Wood cutting with the moon.....

[Robbie]

jabush, the sap is supposed to be going down starting the day after the full moon, this is supposed to be a gradual cycle, reaching it's peak on the new moon, 25th July.

Then after the new moon it gradually starts to rise.

So far my wood seems to drying very fast, though the only thing I have to go by is what it's doing now compared to 3 months ago.

I will have more to go by next year.

December 20th, 2006 is supposed to be the best day of the year to cut firewood or timber for the whole year according to everything I have read and found concerning wood cutting during moon phases.

It's really hard to understand all this, so I am testing dates. If it does not work or help then we will still have wood drying.


Robbie.

 

[jabush]

jabush, the sap is supposed to be going down starting the day after the full moon, this is supposed to be a gradual cycle, reaching it's peak on the new moon, 25th July.

Then after the new moon it gradually starts to rise.

So far my wood seems to drying very fast, though the only thing I have to go by is what it's doing now compared to 3 months ago.

I will have more to go by next year.

December 20th, 2006 is supposed to be the best day of the year to cut firewood or timber for the whole year according to everything I have read and found concerning wood cutting during moon phases.

It's really hard to understand all this, so I am testing dates. If it does not work or help then we will still have wood drying.


Robbie.

Update...the bark is now readily falling off the pieces of Red maple that I cut 7 weeks ago. I burned some 2-3 inch pieces Thursday night in my bbq and they lit right up.

 

[jabush]

OK...when this thread started I was eyeing up a 14", 55 foot Red maple on my property. I dropped it on the 11th, which according to my Farmer's Alamanac calendar was the New Moon. Now don't laugh...my NASCAR calendar has July 11th listed as the Full Moon and the 25th listed as the New Moon. So I'm not sure which was which, but the smaller stuff has cracks in the ends. The bigger pieces have small checks in the center only. I should have it all split sometime in Sept, so I'll take note as to how it's drying. Of course, now I wish I had cut another one on the first for comparison.

Anyone out there happen to drop a Red maple on or about the end of June/first of July????

You have a NASCAR calendar AND you cut wood with the moon? Not one to be pigeonholed I guess!

Nope!! Also have rain barrels AND burn barrels.

Boring rainy Saturday...what can I say???

 

[Robbie]

Jabush, that is good news about the bark falling off. I am still watching my wood to see if there is any major difference. My stacked wood seems to be drying very well and the bark fell off of it even before it was split, and this is after it was cut green only a few weeks earlier.

I won't know how this moon thing works until later this fall when I start to burn some of the oak I have drying. Every thing I have read about oak says about 6 months for proper drying time (4 at the earliest). I will test this in about 2 months, except the stuff I will attempt to burn will have been drying for only 2 months, covered and in semi shade.

I will know immediatly if the oak is seasoned because I burned lots of green/wet oak last year and I know exactly how it burns. I mentioned in one thread that I bought this "seasoned" oak and it actually had water dripping out of it while it was burning in my stove.



Either way, this is interesting stuff to me.


Robbie

 

[Robbie]

Update: My wood is so dry I have to stack green wood on it to keep it from floating away.


Not really, though my wood did seem to burn great last fall and it was loaded with large cracks. The reason I am posting this now is because of the moon phase.

Has anyone noticed ?

http://www.calculatorcat.com/moon_phases/phasenow.php

(broken link removed to http://www.almanac.com/astronomy/moon/index.php)

It is now very close to new moon. The sap is supposed to be as far down as it goes for this time of year. The next two days are prime, go for it.

The sap should be down near the base of all living things...........no not us, just the trees....... ;-P

My wood is dry as powder since I started doing this, I am certain it makes a difference in some way. The real difference is when You look at the sap coming out of the trunk after being cut now during this moon phase compared to the amount of water that comes out during a different moon phase about two weeks from now. It pours out during a different moon phase.

I think it works, but of course there will be non believers. Does it really matter in the long run ? If you try to cut during the "new moon" phase you might see that it somehow seems to make a difference.

My wood really is very dry with extra large cracks, and those cracks appeared within two weeks of cutting...........even without being split.

It sure does not hurt to try............. %-P


Robbie

 

[jpl1nh]

Oookay then...I'm gonna be really stuffy and apply some logic here. Just to let you know, sometimes a bit of logic sounds good, but unless it actually considers everything it may just be garbage. However, I'll try here. Since sap is basically water with all sorts of stuff in solute in it, a moon phase depletion of sap would be a form of dehydration which if significant would be somewhat harmful to the plant. A plant in leave is basically a large siphon, water evaporating from its leaves providing a vacum which in turn "sucks" more water up from the stems and roots. Gravity looses in this battle everytime. Without water in the plant it looses it "turgor" or fullnes and begins to collapse (wilt). I cannot think of any reason why the moon would cause water to move counter to it's normal upward movement. If anything, wouldn't the moons gravitational pull tend to move it skyward? And lastly, for this to make a noticable difference in drying, the water quantities in the living tissue would have to be significantly lowered, not just a percent or 2, which brings us back to dehydration and wilting. In my lifetime being around plants, I've never heard of this before, nor have I observed any type of water depletion tied to the moon phases. But the older I get, the more I realize how little I truly know. And I'm getting pretty old so I don't know much! Just ponderin the possible reasons, moon effects don't seem likely to me.

 

[Robbie]

I too was a non-believer.........until I read many articles about moon phase/sap related and wood/lumber drying articles in the last few years.

I do not have lots of links to all these but a quick search on google using the search terms "wood drying moon phase" or many other variations should work.

Below are a couple interesting reads that might shed some light.............and you may very well be correct on your thoughts.

(broken link removed to http://www.tonewood.ch/moonwood.html)

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001EM&P...85..463Z

More food for thought ? ;-)


Robbie

 

[Gooserider]

Remember the important part, After mooning the tree,

KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL -


PUT YOUR CLOTHES ON


:red: %-P


Gooserider

 

[jabush]

jabush, the sap is supposed to be going down starting the day after the full moon, this is supposed to be a gradual cycle, reaching it's peak on the new moon, 25th July.

Then after the new moon it gradually starts to rise.

So far my wood seems to drying very fast, though the only thing I have to go by is what it's doing now compared to 3 months ago.

I will have more to go by next year.

December 20th, 2006 is supposed to be the best day of the year to cut firewood or timber for the whole year according to everything I have read and found concerning wood cutting during moon phases.

It's really hard to understand all this, so I am testing dates. If it does not work or help then we will still have wood drying.


Robbie.

Update...the bark is now readily falling off the pieces of Red maple that I cut 7 weeks ago. I burned some 2-3 inch pieces Thursday night in my bbq and they lit right up.

Sorry I never posted back about the Red maple. It dried nicely by Dec/Jan and I burned every bit of it. No sizzling, no smoldering.