Smallest rounds you split?

[The Dude]

Forgive me if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find the answer with a few searches.

What's the smallest diameter rounds that you split?

I have access to lots of 4-6" diameter black walnut branches. The size as is seems about the size of a normal split that I use, but I wonder if all of that thick bark on walnut makes for an inefficient burn. Splitting it in half will make for splits not too much bigger with the pallet wood boards that I already have loads of, so I'm not too eager to work hard cuting and splitting to produce what I can have without that work. Aside from my particular situation, I'd also like to know in general about round vs. splits, to make better decisions in different situations in the future as well.

Having burned only 1 season, I don't have enough experience burning rounds yet and don't have any seasoned stuff to experiment with at the moment.

Thanks for your thoughts!

 

[midwestcoast]

How big a round has to be before it needs to be split depends on a bunch of things. One person might split about everything & others will leave everything round until is get too big to easily pick up.
Bottom line: You could surely burn those sized rounds in your stove, but since you say you have no seasoned wood I assume you need to burn them this coming season? If so I'd say split & stack everything over about 4" now. They'll season faster. Unfortunately they will also burn faster, but sounds like you just need some dry fuel at this point.

 

[Jags]

If you need it to season, you will want to split it. If you are ahead, I don't bother splitting anything that I can palm from the end.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

By all means if you need that wood next winter, get it split. If not for next winter, then it is good to have some rounds but size will be somewhat dependent upon your stove. Having some rounds will help you hold a fire longer for those long cold winter nights but you have to make sure they have had time to dry. So, this year, I say get them split in half and hope for the best.

 

[ailanthus]

I have a smallish stove, so I might tend to split smaller than most. That said, I also like some bigger rounds for some longer burns. Generally, I follow the one hand rule, just like Jags said. I remember reading some research that splitting much smaller than that doesn't significantly speed the seasoning process anyway, and that's what I'm going by, though I'm sure there are some here that would disagree.

 

[Wood Duck]

When I find a piece of firewood with fungus on it in the stacks that I am burning (stacked about three years ago), the piece is usually a round with bark on it. I split almost everything that is straight enough to split reasonably well. Some of the wood I split is two or three inches in diameter.

 

[xman23]

For me 4 to 6 inch rounds are real nice. Cut um, stack um, burn um. A few 6 inch rounds are an all night slow burn. You do need a good mix of wood sizes, but i could get by with only unsplit < 6 inch.

 

[dafattkidd]

Rounds take longer to season as everyone else has indicated. If you do decide to split them I recommend using a tire. Throw a tire on the ground. Load it with rounds. Hit them with your maul. That is a super fast and easy way to split small pieces. Hope that helps.

 

[weatherguy]

Dont rounds have less moisture in them to begin with? I thought I read that somewhere, dont know if its true or not but being towards the ends of the tree I thought it made sense.

 

[fox9988]

At one time, if I could get it in the stove, it didn't get split (10"). Now I split anything over 6".

 

[maplewood]

I mix any sized hard wood with split soft wood, so if I can season it unsplit, I do.
Less work, better bed of coals, less work, longer burns...did I say it was less work?
I pay for hard wood, and get my soft wood free from my own property. So to start the
fire with split soft wood and about 10 pages of a newspaper will take off like cedar kindling.
Anything on top, like some 6+" rounds of hard wood, will follow - guaranteed.

If I was burning in my PE stove, I'd only have wood the size of what I could pick up from the
end with one hand. It keeps a bed of coals without any difficulty, and will restart with splits
or rounds without difficulty.

 

[PapaDave]

Still a relative newb, but I'll split some really small stuff just to use as filler or largish kindling. Most of it is either w. pine, spruce, or poplar.

 

[Wood Duck]

Dont rounds have less moisture in them to begin with? I thought I read that somewhere, dont know if its true or not but being towards the ends of the tree I thought it made sense.

I am not sure what you might have read, but it seems like we might not all be talking about the same thing. I think when we say 'rounds' we mean any piece of firewood cut to a length that allows it to be put into the stove but is not split. The rounds might come from the branches or could come from the trunk. I have never heard that live branches will have less moisture than the trunk. In fact I'd expect the opposite to be true, since the branches, being smaller, have a higher percentage of sapwood and bark than the trunk and sapwood and bark are where the sap moves up and down the tree, so they should be moister than the heartwood, which is no longer part of the active growth of the tree.

