Chuck Some Wood

Cutting and felling trees, milling logs and preparing firewood is not an exact science. It surely dates back many centuries, and many of the practices and terms of reference have remained unchanged, because… well, because… Hey, that’s just the way it is.

How much wood is on your truck?

Different folk will give you different answers for the same load, but generally they will express the quantity in cords or cubic metres or cubic feet.

According to Professor Wiki, the cord is a unit of measure of dry volume used to measure firewood and pulpwood in the USA and Canada, although the term is used informally elsewhere. A cord is the amount of wood that, when "ranked and well stowed" (arranged so pieces are aligned, parallel, touching and compact), occupies a volume of 128 cubic feet (3.62 cu.m.) This corresponds to a well stacked woodpile 4 feet (122 cm) high, 8 feet (244 cm) long, and 4 feet (122 cm) deep; or any other arrangement of linear measurements that yields the same volume. The name cord probably comes from the use of a cord or string to measure it.

We ordered some pine from local supplier Richard down the road, who advised that he supplies 4 cubic metre loads (about 1.1 cords). Now, it isn’t that Richard wants to be difficult that he has such an odd unit of supply, it’s that Richard’s 2-ton delivery truck holds 4 cubic metres (approximately)

Richard’s loaded truck does not look as neat as the load in the picture above, meaning that he has not followed the international specification of “ranked and well stowed”, but rather loaded in a more non-orderly fashion. I believe the correct technical term is probably “chucked on.”

(Above): White-gumbooted Richard arrived quite promptly at half-nine, as he had undertaken. Alone. He had no assistants to help offload what is quite a few bits of firewood. No problem though, as he reversed slowly and docked close to the four pallets I had pre-placed on the driveway. Hand-brake on, and the thing started tipping, depositing the firewood on the ground easy-peasy.

But, like a dog poo-ing on the wrong spot, half the wood landed on the hard surface instead of the wooden pallet.

Now, there is still a supply of firewood in the shed, and this new batch will not necessarily be burned immediately, or even this winter. Time will tell, so it needs to be neatly packed in the back of the wood-shed – stock rotation is the name of the game. The re-packing of the shed will take a large part of Saturday, so I need to secure the new arrivals securely and safely from the heavy rains which the weatherman has been promising – we’ve already had 3 mm this morning.

(Above): Re-packing the haphazard heap into a slightly more orderly pile on the pallets is an easy job. Simply do it one or two pieces at a time. Theoretically, one could perform this process for 40 cubic metres, it remains the same, it simply takes a bit longer. But no fear, we only have a 4 R.Cu. M. heap ( Richard Cubic Metres)

(Above): Midway through, I was greeted by a cup of tea. Very nice.  Then the Roofing Contractor (yes, I’ve already forgotten his name!) arrived unexpectedly to do a provisional inspection of his tasks ahead – also a welcome break fro 10 minutes. Eventually, we had four pallets, packed almost 1 metre high – in my book, that makes 4 cubic metres.

(Above): I appreciate that the purists among you will try to point out that a little rain-water has never hurt any pieces if fire-wood, but I eventually ended up with this wrapped stowage, because (a) I like things to be orderly and look pretty, especially when its in the front of your home and visible to the street, and (b) I’m not sure if there is any logic in piling chunks of soggy firewood on top of each other in the wood-shed.

The next job on the list will be to re-arrange the contents of the woodshed. Neat.