Making your own firewood: when to cut it, how to season it and which machine you need

Every autumn we get chainsaws in the workshop that have spent the summer in the garage and are now expected to produce a whole winter's firewood over two weekends. It works out fine if you plan it: good firewood is made a year ahead, and safety starts before you pull the cord.

When to cut

Fell in winter, with the sap down: the wood holds less water and seasons faster. If your firewood comes from a summer prune or a summer felling, no harm done — just reckon on it taking longer to be ready.

The species around here behave very differently:

• Holm oak and oak: the best firewood in the Empordà, dense and with long-lasting embers. Needs 18 to 24 months to season.
• Olive: excellent — burns slowly and gives off little smoke. Make the most of the late-winter prunings.
• Pine: lights easily and heats up fast, but it is resinous, it spits and it dirties the flue. Good for getting the fire going, not for keeping it in overnight.
• Fruit trees and poplar: they burn well but quickly; ideal for the first hour.

Seasoning it properly

Green wood is more than half water by weight. Burning it means throwing heat away evaporating that water and coating the flue with tar. To get it below 20% moisture:

• Cut and split it before you stack it: wood loses water through the open faces, not through the bark.
• Stack it up off the ground (a few pallets work perfectly), covered on top and open at the sides, facing the tramontana (the strong north wind) so the air can move through it.
• If you cut it to stove length from day one (usually 25 or 33 cm), come winter all you have to do is carry it indoors.

The chainsaw for firewood

For logs up to 30 cm, a 40 to 50 cc chainsaw with a 40 or 45 cm bar is about right; for big holm oak trunks you need to move up in cc. Three things we say over and over in the workshop:

• Work on a sawhorse, never with the log on the ground: the chain stays off the stones and your back stays out of it.
• Sharp chain and the chain oil always topped up. If you are having to force it, stop and sharpen.
• Never cut with the tip of the bar — that is where kickback comes from. Chainsaw trousers, a helmet with a visor and gloves are not optional.

If your chainsaw has not turned a chain in a while, run through our chainsaw maintenance guide before the season starts.

Splitting: buy a log splitter or hire one?

Splitting with an axe is good for you, right up until the knotty 30 cm holm oak rounds turn up. A hydraulic log splitter does that work with no effort and no risk. To choose one, look at the force (5 to 7 tonnes for softwood and medium logs; 10 tonnes or more for holm oak, oak and olive), the maximum log length, and whether it is vertical (easier for heavy rounds you would rather not lift) or horizontal (faster with medium logs).

If you make your own firewood once a year, there is no need to buy: at Tecomac we hire out a 10-tonne vertical log splitter that runs off 220 V, for €80 per day. One day is enough to split a whole winter's worth.

Want us to get the chainsaw ready before you start, or to book the log splitter? Give us a call and we will sort it out.