Wood Store

We have about 10m3 of wood from the Willow trimming and Cypress felling last year.  It has been knocking about in log form to allow it to dry sufficiently for splitting.  The Willow (trimmed outside growing season) is already dry enough to burn but the Cypress will need to season for another year.

I bought an electric log splitter (Forest Master FM10) and it is brilliant.  It got through all the logs in a day and a half over the weekend.

wood-pile

The log store will need to be enormous to hold all of the wood.   This one is going to be 7m long.  The ends borrow some features from the house timber framed gable, and I’m aiming for exposed rafter ends.  The wood is the same price no matter how nutty you get with the design, the dimension are intended to result in near zero wastage.

frames-in-progress

It has been raining all day, otherwise the log store would have been up by now.  It was only supposed to be a weekend project.

It only rained for half the next day but I decided I like rain and got on with putting up the frame.   It didn’t end up quite zero wastage as I cut some of the rafters the wrong way around. Later on the middle parts of the frame got uprights to match the ends as they make it easier to stack the wood.

wood-store-frame

It took another day to nail the roof on and cut some pallets down to stand the wood on. It rained heavily before I finished the roof and the timber frame stayed dry with all of the overhangs and drip edges working as they should apart from a cock up where the feather edge board is joined which ought to have had a little gutter rather than a frame underneath.

Now I just need to finish off the trim at the bottom to prevent willow leaves from blowing in, then fill the store with wood.  It occurred to me it wouldn’t take much longer to make a car port when the tent needs to be replaced.

wood-store-2

It took a further couple of days (between rain storms) to stack the wood store with wood and tidy up.   The size turned out to be quite a good guess with space remaining for only a few more logs.  It is a much more efficient use of space than the pile of wood that originally sat there.

wood-stacked

I made a mistake and put some wood stain on the lighter wood to help it match the darker wood.    Turned out to be a varnish of some sort which flakes of in an untidy manner.   I would have been better waiting a few years for all of the wood to go to grey.