How Small Do Y'all Go

95% of the wood I burn is from droppin live trees. I waste almost nothing. The really small twigs(1" and smaller) I pile up and leave them sit in the timber till next year and then pick them up for kindlin when I got room on the truck. If I'm sroungin from the brush dump I get alittle pickier bout that.

I start filling the truck with the large diameter stuff and continue loading til I'm full. If the small stuff fits, I'll take it but generally won't cut it with the chain saw. I'll take stuff down to 1-2 inches if I can grab it in 10 foot lengths and then deal with them later in the compound miter saw. No sense in going back for more if there is only small stuff left which in my opinion, is less than 4 inches in diameter.

If its sound & not rotten,I bring in everything over 1 1/2" or so.When its from 1 1/2 to 4 inch diameter I leave it in longer lengths from 3 to 10 feet,finish cutting later after its dumped in a pile.If some of the small stuff is hickory or cherry its cut in 6"-9" lengths on bandsaw or mitre saw then saved in a closed barrel or several cardboard boxes for the smoker & Weber kettle.

I tend to use this small dry hardwood as regular fuel for the smoker & Weber also,I have plenty of it,its free & I like it better than 'commercial' bagged charcoal.Smaller twigs/branches are left in scattered neat piles in the woods for wildlife cover.

We have to go 40 miles one way to get wood so The big rounds go in first with anything and everything that will fit in between them. Now last year I cut down our elm tree that was way too close to the house and threw anything 1.5" or less in the burn pile. With this super mild winter I started looking at that burn pile differently and took out everything bigger than 1" and used it in the stove. One hot dry summer seasoned that small stuff really well. I got about a couple weeks worth of small late afternoon fires out of it.

If it is still in the form it took on the tree, all branchy and tough to handle, then I leave it. If it is cut in a way that makes it easy to deal with, such as small diameter poles, , I'll take pretty small stuff. If it were cut to stove length I'd take twigs.

I keep 2" and bigger. All 16" long.

Not a scrounger, but I am a frugal Yankee . . . figure it took the tree quite a while to grow and I hate to waste wood since all wood when burned will produce heat regardless of the size so I tend to cut up everything 2 inches and larger . . . the rest of the smaller branches I leave behind to break down into tree food.

I pile stuff smaller than about 1.5" and burn on site. The woods need ashes too. I just don't take the time I'm hunting BTU's and if I bend over to pick something up it had better be worth the time. When the bark falls off after the wood is CSS I use the bark as kindling. Its already cut to size and everything.

Like some of the others, I seem to have zeroed in on 1-2 inches. I do most of my processing on my own ten acres though, so return trips to the scrounge site are not an issue for me. Also, if I am cleaning up on someone else's property, I will usually cut smaller as well and try to leave the place as clean as I can.

I used to be very anal about collecting/cutting/processing everything with very little slash to go in the brush pile. I'm talking twigs here. After about 3 years of that I have way too much small stuff laying around in my wood piles and in trash barrels for kindling. So last year I started trying to do what was easiest for me and my saw. I try to spend as little time as possible limbing the small stuff off the tree and making a "naked" tree that is easy for me to buck up from top to trunk. In the process I try to leave as many straight pieces as possible, and usually this gets me down to about 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter before the the limbs get too small and have too many branches or forks in them. At this size they are relatively easy to move into the brush pile as well. Any bigger and its more work to throw them in the brush pile than it is to buck them into firewood.

I never take anything smaller than 6" and I'm often upset with myself for taking smaller than 8". I do push the tops back in the woods and try to pile fairly tight to provide cover for rabbits. I never much cared for excess bark in my stove as it seems to create more ash for less BTU than split wood.

I was thinking about this today, as I was scrounging between 3 trees on my neighbor's property that blew over a year or so ago (just moved here, so that's why I didn't get on them sooner). I've scrounged with people that want to pick up anything and everything, but I don't go for anything less than about 3 inches diameter. For me to pick it up (or cut it up), it'd have to be big enough for me to grasp in my hand and give someone a good clubbing with, not just a swat. Otherwise not worth picking up, hauling, storing and then carrying to the stove. I think I got that way due to scrounging with my grandfather, and I picked up his sense of what should be cut for the stove and what should be thrown on the brushpile. I really didn't need to be taught the difference, it is almost instinctive for someone that grew up as a wood scrounger.

I was also thinking about it in the other extreme, since we lost a lot of trees as a kid and how he would still pay for firewood even though there were at least three trees down at anytime that we didn't heavily scrounge from. When the trunks are just so large or the wood is down in a lot of brush and rough terrain, I leave it lay. These trees are just past my own backyard, but I know I'm not going to battle the briars, weeds and the fact that they have fallen overlapped to harvest every bit of this wood, even though I'd like to.

The brush mower can mow anything under 2" so I take everything bigger. I do go around after I've taken everything I'm going to take and dice up the leftovers to make sure they lay on the ground to promote rot and easy mowing.

Nothing smaller than 2" here. That stays in the woods. If the top limbs are all crooked then I just leave them but there aren't that many of the really bad ones.

Generally 2-3", and the rest is left where it landed. I also leave large, gnarly trunks out there these days.

firefighterjake said:

Not a scrounger, but I am a frugal Yankee . . . figure it took the tree quite a while to grow and I hate to waste wood since all wood when burned will produce heat regardless of the size so I tend to cut up everything 2 inches and larger . . . the rest of the smaller branches I leave behind to break down into tree food.

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I'm with Jake, I take everything down to about 2". Sometimes only down to 3" depending on how much time I have available, what type of wood it is, how difficult it is to get to it etc.

I cut down to 1". Takes almost no effort or time to cut a 1'' branch. This all gets stacked with the rest of the wood. As I come across it, I drop it at the base of my indoor wood rack. When I wake up, a handfull of 1" superdry hardwood starts right up from embers and gives a good fast bed of coals. I don't have to make kindling.
I love the rounds between 1 and 6". I don't split them, they go right in the stack, much less work IMHO. I can't imagine leaving them behind.

Over 2 inches goes in the wood pile to fill in the space between big splits, under 2 inches goes into my kindling pile, I have two years worth of kindling so I stopped taking anything under 2 inches, if you need kindling take it, if you dont Id probably leave it.