Bye Bye to Hickory

[Simonkenton]

I have never burned much hickory. Can't split it. I am a big guy, I have several mauls and several wedges, I can split wood.
But not hickory. So I don't mess with it.

Two years ago, the local firewood guy had a truck load of hickory for sale. This is a small dump truck, 8 x 8 and 3 feet thick.
So I had him deliver it to my house.
This year I am burning it. My God it is just covered with fine sawdust powder, like flour. This is from hickory bark beetles.
I am scared to bring this stuff into my house, I leave it on the deck, which is pressure treated, and just bring it in as needed in the stove,
I don't want those bugs jumping out into my house.

Every time I bring in an arm load of wood, my arms are covered with this powder sawdust. What a mess.
I will run out of hickory in a week and Thank God. No more hickory for me.

 

[JimBear]

My Honey Locust is that way. The 4 cord that I stacked in an old wooden corn crib are terrible, it’s been c\s\s over 2 years now. I actually had to wear a dust mask & goggles when loading it in the truck. The 3 cord I had stacked outside uncovered they have barely touched.

 

[Grizzerbear]

Hickory makes up about 1/3 of my wood stacks. Id sure hate to not have it. I never worried much about the saw dust. Even oak makes a mess if i aint careful. Hickory is tough to split tho for sure.

 

[Simonkenton]

A few years ago I was building an addition onto my log cabin. My helper was a 32 year old guy, good worker strong kid.
Along with the addition onto the log cabin, we built a wood shed. And then we filled the wood shed with wood and it holds a lot of wood.
We started off with a bunch of black walnut, I had whacked several black walnuts to make beams for the house, so we had about 6 Nissan truck loads of that, the leftover trunks and limbs. Some pretty big stuff, 24 inch.
And Adam was splitting the hell out of it, like I said I have 2 real good mauls Adam was whacking it in two with one stroke. Black walnut splits pretty easy.
And we whacked a beech tree, it was a little more difficult I think we had to use the big hammer and the wedges.
And we whacked a red oak. Big trunk split pretty easy with the Fiskars.
Adam was getting in to it he was a badass of the Fiskars maul.

Then, we had to take down a little 12 inch hickory. I told Adam, "I bet you can't split this one."
He said he would do it easily.
This was a 16 inch long piece, Adam gave it a whack, the maul just bounced off. It took Adam 17 strokes to split that little hickory piece in half. Adam agreed with me, he did not want to tangle with a 24 inch hickory tree.

 

[johneh]

This was a 16 inch long piece, Adam gave it a whack, the maul just bounced off. It took Adam 17 strokes to split that little hickory piece in half. Adam agreed with me, he did not want to tangle with a 24 inch hickory tree.

I have a magic machine for that 22 ton hydro

 

[FTG-05]

I got aton of it. Love it. Nowadays, I use it for smoking BBQ. Don't really need it for heating the home.

I did mod my 22 Speeco/Huskee log splitter to deal with it:

 

[Prof]

There is little doubt that hickory is a pain to split manually. Several years ago I owned a wood lot that was primarily hickory, so I burned a lot of it then. I got fed up with trying to use an ax, so I just used a sledge and wedge for any hickory that needed split. I remember a fair amount of beetle dust being present too. It burned as hot as could be though! I don't have any hickory on my current lot, and I can't say that I miss it.

 

[Woody Stover]

Two years ago, the local firewood guy had a truck load of hickory for sale. This is a small dump truck, 8 x 8 and 3 feet thick.
So I had him deliver it to my house.
This year I am burning it. My God it is just covered with fine sawdust powder, like flour. This is from hickory bark beetles.
I am scared to bring this stuff into my house, I leave it on the deck, which is pressure treated, and just bring it in as needed in the stove,
I don't want those bugs jumping out into my house.

I don't think they are still in there once the wood dries out for a few years, but I'm not sure about that. At any rate, I don't worry about it, I have a couple splits on deck, in the hoop next to my stove. This is a cabin with Oak flooring inside and creo phone poles (Pine?) outside.
I guess they could damage your home, though.. https://www.terminix.com/blog/home-garden/do-powderpost-beetles-cause-structural-damage-to-homes/

My Honey Locust is that way. The 4 cord that I stacked in an old wooden corn crib are terrible, it’s been c\s\s over 2 years now. I actually had to wear a dust mask & goggles when loading it in the truck. The 3 cord I had stacked outside uncovered they have barely touched.

Huh. My neighbor has a dead HL that I'm going to get..I'll keep an eye out for the Powderpost Beetles.

Hickory makes up about 1/3 of my wood stacks. Id sure hate to not have it. I never worried much about the saw dust.

I don't get a lot of Hickory..they don't die or come down as much as Red Oak does. I grab the Hickory (Shagbark and Pignut, that I know of) when I can. It goes to the power splitter.

 

[Stinkpickle]

My Honey Locust is that way. The 4 cord that I stacked in an old wooden corn crib are terrible, it’s been c\s\s over 2 years now. I actually had to wear a dust mask & goggles when loading it in the truck. The 3 cord I had stacked outside uncovered they have barely touched.

Same here. Honey locust and shagbark hickory that I don’t top cover hold up just fine, as long as I stack single rows and keep them off the ground.

 

[Grizzerbear]

I get a lot of them from storm blow overs. They are first tree to leaf out in the spring here and they catch all the wind from storms until the oaks leaf out and give a hand at breaking the wind. A lot of them are damaged at the base of the trunk from wildfires.....further making them more prone to topple over.

 

[Gearhead660]

Just finished CSSing 4 cord of hickory and locust last month. Will see how dusty it is in 3 yrs when i get to burn it!

 

[weatherguy]

I have half a cord in rounds that Im going to use the hydraulic splitter to split them, tried with the Fiskars and decided Ill wait. Once split and dried though its awesome firewood.

 

[hickoryhoarder]

I have little trouble splitting hickory rounds that have been stacked a year. And I'm old and small, using a maul.

I haven't had any hickory with beetles, though once in a while splits on the ground will get carpenter ants.

 

[Simonkenton]

There are different species of hickory. It is possible, that one species is easier to split than another.

 

[hickoryhoarder]

There are different species of hickory. It is possible, that one species is easier to split than another.

True. I think shagbark is easier than pignut. But they're both pretty easy to split in the second year by this old, weak guy.

 

[TradEddie]

I found that a very narrow wedge and sledge did far better splitting Hickory than any regular wedge or maul, but it was also far easier to split after waiting several months. On the burning end, I found that Hickory has just two speeds with my insert. It either smoulders and smokes, or with just a hair more air, will ramp straight to 700F+. Great for the coldest nights, but I wouldn't want to have a full load of hickory in there. Wonderful wood to mix with lesser woods, I'd take all of it that I could,

TE