How can you tell the cherry from the oak? FWIW, I don't see any perpindicular rays in any of the end grain.
Cherry has a distinctive aroma, and possibly visible "lenticels," raised horizontal lines in the bark.
The "rays" in Oak may be obvious in some cases, almost invisible in others. In the second set of pics, I can see the rays when I click on it to zoom in.
Let see what someone else thinks.
Those would be my guesses as well.
I don't think any of those are ash
We didn't see a split-grain pic of the split on the right, but the bark looks to me like it might be White Ash..
I've burned some Cherry that has been in the stack for two summers, and it still wasn't dry enough; Gunked the glass and dogged the cat a bit. Some splits felt too heavy to be dry, as well. So while some say that Cherry dries fast, that hasn't been the case for me, with stacks in the woods where the wind isn't as strong.
Ash seems to dry at the same rate as some other medium-high output woods (except Red Oak,) but it definitely starts at a lower moisture content than some others, so it gets under 20% sooner.
Small splits will dry faster, but will also gas faster in the stove, and that may contribute to your stove getting hotter than you want. Bigger splits of dense woods like Oak will burn in a slower, more controlled way, in my experience.
I haven't run a hybrid stove, so I'm unsure what might be "overheating" on your stove. Do you have vigorous secondary flames, leading to a stovetop temp that's too high, is there a cat thermometer that's going to 1500, or does the stovetop over the cat get hotter than the rest of the top?
