Scott found a pretty good idea online for wood racks. They're pretty easy to build and they keep everything up off the ground. We've started out racking them up under the awning so they can start drying right away. We've had a LOT of rain, and we really need to get them out of the weather.
The first thing we did was to pick up all the stuff we split at the start, before we decided peeling all the logs would be a better approach. I hate to say it, but a lot of them are pretty black, and the ones on the ground were a little slimy. We still have to do the Borax solution, so hopefully we can scrub them off and they will be okay.
We've been having an issue with the wood getting moldy on the surface due to all the humid weather we were having, and at the workshop, Richard Flatau thought we could probably scrub the mold off - but said that if we couldn't, we should just BURN those pieces. (I about fainted, since that could possibly end up being over half our wood if the stuff doesn't come off easily). (I'm not actually all that worried, because a lot of it has kind of dried up and gone away on it's own as the weather has changed.)
You can see, by comparison that the newly cut stuff looks SO much better....
However, Poplar (Aspen) is pretty well known for turning black as it ages anyway, so we've been talking about what we're going to do about that. One option is to just let it go black, and allow that to be the look of the house. I'm not really sure I like that plan. I'm afraid it will just look like weathered shit - kind of like those cedar sided houses that have gone all silvery with black stains at the bottom and the top where the rain and show hits them the most. It just doesn't look good....
Another option we saw mentioned recently is to get a really good chop-saw (Scott is keen on this idea), and shave off the ends as we're building the house, so they're nice and white and clean, and then getting some breathable stain to treat the ends so they won't blacken again. We've talked about doing log prep on Friday evenings next year, so that on the weekends we can just really push on the actual mortar work, so that could work out pretty well.
OH! Check this out! We got this perfect wagon to haul split logs from the piles to where we're stacking them, and it's exactly the perfect width for our log ends!!
Also, Scott's been thinking about this log stacking stuff and how we want to cover the racks, etc., and he's come up with an improvement on the design that he believes will allow us to stack more wood and have a framework to drape the tarp over that will keep some air flow over the logs. In fact, he was so proud of this, he actually came and got me from the bedroom and dragged me into the kitchen so I could take a picture of his drawing for the blog.
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