wouldn't start. Sounds like he's out of gas. What could be wrong? But I put 5 gallons in! Blocked fuel line? Evaporation? Horrors. Lysander always starts. But winter is coming on express rails, and I have to build up my wood pile. So I decided to get in the stuff my neighbor had left piled up by the side of the power line right-of-way. This I can haul out with the car (Vicky, short for Victoria Suzuki Vitara) in compound low 4-wheel drive, as long as she's on the road. A couple days frenzied work with the logging chain and the cant hook (to lever the nasty logs around) and I had some prime victims.
The next job is to cut these guys into the 45cm Chalupy standard droob length. This is, of course, chain saw time. Here Parsifal comes into play.
My target is the log shoved up on my japanese style sawbuck, a remarkably simple X shaped sawbuck. Works like a charm, and you can maneuver it with one hand. Parsifal is, of course, my trusty Stihl MS 170 chain saw. Both my Stihl saws are named after Wagnerian heroes. They are, after all, loud. And somewhat temperamental. About one hour later, we had some more Stihl life:
Everything has been bucked, as the expression goes, to 45cm length; Parsifal is taking a break; standing up against a log is the cant hook, necessary to get the log off the ground so's you can saw it; and my new hard hat/ear muff/face shield, which, by the way, doubles as an extraordinarily effective mosquito deterrent. In the background, the regular sawbuck and the last of the logs, all sawn up.

It is not the sawing that is the "critical path" as the Operations Research people say; it is handling the better part of a ton of wood. You can't saw a log on the ground. You will run the chain into the dirt, and then your chain saw is kaput. So you have to raise the log off the ground. For this I use the cant hook (leverage) and a variety of hold-it-for-now fixtures. The japanese sawbuck is one, but a very useful thing is a piece of 4x4 with a ramp cut into it. Cant-hook your log up on the ramp and go.

Still (or Stihl) after a couple hours of this, the chain saw was dull, my back ached, and then some, and it was time to quit. The various pieces of wood await their interview with Jack the Splitter (See previous post). Then we have to stack it (more handling).

Notice the sun shining in these pictures. It has been 30 days or more without sun. I thought I was hallucinating when I saw blue sky. Sun? Whazzat?

Splittin' wood the easy way

Ever since I got my woodstove, getting wood in for the winter has been a priority chore. This involves three steps: (1) locating your wood. (2) Cutting it up, or bucking, the wood to size, and (3) splitting it. No matter how efficient your stove, it won't burn unsplit logs, not very well anyway. I have omitted major steps, such as towing the wood out of the woods with Lysander the tractor, and the almost infinite amount of handling you have to do; but of all these tasks the most onerous is splitting. Thus far, aided by my son, I have done all this stuff with a maul and a double-bitted axe. Although satisfying, it is a lot of work. All this has changed.

For my birthday, my son and daughter gave me an electric splitter. An incredible device. The electric motor drives a hydraulic pump, which pushes a ram, and there is a splitter post at the other end.
Behold Jack the Splitter. At the left of the picture, the splitter wedge. Center is my victim. At right, concealed by a black safety guard, is the red hydraulic lever. You push down on a green button and let the motor spin up (0.1 sec). Then you push down the red lever under the guard (another 0.1 sec). The hydraulic ram travels majestically down the rail, about 2 sec. It contacts the wood, and crack! your log is split. It can't take another 2 seconds! Total time under 15 seconds. You now take one half and set it in the splitter:
and repeat the sequence. I caught Jack in the act there. You can see how the ram drives the log against the wedge. Maybe you can't see the ram, it is black; a most unphotogenic color. A charm, a marvel. I may split some wood with a maul just for fun; but I am not bound to it. I thank my offspring very, very much.

At the end of this stint, a few days worth of wood.
Actually it might go a week! This is all "road kill" wood; stuff that the snowplow crews cut down. I collect that stuff first thing every spring; most of it is birch.

Now I have to stack it, but I will let it dry out on the back porch for a few days.
Unlike Jack the Ripper, my Jack is not (to my knowledge, anyway) wanted by Scotland Yard.

An improvi-shed for firewood

We are told by the sages to beware the ides of March. But here in Alaska, we have to beware of the equinox. Sure enough, on the 23d of Sep, I awoke to -1.1C. That is below freezing, for the metrically challenged. Hmmm. Time to build a fire. But this is not the time to go gathering your firewood. It may work in distant New (or old) England, but in Alaska, September is the month of rain. So if you start gathering your wood now, it will be wet. Wet wood does not burn too well, if at all; I found that out last year. Green wood is just as bad. Again, bitter experience. So we must gather our wood in spring, and let it dry out while summer's breezes blow. But if you don't cover your wood, it will not dry out. Last year I simply draped tarps over it.

Note the blue tarp, pronounced as one word in Alaska, i.e. blutarp. Without blutarp, duct tape (called gaffer tape in the UK), and WD-40, life in Alaska as we know it would cease to exist.

As they say in the software business, this is not such a GoodIdea(tm). In the middle of winter, your blutarp freezes to the firewood, especially with half a meter of snow on it. Then you have to somehow get the wood separated from the tarp and your wood out of there. This, last winter, posed a major problem. So this year, I started spring with the idea of building an elegant woodshed. You know, framed timber construction, steel roof, the works. But the porch (of which more later) and other things sucked up the time, so we come to September with no woodshed. What to do? Well, build an improvi-shed.

First, we use lashings instead of fancy joints, nails, or screws. Nails always work loose in cold, because the nails and wood contract at different rates. So, with ropework done, we got us a shed:
Well, at least we got us a framework. The next step was to take a big blutarp and tie it down to a frame.
Et voila, woodshed. Will it survive the winter? Will it collapse under a meter of snow? Does it keep out the rain ? Well, it keeps out the rain all right. For the answer to the other thrilling and dramatic questions, stay tuned.

Lashing is a very useful skill. I learned it in Boy Scouts, age 12. If you want to learn, see almost any backwoods, survival, or primitive living website.

By the way, since Sep. 23 we have had four or five sub-freezing days. The garden still has a cabbage, leeks, lettuce and spinach in it. All have survived, worst case a -2.4C frost. Amazingly hardy vegetables. But soon the lack of light will get to them and they will stop growing. I'm hanging out as long as I can. And with dry frewood too; an almost sybaritic luxury.