Never again for apple

Yes, it is a lot of work for a little bit of wood but the wood does burn great. The knots only make the fire last longer. I agree though you can put up wood a whole lot faster by picking a different tree.

I save all mine for the smoker or chiminea, smells great and adds awesome flavor when soaked for the smoker. Gotta love apple- smoked baby back ribs.

Backwoods Savage said:

Yes, it is a lot of work for a little bit of wood but the wood does burn great. The knots only make the fire last longer.

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Knots and crotches are the densest part of a tree, and apple is some pretty dense wood to begin with. You'll be happy you did it when you need that wood most come January.

BTW, you can send me all your crooked apple pieces. They are the very choicest wood for "knees" in wooden boats and are worth some money if you can find a guy who needs them and knows what they are.

So at a full cord in 8 hours, sounds like fair pay to me. Apple smells great, coals great, and super for smoking and grilling.

If it was covered with poison ivy, as all the old apple around me is, that would be good reason for never again.

Yup, good wood but lots of hard work for some low production numbers.

Its usually a good burn..but I agree its tough.

I have had the same result with peach lots of work small amout of wood. It does work well for smoking and has a nice aroma. Save it for those uses and it won't seem so bad ,I still have some left from three years ago.

The work is wworth it for a smoker. Apple almost always seems to get rotten and ant infested over a certain size... usually that's why people need them removed or they get damaged easier in a storm.

Any nut or fruit tree can be used in a smoker- including oak. They have different character

Love cutting up apple . . . and splitting it . . . if nothing more because of the great smell . . . although the great burns are right up there as well. I don't go out of my way for apple and actually don't like cutting it unless I have to due to its location, condition, etc. but I also don't mind processing this wood . . . then again it helps to have a hydraulic splitter . . . wouldn't even want to imagine splitting this by hand . . . perhaps a challenge equal to that of elm.

And oh yeah . . . I always keep some aside to share with my buddy who smokes meat and shares it with me . . . and I gave some to my Amish neighbors who are wicked nice.

You really do earn those BTU's when you split Apple by hand.

I remember years ago we volunteered to remove some apple trees from a little old lady's house. Not much wood and we had to bundle up all the branches on the street for the garbage collecter. Way to many branches (and we cannot open burn where we live) for the amount of wood. But atleast we helped the lady out.

I would trade two ranks of seasoned oak for a rank of green apple any day of the week. Find a bbq/smoker person in your area and they will more than likely do the same....then your effort was worth it

I've gotten some orchard trimmings in the past before.
Definitely don't stack well and an awful lot of bigger chunks can be nasty to split.
Burns nice though.

I picked up some apple a year ago. Some of the first wood that I split and I figured I was just new to splitting and didn't know what I was doing. Sort of made the green oak go a lot easier in comparison - I figured my skill had increased fast

I have not burned it yet though.. it was a year cut but not bucked/split when I got it and it now has been split for a year so it is in this years burn pile. I hope it does burn as well as folks say it does (and that a year was enough to dry it out - we did have a good dry summer...)

I had a recent load of oak that had a few pieces of what I believe was apple in it - hearts were punky with ant nests but the outsides were a PAIN to split. Very white and hard wood. I didn't smell anything in particular but those rounds put up quite the fight. Not enough to stack on their own though. I guess every type of wood has good and bad parts but in the end they all make heat and ash eh?

I have an apple tree in my yard that may end up in my woodpile very soon. I am sick and tired of picking up rotten apples just so I can mow the yard. If you don't pick them up the bees move in something fierce.

I cut down two dead apple trees that are nice and dry. They were pretty small and about a half dozen of the rounds were on the verge of needing to be split. I got through one of them and after the third swing on the second I decided that they will burn just fine the way they are. Can't wait to throw these nice rounds into the stove.