How To Shorten Firewood That Is Too Long For Your Wood Burner

Here’s the thing – different wood burning appliances have different length requirements when it comes to firewood you can fit in there.

Even though the common standard for firewood length is 16 inches, it doesn’t mean that such pieces will work in your kind of insert, stove or a furnace.

So what should a homeowner do if he receives, or even cuts himself a batch of wood that is tad bit too long? Well, as far as I’m concerned, more cutting will need to be done…

But such a waste of time could be made a bit easier on you, if you follow the tips I talk about below, that is.

Build a jig

I think this is the best way you can tackle this dilemma, especially so if you’ve got a bunch of wood to shorten.

A bandsaw, reciprocating saw or miter saw may also do the trick, but I just can’t see anyone using one for even a cord of wood. It’ll just take way too much time to be useful…

You can build such a sawbuck with left over wood you can get from a pallet, or you might as well go ahead and buy some 2x4s and build it that way.

The reason why I like this method is because you can cut a whole bunch of splits in one go, and it’s rather safe.

With that said, I would highly suggest strapping the top of the pile with a pair of bungee cords or even a ratchet strap first, just to be sure none of the wood goes loose during sawing.

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The jig does not have to be of this exact look – you can build anything from a traditional X shaped sawbuck, to more of a V extended. The goal here is to be able to gang cut many firewood pieces in one. That’s pretty much it.

What to do with those left over short ends?

Burn it like any other wood.

I mean, it’s firewood at the end of the day, just in a lot shorter form, if you will.

With that said, you might consider keeping these smaller pieces for the off season heating; that is, use it up when you don’t need that much heat in the house.

What about a log holder?

If you have larger and longer wood to deal with, especially if it’s still not split (that is, in the rounds), you may give a shot at building something like this:

And yes, picking up every single round, putting it in there and cutting one by one like that would take a significant amount of time, but hey, this is an alternative, and you may find it more useful than that wood jig I wrote about earlier.

Preventing the same from happening in the future

If the reason why you turned out with so many inconsistent cuts is because you were eyeballing each and every one of them, welp, that’s how it goes when you do not measure.

You can’t go wrong with a tape measure and a piece of chalk, but I’ve written a whole post about the very same thing, with a lot more ways on how to do it. Check it out by clicking here.