How much slower to process hardwood?

[Big J]

As a hobbyist firewood producer (most of my firewood ends up being burnt by me, the chaps that work for me or friends, though we use a fair bit) with a fairly quick processor, I have enough time on the machine to compare hardwoods versus softwood and I've concluded that I will never, ever buy hardwood for the purpose of firewood again.

 

Rattled off a 40 cube order for a friend, and had the choice of 25-35cm straight, 3.7m larch (too good for firewood really, but strongly dislike milling larch and it ended up in my yard as payment for a job) and some very loosely definable processor grade hardwood (plane, whitebeam, ash, lime, cherry). I would say that yes, most of it would physically fit through a processor, but it was bendy.

 

So cutting to a largish spec (35cm logs) we found that we were struggling to do 2 cube an hour. The plane is hellishly difficult to split, and the processor would occasionally jam, even with 25 tonnes of splitting force.

 

The larch however was a total joy to split. No jams, all splitting done on the 8 way and it took under 5 minutes to do a cube. 14 minutes for a 3.3 CM crate to be precise.

 

So appreciating that all things weren't equal (very straight, perfect sized softwood versus not ideal, but not awful hardwood), how much slower do folk find cutting hardwood is? And do you find it damages the machine more? I certainly feel that the hardwood risks more breakages.

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

Totally with you here. I've got a load of DF bars from 2nd thinnings in at the moment. 2.3m long, average dia 8". Beautiful.

[Big J]

Totally with you here. I've got a load of DF bars from 2nd thinnings in at the moment. 2.3m long, average dia 8". Beautiful.

 

It's so quick that you need at least one person just taking away crates and reloading the deck. It's the selling it that takes the time!

[se7enthdevil]

plane, whitebeam and lime are very interlocked so compared to softwoods like you stated they will seem nightmarish.

 

i think it's too quick to write them off though.

 

surely if you had a load of 25cm straight beech, ash and oak you would have a better time logging...

[SbTVF]

Can't beat some straight sycamore poles from old coppice that have been sat a few month. Most of the pieces launch onto the conveyor like they've been catapulted!

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[skyhuck]

Nice processor sized hard wood is pretty much as easy to process as soft, however finding that kind of hard wood is pretty difficult and expense. Whereas virtually all soft wood is clean and straight and normally pretty cheap.

 

I'm burning larch at the moment, I thinks its fantastic, hot, last nearly as long as hardwood and produces so little ash!

Edited April 14, 2017 by skyhuck

[Logsnstuff]

wish I could sell more than half a dozen bags of softwood a year, takes me anywhere from 12 min to 40 min to fill a 90x90 depending on where the hardwood came from, usually oak, beech or birch occasional sycamore.

treated myself to an infrared thermometer few weeks back and I tested it on some 2 year seasoned beech from the polytunnel with the stove shut down was getting 359C I then tried it with doug fir that's about 7 year old out of the log store and was getting 371C

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

Plantation beech, processor size, yum yum tho sure

[gdh]

We sell 95% hardwood and cutting softwood is definitely quicker because softwood is more consistent in size and straight.

 

I usually do (on 9 inch) 5 cube of hardwood into boxes per hour or 9 of softwood but a lot of that is because the softwood is big enough to split 12 ways - if the timber was straight and the same dimater there wouldn't be much in it.

 

Fastest we've ever cut is 18inch softwood into a heap at 17cube per hour.

 

Hardwood is harder work for the processor but other than wearing the chain faster we have no problems. The splitter only strugges if a bent piece slips sideways.

[matelot]

wish I could sell more than half a dozen bags of softwood a year, takes me anywhere from 12 min to 40 min to fill a 90x90 depending on where the hardwood came from, usually oak, beech or birch occasional sycamore.

 

How much do you sell softwood for compared to hardwood?

 

I think most people here would prefer people burnt UK produced softwood opposed to european hardwoods.