Storing Tree Trunks

Since last summer we have been cutting down trees on our land to make a clearing for our building project.  The fact that we are not done with this process this many months later is a good indication of the extent to which we underestimated the magnitude of this task.  Perhaps all this exposure to fresh country air has made us a little crazier than we were when we started, but we recently decided that we should make this task even more challenging.  Up until now, when we fell a tree we have been cutting it up into short sections suitable for firewood.  We got a great collection of firewood by now.  It's mostly oak with a little bit of maple and poplar.  Actually at this point we have years of firewood stored up; we really don't need any more.  Also, most of the wood we have been cutting up into firewood has been really nice timber, worthy of fine wood working.  So we decided that rather than cutting it up into little pieces, we would try to save it in long lengths which we could later mill into planks for woodworking projects.  We don't want to mill the wood immediately since we have as yet nowhere to store milled lumber out of the elements.  Logs can be stored for future milling if you are careful how you handle them.  They have to be kept off the ground and the ends have to be sealed so that they dry more uniformly so as to reduce cracking.  We decided to cut all future good trunks into 11-13 ft sections.  This will be tricky.  Some of our larger trees have trunks  12 to 15 inches in diameter.  Such a log can weigh as much as 900 pounds.  This is near the upper limit of what our equipment can handle.  It is interesting to think that people used to handle such logs before there were diesel engines.

This is a maple log being prepped for storage.  We started with some of the smaller trees to get the hang of it - this one is only about 6-7 inches in diameter.

We cut the ends square and remove a stripe of bark along its length to promote uniform drying.  We put it on some cribbing to keep it off the ground.

A small oak log being prepped for storage.
These smaller logs are relatively easy to handle.   The tractor pulls them easily.

The last step is to paint the ends of the logs with a sealant. 

We sealed the ends of the three oak logs immediately.  We will seal the ends of the maple log in a couple of days once it has stopped dripping sap.