I burn a lot of Oak and Locust here. Having an older stove, I am relighting daily.
Tinder and kindling are sometimes in short supply. I do save 'splitter trash',
chips of wood that naturally fall to the ground during splitting- and I find it well
worth the trouble to pick it up, personally. In addition, I've also found it well worth
the time to 'manicure' the splits I'm feeding to the stove. This is another source
of tinder that should not be overlooked IMO. Not everyone is going to have this
stuff. I think Ash is probably a much cleaner splitting wood, for example, but I
never get any Ash around here. I fill a small box with these freebie splinters
all the time when I'm using Oak or Locust- in particular, Red Oak and Black
Locust. Pretty good splinters from Cherry, too. White Oak is 'OK' but doesn't
produce as much as Red Oak.
Kindling is sometimes in short supply if I had a busy summer and didn't cut
up a lot of small branches. Some years it's scarce, other years I have plenty.
I think this year I will go out and look for some construction scraps and some
clean pallets for kindling. I'm likely to run out before the season ends this year.
Anyway, I bet a lot of folks just throw their 'fuzzy'/splintery Oak and Locust into
the firebox as is. I'm enjoying it and finding it useful to pull off those splinters
first. YMMV...
P.S. Just to be clear, a lot of these type splinters are pretty darned big- at times
they could also be called small kindling.
Tinder and kindling are sometimes in short supply. I do save 'splitter trash',
chips of wood that naturally fall to the ground during splitting- and I find it well
worth the trouble to pick it up, personally. In addition, I've also found it well worth
the time to 'manicure' the splits I'm feeding to the stove. This is another source
of tinder that should not be overlooked IMO. Not everyone is going to have this
stuff. I think Ash is probably a much cleaner splitting wood, for example, but I
never get any Ash around here. I fill a small box with these freebie splinters
all the time when I'm using Oak or Locust- in particular, Red Oak and Black
Locust. Pretty good splinters from Cherry, too. White Oak is 'OK' but doesn't
produce as much as Red Oak.
Kindling is sometimes in short supply if I had a busy summer and didn't cut
up a lot of small branches. Some years it's scarce, other years I have plenty.
I think this year I will go out and look for some construction scraps and some
clean pallets for kindling. I'm likely to run out before the season ends this year.
Anyway, I bet a lot of folks just throw their 'fuzzy'/splintery Oak and Locust into
the firebox as is. I'm enjoying it and finding it useful to pull off those splinters
first. YMMV...
P.S. Just to be clear, a lot of these type splinters are pretty darned big- at times
they could also be called small kindling.
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