Firewood ... the final solution

Yes, I built a 16' x 6' woodshed ... by myself.   8' tall.   No easy task, working with 16' lumber and 4'x 8' sheets of plywood... with no one to hold the other end.  It took me about 16 hrs to build and paint it.

Then... I finally did it.  Bought a splitter.  A Husky consumer model, 22-ton.   Wanted an Ariens with a Honda engine, but this was $400 cheaper and I bought an extended 4 year warranty that even covers normal wear.   How much can I use this a year?  Kind of felt silly about buying it but... it will save time and save my hands with the manual splitting I've been doing.   I decided not to build my screen house so I justified the cost that way.   Aside from the USA-made Briggs & Stratton engine (know for their mediocrity), it is a simple and heavily built solid steel machine.   It weighs 534 lbs, but it's fairly well balanced, not too much of a struggle to move.   I hope I don't roll it off the bluff by mistake.  It cut even the knurliest hardwood with ease.  It makes a nice compliment to my Stihl chainsaw.  

I got a helluva workout.  Especially my glutes, core and back.  As hard as any resistance work I've done.   Lifting 80lbs logs onto the trailer, rolling even heavier ones uphill and through the woods.   Although the wood was long dead, half of it was stringy and wet.  Good that it will be at the bottom of the pile.  With the splitter, I can produce a face cord of split firewood from a felled log in less than a half day.

Since I abandoned the screen house project, I upgraded my porch fireplace with the nice Preway I had intended for the screen house.  Tried it out last night.  Awesome.  It's going to make sitting outside, even in winter, nice.  Still want to add some heat shielding for the floor and deck rails, but it's great.

OK... project finished, now back to playing guitar and training on the track.