When “Firewood” is More Than Just Firewood

This week I was discussing with a local friend my ongoing efforts to “catch up” in the eternal race for firewood inventory (it is a local habit to enter the winter with two winters’ worth of firewood; we entered last year with a year-and-a-half’s worth of firewood, and are now relying that surplus to get us through Christmas while the new stuff dries out) and he mentioned a load of timbers that had been dropped off at his place.  His brother works for a large hardwood sawmill, and when the metal detectors find metal in a log or timber being milled, that piece is summarily rejected.  These tulip poplar and oak timbers were simply going to be chopped and split as firewood.

So I dropped by to see what he had in hand, and oh my was there a pile of big timbers.  I picked out three 10-foot 10″x 15″ chunks of white oak to make some workbenches.  These were among the smallest timbers with some being 16×16 by about 15-feet long.  There were a pair of logs that exceeded 24-inches diameter and twenty feet in length.

He thinks his brother can get him some more as time goes by and the inventory of rejected timbers grows.

Yowser.