Favorite hardwoods?

Red oak.

Hop Hornbeam (Iron Wood )

Ash...Easy to split, seasons quick, abundant(at least in my area) and MLB still uses it for there baseball bats..Enough said. All the previous mentioned are good if you want to wait 2-3yrs to use them....

White ash. Have a lot, and a lot more to get

I like Sugar Maple personally. I find it seasons in 12-18 months and burns just as good as Oak.

My new favorite wood is Mulberry, easy to split great heat, cool blue flames and a fireworks show all in one!

On my property , its beech, hop hornbeam , hard maple , white ash , cherry, then soft maple. In that order.

Red oak for me, if I could have a second wood I would pick about any species of hickory to mix in with it.

I have mostly pine and soft maple.
Next in availability is red oak, white oak and cherry.

Of those, the oak is my fave.



Also have some grey birch and poplar here that was first to repopulate a clear cut area but is starving and dying from pine trees growing over them. Both rot pretty quick as they lose the daylight battle. I've cut a few of the grey birch before they rot and it is decent firewood. There's a few yellow birch and they are even better.

I end up with a lot of dead wood. An old white or red oak is hard to beat. About the only green trees I cut down are thorny, honey locusts. That wood is great when seasoned. But my all-time favorite has been shag bark hickory. That tree was dead, had to wait a year+ to burn the bigger stuff, but it was worth the wait!

Favorite hardwood Red Oak. How much Red Oak in my stacks 90%. How many dead standing Red Oaks in the back yard? Hundreds waiting to be c/s/s. Why would I like anything but. The other 10% is White Pine and there are dozens of them down on the ground from all the wind storms we have had the past few years.

Kosmonauts said:

number one choice of firewood?

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Whatever is available locally is the best wood choice. All wood has about the same energy per weight as any other. Hard wood, being more dense, simply means fewer loadings to get the same heat over time than a soft wood.

http://woodheat.org/firewood.html

In our case my local woods of choice are Black Locust, Turkish/Austrian oak, and Chestnut. I also throw in a bit of trimmings from Walnut, Mulberry, and various fruit trees, but simply because I have those on our property.

If I had to pick just one of the local wood, it would be Black Locust. It seasons quickly, and it is cheap.

I live north of the "oak line" (roughly US RT2 for folks in northern new England). thus my choices are hard/sugar maple, red maple, birch ash and beech. Beech heats better than the last three but its PITA to hand split. I wont even pick up popple (aspen) but expect if that's all I had I would burn it.

I do a lot of small scale timberstand improvement when I can, cut out the crowded understory and leave the future sawlogs. Red maple tend to regenerate in clumps so I can usually plenty of firewood by trimming down the clumps

I would have to agree with whatever is available and plentiful in my area. Sooooo, there are MANY choices here. I would take the FREE stuff......LOL

I'd be happy with any of those mentioned, especially ash.

Way too many to choose from around here in Pa., very blessed and fortunate that way, but Saturday I scored some more Apple and thought "I really like Apple for fuelwood, smells nice, throws great heat" so in my current state of mind I'll say "Apple"!

Locust because it burns hot love the blue flames, last a long time and seems very plentiful lately. Plus around me it seems no one wants it.

Black locust

PA. Woodsman said:

Way too many to choose from around here in Pa., very blessed and fortunate that way, but Saturday I scored some more Apple and thought "I really like Apple for fuelwood, smells nice, throws great heat" so in my current state of mind I'll say "Apple"!

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Ah, yes...apple! I didn't even think about that, because it's so dang expensive around here. Everybody hoards it for bbq smokers.