Oooooh that smell, can't you smell that smell?

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Ram 1500 with an axe...

Minister of Fire
Mar 26, 2013
2,327
New Jersey
Before processing wood two years ago, I would never had thought that trees or fruit trees would ever carry over the characteristics of their fruit and their scents..... That being said, I have experienced a lot of different aromas from my stacks. The best being from black cherry to the worst being a vinegar smell from red oak, that I really did come to enjoy after about 2 weeks and realizing that I needed to enjoy my hard work of splitting all that red oak :)
What have you all experienced and enjoyed senses wise while splitting or enjoying your stacks in your yard?
Oh what made me write this post was being able to enjoy the root beerish aroma as I was splitting and enjoying the sights of the batch of Sassafrass that I have....
 
For reference for those not in the "know" :)\\



Love the smell of fresh split cherry !
 
You mentioned the two I enjoy. Black cherry is spicy sweet to me, and I enjoy the strong oak smell. Oak smell makes me think of new wood floors, lumber yards, and Bourbon barrels. Sassafras is nice, too.

I've even grown to enjoy the cow manure smell of some red oaks (usually pin oaks). It actually makes me chuckle when I tell folks that I was out back splitting some $h!t and have it really smell that way!
 
I like cherry and maple. The oddest smelling stuff I split was red elm , kinda smells like silage when first opened up.
 
My black cherry has been giving off a kind of anisette smell, but only when it rains on the stack...
 
I set aside some black cherry to mix with the charcoal in my smoker. My personal favorite so far has been black birch. It has a wintergreen smell to it. Ill be working the other end of the spectrum soon here - got a couple cord of black locust to do next.
 
And here I thought this was gonna be about hittin the local Taco Shak after a hard day of cuttin wood...
 
Bradford pear tree splitting, like wafting a fine white wine still in the oak barrel, or the smelll of 5 year seasoned maple burning over an open fire. Citrus smelling pine, but i do cringe thinking about the sour aroma of a burning beech log. disgusting.
 
I have pin oak that I split 4 months ago that still smells like manure. I will never again get pin oak. it smells soooooooo bad.
 
My favorite was some White Oak that was sitting in rounds for a couple years; Sweetest vanilla smell imaginable! Slow going, getting through that pile. :) I have a trunk to get, that's been down for several years...hoping that will be a treat.
 
Gotta go with the cherry too. I can't wait to fire up this fall and smell it for the first time
 
The honey locust in my avatar. That's one of my favorites!! Hard to explain the smell, something like a sweet bread or desert dough! Pat
 
I'll never forget the load of oak rough-cut boards my dad stickered in the garage of our barn when I was a kid. Came fresh cut and green - he put a fan on it to move the air through it. Opened the garage door to let the air our - stank like crazy, lol...
 
Sass and Honey Locust so far for me.
 
River Birch has a great smell, splitting and burning. Kind of like Cherry but I like it even better.
 
Cherry smells great when burning. I like the smell of the hickory and oak in my stacks. Whenever I mow around them I go slow and savor the delicious smell of all that money saved not buying heating oil
 
i love the smell of cherry and sass.
and even though i love black locust as fire wood,the smell when its green almost makes me sick,headache and nasious(sp)
 
Cherry, Black Birch, Sassafras, Apple, and even though many don't like it I kind of like the smell of Sycamore...just something about it !
 
Cutting and splitting maple in the spring has a definite maple syrup odor. If I peel off some bark and scrap the inner bark it definitely tastes sweet.
 
Six days out of the week I have to say Sugar maple. The sap of sugars smells just like the syrup that gets boiled down from it. On the Sabbath day however, I have to vote for Applewood, it would be disloyal to vote otherwise. And when Im on vacation its Hickory for sure. But there was this rare occasion of a flowering crabapple that got crushed by a fallen black cherry that had to get severely pruned and I never smelled anything like it. It smelled like concord grapes. And the wood was streaked with purple and rose colored ribbons thruout the heartwood.
 
I used to work in a pulp mill that processed pine. One of the residues from the process was crude turpentine. It was a difficult to process waste product to us but there was a company in florida that would buy whatever we could collect. It turns out that many of the flavorings and fragrances came from turpines, including a majority of the rose oil used in Perfume. I have a couple of sample bottles of peppermint, anise and lemon oil, that were all extracted from turpentine.
 
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