Handyman Guide > Burning wood

Wood is still used as a fuel in rural areas for cooking and heating purposes. A familiar sight in rural kitchens is the coal and wood stove that does the cooking as well as keep the kitchen warm and comfortable.



As wood is usually sold by the cord rather than by weight it is best to get such wood as hickory, oak, and maple, rather than pine, elm, and birch. The hardwoods will produce considerably more heat than the others.

You will frequently find with wood burning stoves that a brown liquid oozes out of the seams between lengths of stove pipe. This is creosote which has condensed in the chimney. One way to avoid this troublc is to see that only small hot fires are burned in the stove. A hot fire will warm up the stove pipe and chimney so that the creosote is carried out of the chimney as a gas. If there is a smoldering fire in the stove, the chimney will never get warm and the creosote will condense into a liquid.

Sawing Firewood. Any homeowner who likes to keep a fire going in the fireplace can save himself a considerable amount of money each year by buying his firewood by the cord length and cutting it himself rather than purchasing the more expensive fireplace length wood. Sawing large size wood is not difficult provided you have the right equipment, and it also provides a mild form of exercise which is beneficial to a great many of us.

For working alone, a buck or swedish saw is an excellent tool for cutting wood up to four or five inches in diameter. The tension of the blade can be adjusted with a turnbuckle or some other device.

Wood over five inches in diameter is best cut with a one-man crosscut saw, which has a blade about 4 feet long. Some of these saws can easily be converted into two-man saws by changing handles. The trick of using a two-man saw is never to push the blade back towards the other fellow. Let him pull it back. As soon as you try to push the saw it will buckle and the work will go slowly. Saws used for cutting firewood should be cared for like any good handsaw. Have them sharpened from time to time and hang them up when not in use so the teeth will not get damaged.

For easy sawing you should have a good saw buck. This should be solidly constructed out of 2 x 4 in. or 2 x 6 in. lumber. The legs should be wide enough apart so that the buck will not tilt easily and it should be high enough to suit the person using it.

As far as axes go, the home mechanic does best with a single blade ax, and the head should not be too heavy. A three-pound head is about right, for if the head is too heavy, chopping and splitting wood will be an exhausting business. Double-bitted axes are very heavy and should be used only by those with considerable strength, not to mention experIence.

Keep the edge of the ax blade sharp and free of nicks by not allowing it to strike metal objects or rocks. Be sure that the head is secure on the handle. If it begins to pull loose, use wedges driven into the handle to tighten it. Do not tighten the head by soaking the ax in water. This will cause the wood handle to expand, and while the head may seem secure the wood in time will dry out and shrink away from the head.



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Elements of the House - Building Materials - Lumber - Molding - Kinds of Wood and their Characteristics - Plywood Wallboard - Roofing Materials - Concrete - Mixing Concrete - Cement Mortar - Concrete Forms - Concrete Blocks - Cinder Blocks - Bricklaying - Fieldstone - Anchoring in Masonry - Soldering.

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Heating
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Plumbing
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Electricity
Definition of Terms - Ohm's Law - Alternating and Direct Current - Sources of Electrical Power - The Electrical System - Overloading the Circuit - Rewiring - Reading a Meter - Precautions - Fuses - Types of Cord - Splicing Wires - Replacing Plugs and Switches - Home Lighting - Electric Motors - Signaling System - Transformers - Burglar Alarms - Repairing the System - How to Install a Bell System.

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