THE SCIENCE OF Wood Stacking

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MOTHER'S HEARTH

From Shaker rounds to ricks, how to pile fuelwood for maximum seasoning.

By Ceylon Monroe.

In my part of upper New England, winters are long and cold; security is a big stack of well-seasoned firewood. The urge to "get the wood in" runs deep. It's an itch that kicks up when the leaves begin turning in mid-August and that won't stay scratched until the snow season's fuel supply is split, stacked, and ready to hand.

There is an art and a science to building a woodpile. Some say there's a spiritual side to it as well, but I can't help you much with that. You'd have to come to meeting already knowing that there's something more to a tree than wood, bark, and leaves as the Indians and the old-time French-Canadian axmen did, and the way a few modern woodsmen and women still do.

Firewood just dumped in a heap won't dry and it won't burn well. Rain will run down and soak into cut ends while ground moisture will migrate up and soak into spongy inner bark. But even the toughest ash and beech fire logs will start quickly and burn efficiently (with little creosote-making smoke) if seasoned in the woods for 6 months to a year, sectioned to stove length, the big logs half-split, and all of it piled in the woodshed or barn for some months more. The hardwood should be quartered; the pine should be split to kindling and piled again to surface-dry in a warm cellar for a few weeks or months and finally brought upstairs to heat and dry crisp for a day or two near the stove. Henry Thoreau neglected the work of piling and repiling when he wrote, "Wood warms you twice ...once when you cut it and again when you burn it." By my count it warms you six or seven times — most of that in building and tearing down woodpiles.

Stacked in the Woods

Since colonial days, wood cut from trees too small to saw into lumber has been bought, sold, and traded by the cord — 128 cu ft of 4-ft-long logs and air in a stack 8 ft long and 4 ft high. Loggers were paid by the cord as piled in the woods — each cord was anchored at one end against a standing tree with the other end ricked against a pair of stout poles sunk in the snow or soft ground. A crafty woodcutter would build in as much air as he could, padding his wages a bit and helping speed the seasoning process. Left in the woods through at least one season of dry winter air, the logs would lose their live wood moisture content in excess of ambient humidity (about 20%) through evaporation in warm weather and, more slowly, via sublimation after a frost.