Burning sugar maple...

Hey guys

I was wondering if, when burning sugar maple, you can have a white froth coming from the wood for a few minutes? I currently have some maple in the stove (just put it in) and it is hissing with a white foam coming out the edge. Possible???

Andrew

Sounds like its not seasoned. How long has it been split and stacked off the ground in single rows? Do you have a moisture meter?

It isnt the wood species that is important but the conditions that it encounters during seasoning. Hell with the right conditions, +100F and 5% relative humidity even oak will season in a few months... but yes it sounds like you have wet wood

I would think Sugar Maple would take longer to season than any other Maple.

Sugar maple (and most of the norway maple I cut) takes every bit of two years C/S/S to be prime....
silver and red maple takes a year. And I've had small rounds of sugar maple that were several years cut and stacked (unsplit) that still foamed on the ends briefly when put in the stove. Further proof IMO that wood seasons much better when split....

Any wood can get frothy if there's too much moisture. The froth is just air and moisture escaping from the wood.

Try that wood again next year.

Sugar maple has such a nice colored flame.

And when cut at this time of year, the stump attracts dozens of varieties of butterfly, which one can enjoy watching while they feed.

Hrm. Ah well, I guess some of my maple is not dry yet..even if it has been c/s/s for 3 years!?!?!? And the rounds were only 6 inches or so in diameter.

I will check with a moisture meter this afternoon on the other pieces and let you know..they sounded and looked dry to me!

Andrew

Not much need for the MM as you already know it is not dry enough Andrew. Maybe you could boil that sap and get a spoonful of syrup?! I hope you get through this heating season okay. You can always try making sure you have a large coal bed before adding the wood which will help a lot.

Only if green,other than that sugar maple burns hotter than a scalded dog,good wood Very hot burning when dry.

Hissing kinda wet, foaming and hissing real wet

Weird. Something must have happened to certain pieces. Obviously what hissed is wet. But I tested other pieces from the same pile and they were 19 percent on the inside.....and some were 28 percent. And yet they are from the same stack!


Hmmm

Thanks Dennis, but I wil pass on trying to get some syrup this year from those splits. Lol.

Mixed with the other wood after 10 minutes or so the hissing stops...I still have over a cord of mixed wood left and that should easily get me through the rest of winter. I only make one fire a day now....

Andrew

That actually is not surprising Andrew. Shoot, occasionally we get a log or two that is high moisture. I remember burning some 7 year old white ash. The tree was dead when it was cut. Still, 7 years later we got a couple splits that sizzled in the fire!

Dennis: glad to see I am not the only one. Kind of weird but there's not much that can be done. perhaps my piles weren't high enough off the ground and the piece may have been sitting on ground, etc??? Or the water gremlins are injecting water into my dry wood again.....

Andrew

That's my experience, too. Seems odd because it's such a nice dense wood, but beech dries pretty fast.

Or coon pee?!

ROTLMAO!!

Haha Dennis... No coon pee around here. But I plan on getting yellow birch instead from now on... As pen and falcon mentioned, it dries much faster...

Don't think I mentioned it, but I would if I'd thought of it... Yeah, yellow birch is good stuff. It's less common around here than hard maple, obviously, but I'm always happy to have some. If you can get black birch, it's even better, higher BTU and also pretty quick to dry.

I split a couple of pieces of maple from the same pile and measured the MC. one was 30% and one was 20%. However, I think I found the reason. It seemed the 30% was starting to get punky on the inside. however the piece with 20% was not. Would that "punky factor" hold moisture in the wood for longer?

ANdrew

Andrew you might want to research a thing called "Baterial shake in trees". Its more common in conifers and Oaks but maybe sugar maples. Bacteria causes cell wall breakdown and excessive moisture retention. Basically the wood never dries.

Hrm. Thanks Apple. I have never heard of this...perhaps some of the trees I cut were infected with this...I find it odd that wood that has been c/s/s for almost 4 years can have moisture content of 30%.

It seems that may have been my problem with some of my wood....perhaps it was from the same tree....