Well merrily entering my 2nd season burning and spent many a days this spring/summer/fall scrounging wood anywhere I could find it, cutting some trees down, chunking, hauling, splitting stacking etc. . Been joyfully burning this year and have been feeding many different species into the stove. As I was doing that tonight I was thinking about what species I would target going forward and which I would pass on. I was wondering what you folks would call your overall favorite wood to burn (and before anyone says "the kind that I can light on fire" let me beat you too that taking into account everything from dropping to chunking to splitting (by hand) to seasoning time to burning/btu's. If you had an abundance of wood potential and could afford to pick and work with only one species which would it be?
I guess so far I would vote for ash. Seems pretty easy to split, dries fast and is still a nice heavy chunk when dry and gives nice long burns at a good temp. Second I'm leaning towards White Birch. Seems to split without too much effort. Around here we call the white birch "paper birches" as the bark peels into rolls even on live trees and that stuff acts like built in kindling flaming hot and fast and making for easy fire starting. Don't have enough seasoning experience with it and I think it burns faster overall when compared to ash but still like it. Got about a cord of apple this year and it went from 36% to 26% this year and burned a piece but it was hissing. Heavy heavy stuff to handle in big chunks and bit of a bear to split but I think we tackled most of ours the day we rented a splitter so no bad memories splitting it. I know Oak is BTU king but man I have some big (24" and larger) chuncks I cut up this past spring that have been seasoning on pallets and while there is some cracking its still like hitting a piece of granite with those suckers, even trying to take splits off the edge and targeting the direction of the cracks in the wood. Guess those suckers will have to wait for a "rent a splitter day" And I have some 3 year old oak that I bought as a mixed species score of split wood that are about 22" in lenght and were seasoned in a pile as opposed to a stack of wood, in the shade also, that still hisses so I'm hoping in a few years I will fall in love with the oak but right now I'm not sure I'd jump on a CL ad for a down oak to cut up.
Thems my thoughts- how about yours?
I guess so far I would vote for ash. Seems pretty easy to split, dries fast and is still a nice heavy chunk when dry and gives nice long burns at a good temp. Second I'm leaning towards White Birch. Seems to split without too much effort. Around here we call the white birch "paper birches" as the bark peels into rolls even on live trees and that stuff acts like built in kindling flaming hot and fast and making for easy fire starting. Don't have enough seasoning experience with it and I think it burns faster overall when compared to ash but still like it. Got about a cord of apple this year and it went from 36% to 26% this year and burned a piece but it was hissing. Heavy heavy stuff to handle in big chunks and bit of a bear to split but I think we tackled most of ours the day we rented a splitter so no bad memories splitting it. I know Oak is BTU king but man I have some big (24" and larger) chuncks I cut up this past spring that have been seasoning on pallets and while there is some cracking its still like hitting a piece of granite with those suckers, even trying to take splits off the edge and targeting the direction of the cracks in the wood. Guess those suckers will have to wait for a "rent a splitter day" And I have some 3 year old oak that I bought as a mixed species score of split wood that are about 22" in lenght and were seasoned in a pile as opposed to a stack of wood, in the shade also, that still hisses so I'm hoping in a few years I will fall in love with the oak but right now I'm not sure I'd jump on a CL ad for a down oak to cut up.
Thems my thoughts- how about yours?