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93% of my estimate
Tuesday, December 22 2015
Temperatures climbed as high as 50 degrees Fahrenheit today, though it was also rainy enough for Gretchen to postpone the dogs' morning walk until the afternoon, well after a morning visit to the physical therapist for her troublesome back. Meanwhile, my back continues to hold out as I bring home hundred pound loads of firewood on a daily basis from the forest. Today, despite rain that rose briefly above a drizzle, I ventured far down the Gullies Trail, to the place below where I'd been gathering wood recently. Unfortunately, despite attempts to sharpen my chain blade (I used a hand file, though it wasn't the right kind), my saw performed so poorly that I had to augment the few pieces I managed to cut with wood I had cut many weeks before. Today's load came to 98.2 pounds.
Later I noticed that the bottom horizontal rails on my indoor firewood rack were sagging noticeably under the weight of what I estimated to be 800 pounds of wood. Since I would have to weigh all the wood anyway as part of my eventual ash calculation, I removed it all from the rack, weighing it as I did so, and then installed little two-by-four blocks to support the rails (half-inch black iron pipes), one in the center of each rail. The weight of the wood, by the way, was 745.15 pounds, 93% of my estimate, which had been based on the measured volume (a little over 1/5th of a cord) and a value for the density of dry White Oak (4200 pounds/cord). Either it's drier than the wood used for that figure, or I'd stacked it with more voids than are typically included in cord calculations. I suspect the later, because when I carefully restacked it to avoid such voids, the pile lost at least 10% of its volume. It' also important to mention that a good 30% of the wood on that rack is actually Northern Red Oak, not Chestnut Oak (which is similar to White Oak), and Red Oak has a reported density of only 3528 pounds/cord. There's also a trace of White Pine in the pile, and it's density is supposedly only 2250 pounds/cord.
Late this afternoon Gretchen and Sarah the Vegan went to a book release party for a somewhat anachronistic vegan cookbook that Sarah had played a role in bringing to life (she's editor specializing in cookbooks), though neither were especially excited about this particular book. I later saw a copy of the book and it actually looked a lot better than I had been led to believe.
Sarah and Gretchen returned to our place after the party to drink tall glasses of water and watch Golden Age teevee, especially episodes of Master of None (one episode of which had a character mentioning that now is indeed a television golden age).
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