 

[ScotO]

I was the exact same. Now I split everything over 5-6", learned my lesson when I got to a bunch of 10" oak rounds one winter several years ago (they were in the stack for over two years) and they sizzled like crazy. Split 'em if you can if they're over 6".

 

[The Dude]

Thanks for so many helpful replies. To clarify, I do not have a reserve of seasoned splits or rounds yet, but have a very large supply of seasoned red oak boards intended for pallets but never made into pallets (what I call my pallet wood). I actually used it exclusively for half this past season, and it does the job of log splits if stacked tightly. People look at it and say it would make good kindling and nothing more, but I know better from testing out the physics of it. So my point is that I have that to fall back on and may choose to hoard a lot of my splits/rounds this season to build a reserve, especially of I can scrounge more than the four cords I estimate I need for an average season.

I would prefer to keep these rounds larger, since splitting them would make them the size of my pallet wood, which is a waste of work. What I need is bigger stuff that burns longer and slower. So i conclude from all of the advice that I should leave them be. Furthermore, I should go back and pick up the 4-6" stuff that I left until I got this advice.

A question I still have is if the nature of 4-6" rounds, with all the bark, round shape and lack of ana exposed split face, causes rounds to be considered inefficient to burn compared to splits. I also wonder if the bark creates more creosote. In other words, is the main benefit of splitting stuff of that size only for faster seasoning, or does it provide a more efficient use of the fuel? I would just like to know this to improve my general understanding of the physics of a burn.

Thanks again!

 

[kettensäge]

For me it depends on the species. I will leave bigger maple rounds whole. The same size oak rounds get split

 

[Thistle]

I leave everything up to 4 1/2" whole,with a few 5" or 6" rounds left for longer burns.Anything bigger gets split.

 

[PapaDave]

You could also split some and leave some similar sized of the same species so that you'll know,......in your situation, climate, etc., how well and how quickly it dries.
Next year, it will probably change slightly.
I've got oak that's been in the field drying for over 2 years. Most is nice and dry, but some sizzles for a couple minutes. It came from the same stack of logs which were cut and delivered at the same time.
Some were logs that lost the bark that I left as rounds, and those dried pretty well,.....no sizzle, yet some that got split with the bark on still sizzled. Hmmmm.
Best bet is to follow Dennis' advice.

 

[firefighterjake]

If you need it to season, you will want to split it. If you are ahead, I don't bother splitting anything that I can palm from the end.

+1 . . . pretty much what I've done from Day 1. If I can palm it, it's a round.

 

[billb3]

A question I still have is if the nature of 4-6" rounds, with all the bark, round shape and lack of ana exposed split face, causes rounds to be considered inefficient to burn compared to splits. I also wonder if the bark creates more creosote. In other words, is the main benefit of splitting stuff of that size only for faster seasoning, or does it provide a more efficient use of the fuel? I would just like to know this to improve my general understanding of the physics of a burn.

Thanks again!

Ideally, you want some nice big chunks for nice big long burns. ( How big and long kinda depends on the size of your stove)

Unfortunately, nice big chunks can take longer to season.

Opposing those two ideals, you should get more heat out of the wood if you size for seasoning .

Once you start stacking wood for next year and the year after you can start leaving some bigger ones.
You can always split them if you find they are too big or you have too many of them and find you can only use them on really big coal beds.
You're not going to like bigger ones now if they are still green in the middle in November unless you have some fast drying wood and weather.


For my stove ( which is kinda small) I'd be splitting the 6 inch ones if I could, if they were maple or cherry or whatnot for this Winter and putting oak aside for next Winter..







Edit: I don't worry too much about the bark, it usually starts to lift which helps with seasoning and it starts to fall off.

SOME Punky bark can hold a bit of water and freeze and make a sizzling mess loading the stove (maybe causing some creosote, probably not enough to worry about) but a weeks worth of wood kept under cover to pick from all Winter usually helps with that.


Some people burn the bark when it is dry to get rid of it - it also can be considered more valuable as mulch or forest floor. We don't all have a use for mulch or a forest floor to return it to. You do what ya gotta do.