Fall Clean Up

He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Every year, come fall, I end up with a few logs, ash and maple, that have been around for awhile and something has to be done.  So this last Sunday I decided to was the day.  Some of the logs are in pretty good shape, like this one below.  The cut looks fine, no visible rot at all.  One cool thing you can see to the left center is the head of an ingrown knot, a fist sized ball of bark that deforms a large portion of the log.

Below you can see obvious rot, usually the end of the logs.  It's fine for firewood, and splits pretty well, but is still hard work.  It really makes you realize how hard a life people lived 100 years ago, before wood splitters and chainsaws.

The white ash log below is beautiful...exactly what I am looking for... a centered heart on both ends, wide growth rings, no visible whorls or ingrown branches.  A perfect log.  One problem with ash is that it has a very low initial moisture content, so after sitting around for awhile it dries out and gets hard to work with a draw knife.  It used to fight thru but now I just turn it into firewood.

These are a few brown ash trees that I cut for a chair that never panned out.  The logs are fine, and I cut them off my land, so I'm gonna take a chance on these ones.

And here is the result.  The pieces on the tailgate are gonna be turned (literally) into legs and the rest is firewood.  Not a bad haul...now I have to go get a few more ash and maple logs to get thru the winter.  There is plenty of maple around, but the ash is a little harder to find. 

Stacked and ready for winter.

A beautiful Sugar Maple on my land, same tree I use for the legs.