Whats your wood of choice?

I have limited wood burning experience but I've been gathering wood for my first full heating season for 2 years.

Silver/Sugar Maple - 3 cords inventory

Black Locust - 2 cords inventory

Black Ash - 3 cords inventory

Red Oak - 3 cords inventory, 4 more to split

Osage Orange .5 cords inventory

Claimed the neighbors shagbark hickory that fell over last nite. Probably .5-1 cord. I'll have to let you know what I like best. Only thing I've burned was Ash.

Ash for me......Oak if I have a couple years to wait.

I like to burn the wood closest to the stove. Then I like to burn the wood closest to the house. I think the trees are inching back from the house of their own accord, because they know the closest one will be next!

StackedLumber said:

Free is best, but if a beggar can be a chooser I'd probably go:

Beech
Hard Maple
Cherry
Oak

In that order, now I've heard miraculous stories on Black locust and osage, and I'd love to try some, but I've never found any around here. I know where some honey locust trees are, but I think they are different.


But Free is Best!

Click to expand...

Honey locust should be very similar to black locust so grab that up if you can!


My favorites...

Well, they all have their benefits.

Ash for quick seasoning wood with higher BTU
Yellow poplar for quick seasoning wood to use during the shoulder season; this is mostly due to it's availability. I don't have any problems finding poplar.
Oak for the availability and BTU content, but must have it a couple year in advance for seasoning.

One of my all-time favorites though? Sugar maple. The smell when working the wood and the first few weeks of seasoning is just heavenly. And it seasons pretty fast (nearly as fast as ash most of the time) and it has pretty high BTU content.

I'm an equal opportunity burner . . . I'll pretty much burn any wood if it is seasoned -- hardwood or softwood . . . even popple which Backwoods Savage doesn't particularly care to burn in his stove. My own take on wood is that to every species there is a season . . . burn, burn, burn . . .

However, wood that I like to burn a lot . . . the primo wood . . . sugar maple, ash (one of my favorites in terms of coaling, heat and ease of cutting and splitting) and beech. That said, I really like apple and cherry -- although I don't burn a lot of apple and cherry is OK for burning, but wicked nice to process. I also have to give a shout-out to my American elm which is always dying off and providing me with plenty of dead wood and the truth of the matter is that dead elm helped me get through my first year of burning with few problems.

That said . . . I also like white birch and yellow birch -- a pretty wood and I find both species burn pretty well. I also have burned a bunch of red maple which burns decently, but seems to split kind of funky oftentimes.

Wood I have not yet burned but would love to burn some day includes oak (should burn some of this next year), black locust and hickory (I'm not even sure if this grows in Maine.)

free
locust
oak
beech
birch
maple
poplar
in that order

I like Cherry, oak, ash, and locust and there's alot around here.

I've never heard of Yew or Blackthorne.

Neil,

I noticed you live in Stratford upon the Avon in England, (home to shakespere). I have visited your town before. What a great place. I would like to someday return with my family and rent a canal boat and tour the countryside from the canals and locks.

We stayed in Birmingham and took the train to visit towns. Great place to visit. Please post some pictures in the picture section sometime.

Anything that isn't unsplit elm.

DiscoInferno said:

Black locust + something lighter to get the fire started in the first place. Let's say ash. Would like to try osage sometime.

Click to expand...

+1 although Honey Locust has thinner bark.

Beetle killed Lodgepole Pine. Easy to get and easy to split, plentiful and pre-seasoned and dense enough to give me overnight burns in the stove. What more could you want?
See my post entitled "Cut & Burn"

I frequently burn stuff I can't even identify along with pallets, lumber scraps (not pressure treated or painted of course) but if I had a favorite it's locust hands down. I swear its better on overnight burns than oak!

I still have black walnut about 7 cords
Ash about 3 cords
Box elder 3 cords
cedar 2 trees cut down

Cherry and Ash. Pine is great in the 'shoulder' seasons and I can get it dirt cheap!

What ash do most of you have, green or white as there is a noticable difference.

Carbon_Liberator said:

Beetle killed Lodgepole Pine. Easy to get and easy to split, plentiful and pre-seasoned and dense enough to give me overnight burns in the stove. What more could you want?
See my post entitled "Cut & Burn"

Click to expand...

CL, looking at the quality of the wood in that video, I think I might get by just fine with your Lodgepole. Seems to be up around the BTU content of cherry, and the beetle-killed wood is probably denser yet. Many folks here (myself included) have listed cherry as a favorite wood, so I guess Lodgepole would be a fav as well if I could get any. Any chance you might FedEx me a couple cord to try out? Our eastern white pine is a joke compared to your wood. There's pine and then there's PINE.

oldspark said:

What ash do most of you have, green or white as there is a noticable difference.

Click to expand...

I burn both . . . but mostly white ash . . . hard to tell if there is much of a difference in burning . . . I prefer the white ash though . . . seems as though it has less moisture in it from the get go.

I burn mostly Red Oak plus some Cherry. Both are plentiful in this part of the country. I've also burned quite a variety of other woods including Maple, Mulberry, and Mimosa, and even Poplar, Pine, and pallet wood.

I'm able to get plenty enough for free. It's a lot of work, but it's satisfying and enjoyable just the same. I'll continue to collect and burn a wide variety of woods.

I have been lucky to be burning mostly oak for some years now. Oak is heavy for it's size. White oak is a bit stringy when splitting, but thats not much of a problem with the hydro splitter.

To be straight forward , it depends
Early on Aspen suits Me just fine . Later on It becomes Maple ,and Cherry . Still later ,Black Birch ,and Oak . Then as the season winds down it all kind of goes in reverse order . Howzat for a definite answer ?

Our wood of choice out here are 1. tamerack which is what some call wesern red larch

Our second is dougless fir dried of course)


Then we like hemlock for the real cold nightgs...................................................

Oak, Ash, Hickory, Cherry, Hedge...and then anything else that is seasoned and will burn

I enjoy the aspect of all wood and all the different personalities there is kinda like people , but the faster it seasons the more I like it like Most Americans I want to burn it now.. I find hard Maple Cherry, Mulberry n Beech ,Ash..... are my 1yr single row stacked in the sun limited room to keep wood go to firewood........

Jags said:

Battenkiller said:

There's pine and then there's PINE.

Click to expand...

This is truly an understatement. The "Pine" that our Northern members are burning takes about 100 years to get to a 20" diameter. In N Illinois it takes about 6 weeks. It is two different birds. It sure as heck isn't comparing apples to apples. I wish there was some laymens method to compare density. I am sure there is, but I really don't want to whittle a 1ft x 1ft square of oak and dry it down to 20% and weigh it....blah, blah, blah. I will bet the stuff they are burning would be comparable to our White Ash. Just a guess.

Click to expand...

That is indeed the missing key to all these btu charts we use for comparison, density. I just love showing people the difference between a piece of Locust and a piece of White Pine.

I burn mostly White Ash. But, maple and beech are my favorite.