Firewood- Transporting from pile to Stove

[Adirondack case guy]

Well, I can't doo what I used to do, BUT I still can use a welder and build machines to make firewood handling easy and fun.

The boiler for my whole house heating system is located in my shop. The woodshed is adjacent to the shop and can be acessed through a man door without going outside. I built the little red wagon in the first pic. to bring in a couple of days wood per trip. My boiler wood is 19"+- so the wagon holds 25cu.ft. of wood.
We also have a central air tight fireplace which we use to heat the house this time of year and in the spring during similar weather. It only heats the living area and not the cellar and tractor shop. My wood for that is stored in our walk-in cellar. Several years back, I built a dumb waiter to bring fireplace wood up to the side of the fireplace. To get the wood to the dumb waiter in the cellar, I disassembled an old electric feed cart and used its frame to make a wood cart. It is only 30' from stack to dumb waiter, but the system saves mannnny trips with arm loads of wood up cellar stairs. The dumb waiter was fabed from steel Kubota shipping crates and overhead door track and rollers, and is raised and lowered with a HF 120V 1300# winch. I intergrated a framework into the roof trusses to mount the winch and support the weight. The whole dumb waiter system is vertically supported from celler floor to the trusses. The dumb waiter holds 18cu.ft of 17"+- wood.
We also cut wood for the evaporators up in the sap house.
Back in the mid 50s, Dad built the trolly in the pics to bring wood in to the evaporators. the track is 3" channel iron, and I don't know where he got the trolly wheel assys to build the cart.
These homemade tools make our wood handling in the utilization phase much easier.
Stay warm folks, and don't work too hard, unless you need to knock off some pounds around the waist. HeHe.
Loren, the Acg.

 

[Greg1959]

I always enjoy your pics and stories that go along with them

Thanks.

 

[JMOR]

Good thinking, nice work!

 

[Billy NY]

Innovation and necessity, better to have the handling part of it on your terms, I had best not pay too close attention here, I could fit a dumbwaiter next to a fireplace here, use a pallet jack and stage bins with my forks in the garage.....

Certainly looks like a top notch operation from here Loren !

I was thinking about where the rail-rolling stock type wheels came from. Well there was a lot more railroad infrastructure in those days, we used to have quite a bit of it around here, most is gone, seems that trolley came from that era somewhere. I have seen here or somewhere a very similar wood shed to feed a boiler, same means, trolley and tracks to shift the wood to its final destination.

 

[TomH in PA]

The trolley wheels and track looks like they came out of a coal mine.

 

[FLOLDFORD]

I'm always amazed at your ingenuity and the things that you build!!

 

[Adirondack case guy]

There are no coal mines around here, but I can remember when the local railroad was in the next town over and there were little gas powered towmotors which pulled similar carts with ties etc. to maintain the tracks. There were also limestone quarrys around here and posably came from one of them. I don't know. The wheels don't have bearings, just bronze bushings and greese fitings so they wern't made for high speed. A third posability is they were part of the carriage on a sawmill.
Loren

 

[Ande]

Loren, do you ever give your mind a rest? Man, I admire your projects and how you put them together.

 

[markct]

Many factories around new England had simular wheels and carts to move materials around, often thru tunnels between buildings or just around huge plants