# Burning and Stacking Scotch Pine



## otsegony (Mar 20, 2012)

I have an opportunity and a problem. My house is built on 7 acres of land that used to be a tree nursery. Unfortunately the last owner had sold most of the good trees (oaks and maples) and left a lot of landscape grade spruce and pine that wasn't cared for and lots (and lots and lots) of Scotch pine from someone's effort to grow Christmas trees. The trees range from 15' to 30' tall and are of very poor quality. I was advised by a landscaper friend to heavily thin them out or cull them entirely.  Rather than just cut them and let them rot I plan on processing them into firewood.  I've cut a few down and test burned them and found that they are not the worst firewood that I've ever burned (that would be poplar) and might be a good shoulder season wood.  The problem is that when splitting them they are so stringy and warped that it is very difficult to build a decent woodpile.  What are my options?  A giant stack o'pine?  I don't want to spend the time to cut each piece so that it would lie in a stack evenly.  Any advice would be appreciated.


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## Locust Post (Mar 20, 2012)

Might be able to fashion some sort of rack or bin of sorts from some skids.


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## ScotO (Mar 20, 2012)

Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a Holz Hausen.  Look 'em up here on Hearth.com.  Not hard to make for the most part, and when you build several of them you will have yourself some neat conversation pieces.....


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## ScotO (Mar 20, 2012)

Here's a link to one post about Holz Hausens.  There's lots of info here on Hearth.com.  Just use the search box and type in what you are looking for. 


https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/holz-hausen-wood-stacking.76813/


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## Wood Duck (Mar 20, 2012)

Yeah, I build holz hausen with wood that is about 50% decent splits and 50% oddballs. You can build them as large or small as you like, use the normal splits along the outside edges, and pile the odd stuff in the middle


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## NH_Wood (Mar 20, 2012)

otsegony said:


> I have an opportunity and a problem. My house is built on 7 acres of land that used to be a tree nursery. Unfortunately the last owner had sold most of the good trees (oaks and maples) and left a lot of landscape grade spruce and pine that wasn't cared for and lots (and lots and lots) of Scotch pine from someone's effort to grow Christmas trees. The trees range from 15' to 30' tall and are of very poor quality. I was advised by a landscaper friend to heavily thin them out or cull them entirely. Rather than just cut them and let them rot I plan on processing them into firewood. I've cut a few down and test burned them and found that they are not the worst firewood that I've ever burned (that would be poplar) and might be a good shoulder season wood. The problem is that when splitting them they are so stringy and warped that it is very difficult to build a decent woodpile. What are my options? A giant stack o'pine? I don't want to spend the time to cut each piece so that it would lie in a stack evenly. Any advice would be appreciated.


 
I was just in a similar situation - nasty (huge) white pine taken down - decided to keep it for firewood, but only pulled 1.5 cord from it - the rest was huge and full of odd knots - not fun to split and not worth my time. About a half cord of what I did split was real wavy and oddly shaped. I ended up stacking this wood on pallets, but made a pyramid shape, rather than a cube. Just stack as well as you can on a pallet and keep stacking toward the center as the sides get a little wobbly. Cheers!


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## amateur cutter (Mar 20, 2012)

If you need more, I've got 1.5 acres of the s#$t I'd love to get rid of. I may hire an excavator to pile em & burn em so I can stack more firewood on the lot. I'd cut & burn every last one of the miserable things if they weren't such a pita to split & stack. I've got nothing against burning pine @ all, It's not bad wood, but the scotch pine knots go all the way through the wood & make for the ugliest splits. I'd rather process Elm.

OK, rant over, enjoy cleaning the pitch outta your saw. A C


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## Backwoods Savage (Mar 21, 2012)

Here is part of an area where we had both scotch and white pines. We had a chipper come in and just mowed them down. Of course, now I have a bit of a mess to clean up and then we hope to do some planting of pines and fruit trees. We did not get much money from the chipper but it all helps.


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## eclecticcottage (Mar 21, 2012)

Wow, we've been splitting some that we got that was beetle kill, it's been easy to split...


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## Wood Duck (Mar 21, 2012)

I think the problem with a former christmas tree plantation of Scots Pine is that the trees grew in the open and were trimmed to make them even more branchy than a normal tree growing in the open would have been. Scots Pine growing in a plantation where the treesa grow tall and have few branches would be a lot easier to process. The same goes for any pine, I think. I just finished processing a big, tall Scots Pine from the neighbors' yard and it was nice to split, but that might be because there weren't many branches on the trunk.


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