Birch?

[Stax]

My buddy and I fell a small birch tree in my backyard yesterday. I cut it into rounds today and threw it on the splitter. Holy crap was it STRINGY! Should I have let the rounds dry a couple weeks and then split, or is this just the nature of birch?

 

[Hardrockmaple]

Yellow birch is a bugger to split, green, seasoned, frozen, doesn't matter.

 

[Lynch]

i split mine with a axe after it was froze and split nice.
not really stringy. i know it can be i think frozen helps

 

[Diabel]

I have split white birch & it was a piece of cake to split with an axe. Yellow might be different! I hear yellow is high in btus....

 

[rottiman]

good that you split it. If you leave birch whole it will often times turn punky due to the bark holding in the moisture. yellow definitely holds higher BTU's than the white.

 

[rottiman]

Diabel, love your avitar pic.

 

[Diabel]

Diabel, love your avitar pic.

Thanks rotti,

That was my bff for 15yrs! That pic was taken on my trip through Alaska (Chugach) outside Anchorage.

 

[mainstation]

My buddy and I fell a small birch tree in my backyard yesterday. I cut it into rounds today and threw it on the splitter. Holy crap was it STRINGY! Should I have let the rounds dry a couple weeks and then split, or is this just the nature of birch?

Since the hydraulic splitter did all the work, splitting them now or in two weeks seems moot.
Split all birch or suffer the punky wood consequences.

 

[bogydave]

Paper, Alaska, yellow, red birch here, goes by many names but never had real trouble splitting it.
Spruce is more difficult.
The bark makes a great fire starter, rarely ever need anything else to get a good fire going here.
Birch is our best firewood here, so I try to get it mostly when possible. Has good BTU content.