Hardwood Splinters = Valuable Tinder

[Cluttermagnet]

I burn a lot of Oak and Locust here. Having an older stove, I am relighting daily.
Tinder and kindling are sometimes in short supply. I do save 'splitter trash',
chips of wood that naturally fall to the ground during splitting- and I find it well
worth the trouble to pick it up, personally. In addition, I've also found it well worth
the time to 'manicure' the splits I'm feeding to the stove. This is another source
of tinder that should not be overlooked IMO. Not everyone is going to have this
stuff. I think Ash is probably a much cleaner splitting wood, for example, but I
never get any Ash around here. I fill a small box with these freebie splinters
all the time when I'm using Oak or Locust- in particular, Red Oak and Black
Locust. Pretty good splinters from Cherry, too. White Oak is 'OK' but doesn't
produce as much as Red Oak.

Kindling is sometimes in short supply if I had a busy summer and didn't cut
up a lot of small branches. Some years it's scarce, other years I have plenty.
I think this year I will go out and look for some construction scraps and some
clean pallets for kindling. I'm likely to run out before the season ends this year.

Anyway, I bet a lot of folks just throw their 'fuzzy'/splintery Oak and Locust into
the firebox as is. I'm enjoying it and finding it useful to pull off those splinters
first. YMMV...

P.S. Just to be clear, a lot of these type splinters are pretty darned big- at times
they could also be called small kindling.

 

[Beer Belly]

Same here. My Wife starts the fire with handfuls of the stuff....we go thru it like crazy, which means more work for me trying to keep the supply up.

 

[zig]

Came across about 10 foot of old ceder phone pole for kindeling. Stuff splits fine and straight burns easy and hot. Cut it into foot long rounds and set next to the pile under the porch. Kids and wife brought in wood and built a fire to "help". Back to splitter trash now.

 

[Rebelduckman]

I use poplar and pallets for kindling and lighter knot to start( that's what we call it down here instead of fatwood). After trying the super cedar samples I plan to switch to those in the near future. I have 100 acres to cut on so the supply here is pretty much endless

 

[Mag Craft]

I use pallets and construction left over scraps for kindling. I do have a big pile outside of bark and scraps that I sometimes throw into the fire box after it is going.

 

[Fred Wright]

Splitter scraps make fine kindling. Ended up with 2 & 1/2 large trash barrels full this time around.

Don't forget the bark. We salvaged a small pile of bark that had come loose from a stack of red oak splits. Keep it dry, it will start quickly and burn well.

Equally good are small sticks and twigs you can break by hand. Drag some tree brush at the edge of the yard to dry and break it up as needed. Sticks too large to break by hand are cut up for starter wood. We don't use all the brush from a tree but we do use a lot of it.

 

[English BoB]

I cut up half a dozen pallets each season. Cut the slats to 6 - 8 in lengths then have a splitting session ( mind the fingers ) end up with 2 - 3 garbage cans full of dry kindling. The runners I cut in half and burn in my wood bast furnace that heats the workshop when needed.
Also use all the splitter scraps and any other dry wood I find.

 

[Soundchasm]

When I'm lucky enough to use the splitter on concrete, I use a wire rake to "sort" the keepers from the sawdust. The keepers go into a plastic doggie pool and the chips and dust go to the mulch pile. Ash and Cherry do give up the big splinters and I prune them and put them in a box so I'm not always hitting up the pool.

The wife had a longer timeframe to embrace the stove, but she did. And then one day she said "look at this great fire I started". It was a week's worth of kindling. I wisely (probably once and only once) played the long game and admired the nice fire she started.

 

[Grateful11]

I usually try to find a standing dead Pine somewhere on the property, lots of kindling in those. Cut it up in 6-8" lengths and find a nice chopping block of firewood and bring out the hatchet.

 

[Block Inlay]

My new house came with a stocked wood shed and a ton of kindling. Some of it is old shakes, maybe cedar but not sure. I split one into several strips and then break them in half. That and a little ball of paper works fantastic.