Eastern guys

I never did burn soft wood.
Is soft wood rotten wood?
Or has it been marinated with some tasty concoction?

Because even pine is harder than my fingers which i manage to hit at least 1 good time a year with a split.

I'll be burning 2+ cords of hemlock this year.

skinnykid said:

I know this has been kicked to death so I just want an opinion.

I have a chance to get a Butt Load of Hemlock for very cheap/free.

Would you grab it and burn it winter of 2009-10?

Click to expand...

Hemlock is always availble free in my area of New York - and it rarely gets taken. Hemlock is the #1 local wood sawed into rough framing lumber, and the local mills tend to get backlogged with huge piles of hemlock slabwood. Many now are chipping the slaps instead, just to get rid of it. My neighbor owns and runs a mill, and his latest effort is to chip all the slabwood, then dye it, and sell it as landscape mulch.

As far as is it any good? Generally speaking, NO. The word "good" means nothing unless compared to something else, it's based on relativity. So, even comparing hemlock to other softwood-slabwoods - it's one of the worst. It's hard to get dry, when stacked it tends to retain mousture and rot - at least in this area. I suppose an area with better sun would do better. If I stack a load of slab-hemlock outside, next to a stacked load of split maple, birch, oak, or a load of slab-pine, etc. - the latter will be dry enough to burn by fall, the hemlock usually won't. In fact, I have one huge pile up in my field that's been sitting there for four years now. Still pretty useless - but it's not covered.

So, if you live in a low sun area like here in Otsego County, NY, the hemlock is pretty useless as a firewood unless you've got excellent storage conditions.

I get huge piles of hemlock here at my farm. I stack some in my indoor wood-furnace room and virtually "bake" it before using. It does burn, but does not burn near as well as red or white pine (comparing it to other slabwoods). One note. We do use it when making maple syrup. When we've got a roaring fire under the evaporator, all we use is softwood. Keep in mind this type of fire is about as hot as a woodfire can get. When we want to lower the temp a bit, we throw in hemlock slabs, and when we need it hotter we throw in white pine slabs.

Hemlock is usually cut into tinbers in the east, not like spruce, pine and fir which can be classified and cut as dimensional lumber 2x4 2x6 2x12, etc.... Dimensional lumber is 4x4 and 6x6. 8x8 and above. it is a conifer(softwood) and it is great for burning only if you get it cheap...It has lots of sap and makes a good fire starter wood. Or a good additive to your hard wood stove filler. It is mostly used for posts and beams in the east as fir is too expensive, but stronger than hem.

It has been my experience that rows of slabwood stacked by themselves will never dry. To get around this problem I stack a row of splits,then a row of slabs on top of that and repeat the process until the row is about 5ft high. This seems to be the only way to get good air circulation to dry those slabs. I also find that the slabs easily absorb moisture, so the top of the row must be covered.

JoeyJ said:

Hemlock is usually cut into tinbers in the east, not like spruce, pine and fir which can be classified and cut as dimensional lumber .

Click to expand...

Not in my area of New York. Hemlock is primarily used to make rough-sawn 1" thick boards up to 14" wide and rough framing lumber. Also horse-barn flooing boards that are a full 2" thick. Several mills near me saw it, and ship all over state. The boards are very popular for barn siding since they weather a much nicer color than white pine. Hemock boards are also planed on one side, shiplapped, and sold as "channel siding." The most common wood for making 6 X 6 or 8 X 8 timbers is red pine (although sometime hemlock), and 4 x 4s with white pine. Hemlock is also the only wood being sawed locally for rough framing lumber, e.g. 2 x 4s up to 2 x 14s. I built many structures with it, and when you have to lift a 16' hemlock 2 x 12, green - it's a killer.

I framed my house with hemlock and larch, and with rough-sawed lumber generally being cut long I had a lot of scrap left over which burned beautiful. I'm surrounded by hardwoods but wouldn't hesitate to burn hemlock if it was for the taking.

dvellone said:

I framed my house with hemlock and larch, and with rough-sawed lumber generally being cut long I had a lot of scrap left over which burned beautiful. I'm surrounded by hardwoods but wouldn't hesitate to burn hemlock if it was for the taking.

Click to expand...

I'm in the same situation. I do a lot of building with hemlock, and have huge piles of hemlock cutoffs. I burn it because it's here taking up space. But, I'd never pay anything for it. On the other hand, I like having slabs from red or white pine around. Makes great kindling, and also - great for fast heat when you're boiling maple sap to make syrup. Throw hemlock into the hot pine fire, and it cools down a bit. Very easy to observe when you're making syrup.

Here the rough sawn board stuff and rough 2x is mostly Eastern White pine, with dressed 4 sides being spruce for 2x and dressed 4 sides hemlock for 4x+....Doug fir is a luxury and we do pay dearly for it.

JoeyJ said:

Here the rough sawn board stuff and rough 2x is mostly Eastern White pine, with dressed 4 sides being spruce for 2x and dressed 4 sides hemlock for 4x+....Doug fir is a luxury and we do pay dearly for it.

Click to expand...

Here in New York, I haven't seen Doug Fir in many years. It used to the wood we special-ordered for extra structural stength - usually only in 2" X 12" and 2" X 14"s. It has better load-capacity then normal SPF framing lumber. And yeah, the "F" in SPF stands for Fir, but it never happens around here. Now, when I need high-strength framing lumber, I have to either order southern yellow pine- or - just buy some wet pressure treated. Stores stock yellow pine in treated, but untreated is special order only - except for 5/4" X 12" stair treads.

Store-bought framing lumber here is always spruce. I just picked up a batch of 24 foot 2" X 4"s and it came from Russia! That's pretty hard to figure.

Local rough framing lumber is all hemlock. White pine is never used - it's way too weak to hold anything up. White pine is used for planed boards, rough siding, and planed ornamental 4" X 4" for interior work.

I'll add, that at least our local hemlock does not stay smooth after its planed. Parts of the grain keep rising. On the other hand, hemlock from Canada does not seem to have that problem. In fact, any ornamental pressure treated parts bought around here, e.g. turned spindles, newell posts, etc. are Canadian hemlock - not southern yellow pine like the framing lumber is.