New wood from my old place

[Cold Is Dumb]

I rented a house in a wooded area a while back now. The neighbor still remembers me as a bit of a firewood nutjob, which is fine since that is the reason they called when the current tenant had some storm damage. The best tree on the lot (white oak) came down and took out a few lesser trees (sweetgum and pine). The owner had a tree company clean it up. Easy score for me!

This is the white oak stump, hard to believe the size of that rot hole. I haven't lived there in 6-ish years, but the tree seemed perfectly healthy back then.

 

[bigbarf48]

Awesome! That's a great score.

Hopefully it splits up nice for you. I've got some big white oak rounds like that sitting out back that have been the hardest splitting oak I've ever had

 

[711mhw]

I rented a house in a wooded area a while back now. The neighbor still remembers me as a bit of a firewood nutjob, ]

"firewood nutjob"
I Love it!

 

[Cold Is Dumb]

Hopefully it splits up nice for you. I've got some big white oak rounds like that sitting out back that have been the hardest splitting oak I've ever had

The white oak splits well, occasionally some stringy splits, but not unexpected or difficult. I split by hand, cuz I find it meditative and it definitely beats the gym. Various family members think I'm nuts, but then I say "you know, there's this site called hearth.com full of crazies that do the same thing..."

The oak wasn't a yard-bird loner that doesn't have to grow tall to expand. It was a pretty tall tree, and it was more vertical than horizontal, if that makes sense.

The sweet gum is a different story. I've dealt with it before, it's stringy, and doesn't smell great when splitting or burning, but it's free and plentiful. This is not the gum that is so often despised by hand-splitters, that's tupelo/black gum, different stuff, yes? I know that is a different species than what this is. Not the greatest, but not the worst.

I'm close to 4 years ahead, so the sweetgum is shoulder wood, the pine is firepit wood.