Scrounge Wood ID

looks like red maple to me

It is a maple...looks like red maple. It's decent wood. Splits easy & puts out some nice heat. It doesn't put out the heat
As sugar (hard) maple does, but you did just fine.

Look like Red Maple, but at that age (relatively young) the smooth bark on Red Maple looks similar to the bark on Silver Maple. so, I say maple and I think Red, but could be Silver.

I agree, looks like red maple

coverdome said:

Thanks guys! My first hard wood scrounge.
Slight issue with the length of the cuts - anywhere from 12" to 28".

Oh well, free is free.

Click to expand...

Rejoice and be glad that it was cut at all.

Many of your better scrounges will be what's left when the "amateurs" have scarfed all the small stuff.
They don't know that the real cubic footage of wood is in the big stuff.

That's why you'll need a chainsaw (or more) suitable for your local scrounges. Quiet is good here.
After a while, you'll need a cant hook for rolling the big pieces to avoid cutting dirt. And maybe a maul
to split big rounds down to loadable size.

Many here will help speed you along the learning curves.

Maybe the longer pieces can be cut in half to allow them to be loaded north/south (the end faces the front door of the stove). Another option is to cut some for north/south loading and others long enough that when loaded east/west there is a space on one end of the firebox to load a piece north/south. You have to be creative when you're a scrounger and you get a lot of different lengths, plus the mix of lengths allows you to load the stove more fully when you start with a bunch of coals taking up space in the stove.

I'll jump on the Red Maple bandwagon, too. You'll like it. I got some from a couple of different trees this Summer. One was a woods tree with nice straight grain, which was easy to split by hand. Looked like your stuff. The other was a big yard tree with a lot of twists and branches...a bear to split, even with hydraulics! My SILs are burning it now...it's a fine medium-output wood.