Nails in your firewood? Just curious...

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tickbitty

Minister of Fire
Feb 21, 2008
1,567
VA
I am selling a Hearthstone II that I bought last year and wasn't able to use. The guy coming to look at it tomorrow seemed serious, so I went out to clean it up a bit. The ashes from the previous owner(s) were never cleaned out, so I did it. Lots of ashes, but the weird thing was there were like a few dozen nails in there. Different kinds and sizes. WTH? Do any of you burn furniture, or what?! Does it seem odd to you guys that there would be so many nails in the ash? I am just curious!
 
Many people burn pallet wood.
 
I have burned many 2x4 scraps with nails in them. No harm, no foul.
 
I have a Hearthstone II as well. Somehow nails turn up in my ashes also. The only nuisance is that they sometimes dangle down through the grate and interfere with the ash tray removal and reinstalling.

With furniture you get more screws than nails. The nails are from pallets and demolition wood.
 
Heh,heh--nice to have our own little forest where we can just take that stuff and dump it and give a few more minerals to the trees. They don`t complain about the added boost ;-)
 
Ahhhh, as usual you guys are a wealth of information! I never thought about burning pallet wood and etc. And you are right that on this stove they seem to get stuck in the grate! Thanks all!
 
I use one of those magnetic nail picker uppers to separate the steel from the ashes. I used to just dump everything in the low spaces in the lawn. Once I was trying to dig into the sod with almost no luck, it turned out there was a mat of old nails which acted like chain mail against the shovel.

I agree the iron does no harm to the ground though. I bring in steel to the junk now and again so collect up the old nails etc. to add to it.
 
I like the idea of putting nails in the holes in the yard though... maybe they will repel the dang dogs from digging just like they do your shovel!
 
tickbitty said:
I like the idea of putting nails in the holes in the yard though... maybe they will repel the dang dogs from digging just like they do your shovel!

they can play hell with tires :)
 
You will also get a bunch of nails if you cut trees out of old fence lines. If I run across fence lines, just make sure to not the saw into them. :(

They do no harm to the stove, just the saw.
 
Greetings: I would like to share a little vignette with you on this. A few weeks ago, while doing the first burns on my new stove, I chucked in a large piece of hardwood pallet, full of nails, got a good burn going, awesome to watch the secondary fire going. After it burned down, the wood was just sitting there, intact, the piece hadn't collapsed and all the nails were in place. Broke apart when I touched it with another piece. I kicked myself that I hadn't"t grabbed the camera first.
 
Guy at work had a metal fence post embedded in a tree he cut from his brothers fence line. Saw went through it eventually!
I picked up some willow a few weeks back. Some of the bigger diameter chunks have lengths of Romex running in and out of em. weird.
 
Nails are not a good thing especially galvanized ones if you are operating a stove with a catalytic converter as the galvanizing will off gas and damage the Cats chemical coating to react with the smoke. I did however have no problem having them end up in my secondary burn unit in the napoleon.
 
vwboomer said:
Guy at work had a metal fence post embedded in a tree he cut from his brothers fence line. Saw went through it eventually!
I picked up some willow a few weeks back. Some of the bigger diameter chunks have lengths of Romex running in and out of em. weird.

Perhaps someone was using the willow as a Redneck Telephone Pole . . . i.e. mounting an exterior light to a tree instead of mounting it to the home or a telephone pole.
 
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