Hickory question...

[fireview2788]

Up to this point this year I've been burning river birch and it's been burning great but I'm out of it now so I've switched to my next stack which pignut hickory (about 85% of my stack for this year is hickory ). What I've noticed is that it's slow to get going but once it goes it burns long and hot. Yes, it is well seasoned with 3 years c/s/s.

Has anyone else noticed this with hickory or other hardwoods?


f v

 

[muncybob]

Yep, once it's going it's great firewood....smells good too!

 

[David.Ervin]

Has anyone else noticed this with hickory or other hardwoods?

Different types of wood seem to have different personalities. Hickory can be stubborn to get going, but will burn "angry" hot once it does. White oak starts slow and builds to a long steady heat. Osage burns like that's its job, but vomits sparks at you out of spite.

 

[Clyde S. Dale]

Black Locust does the same thing for me.

 

[Jags]

I think it has a bunch to do with density. Very dense woods like hickory, osage, etc simply take longer to catch than say pine, birch, aspen, etc. Its also the reason that kindling made from less dense woods seems to take off quicker.

 

[Applesister]

I'm curious about it too. To this point I only throw in one piece in the middle of a hot fire and it disappears with the rest of the wood.
How it contributes is a little vague. Hickories burn with an almost invisible violet flame suspended somewhat above the logs, like Apple. The very dense stuff, I have a whole cord of Pignut too and that was one heavy ass tree. I dont want to load the stove all with that wood.
I overfired my stove once on Black locust so now Im aware of a possible problem with a whole firebox of one species. So I blend. Lol.
Like mixing silk, alpaca, mohair and wool...
Im gathering red maples and poplar to mix with the hot stuff. Some medium light woods that dont give off alot of heat but burn well to help coax the slow starting stuff.
Its a little hard to tell when you blend what one type does.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Up to this point this year I've been burning river birch and it's been burning great but I'm out of it now so I've switched to my next stack which pignut hickory (about 85% of my stack for this year is hickory ). What I've noticed is that it's slow to get going but once it goes it burns long and hot. Yes, it is well seasoned with 3 years c/s/s.

Has anyone else noticed this with hickory or other hardwoods?


f v

Yep. Hickory and beech are reluctant to give it up initially. Black birch, though, which is similar in density, lights more easily.

 

[Wood Duck]

I have noticed that with Black Locust and oak.

 

[Pennsyltucky Chris]

Hickory, single stacked in the sun, has never let me down. Maybe it's not perfect, but it does it for me.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Hickory, single stacked in the sun, has never let me down. Maybe it's not perfect, but it does it for me.

Jeez, it's great stuff! I have a lot of it this year, and I'm licking my chops over it. But like just about every wood, it has its characteristics. As a super-dense hardwood, it doesn't ignite as easily as lightweight stuff, which is as it should be. It's not a criticism, just an observation. The OP seemed to be worried there was something wrong with his stash, and the rest of us were just reassuring him it was normal behavior.

 

[Applesister]

I feel lucky to have hickory dried and split and stacked neatly on my front porch.
We have about three weeks in January to a week in February when the temps plummet into -15° to -20°.
When the water buckets in the horse stalls are solid bricks and the truck wont start and the furnace runs every ten minutes.
That is what God put hickory on this earth for.

 

[gyrfalcon]

I feel lucky to have hickory dried and split and stacked neatly on my front porch.
We have about three weeks in January to a week in February when the temps plummet into -15° to -20°.
When the water buckets in the horse stalls are solid bricks and the truck wont start and the furnace runs every ten minutes.
That is what God put hickory on this earth for.

Oh, you betcha! I don't get quite that cold here, but last winter came awful close and I was painfully rationing my rapidly diminishing supply of beech to try to stretch it out.

This year, I've got about 3 cords of the really good mid-winter stuff-- a mixture of beech, black birch and hickory, plus another 1 1/2 or so of white ash, yellow birch, and then some less dense stuff like white birch, some red maple and a lot of black cherry. Never had the black cherry before, and I totally love it for starting fires and the colder parts of shoulder season. Oddly, no rock maple this year, but them's the breaks when you get your fuel c/s/d.

Oh, and that front porch? How about this: I have an enclosed attached woodshed. Heheheheh. Didn't realize it when I bought the house because I wasn't a wood burner then, but it's turned out to be by far the most valuable thing about the place. I can shuffle on out there in my jammies and slippers in the middle of a raging blizzard to bring my day's fuel in while the coffee's brewing.

 

[30cal]

Can we see the enclosed attached woodshed? I love handy stuff like that, but please, just the attached shed, no jammies...

 

[gyrfalcon]

Can we see the enclosed attached woodshed? I love handy stuff like that, but please, just the attached shed, no jammies...

It ain't much to look at. The main part of my small house dates to around 1850, then a small extension with kitchen space, a rough storeroom and a woodshed in back of that was put on somewhere in the early 1900s. They knew what they were doing in those days.

It just looks like a shed with a sloping metal roof and a sliding barn door at the back of the house. But it was built with exactly the right amount of ventilation. The adult daughter of the previous owners and her husband put a hot tub in there, of all ridiculous things. I use about half of it for wood storage (maybe 2.5 cords), and the rest of the room to run my small splitter and store some yard/garden tools, etc. The rest of my winter's wood stays outside on pallets, which I use primarily until snow flies.

I'll see if I can dig up a pic tomorrow, but as I say, it doesn't look like much. (Nor do the jammies, for that matter...)

 

[fireview2788]

I'm not worried about it being dry, as I said it's been c/s/s for three years. As it was said, it was more of a question of it being a normal characteristic of hardwoods. I've mostly burned ash which burns fine but I do like the hickory much more!

Thanks for the replies!

fv

 

[Joe13]

Funny this popped up. I have been starting my wood stack and it currently is almost all ash with some white oak mixed in. The other day I attempted to drop a Shagback Hickory. Not only was the saw not a big fan of it, but I hung it up on another standing tree. Luckily, its windy here today and tomorrow, so hopefully itll makes its way to the ground. Should I be concerned with the difficulty to hand split it? The tree is straight as an arrow with no branches save the top, so knots should be minimal. I just really want to get it down and stacked so the seasoning can begin!

 

[fireview2788]

I've c/s/s two different hickory, both pignut, and didn't find it hard to split at all. I was using a splitter but it split very easily. Cutting you are going across the grain but splitting is with the grain.


fv

 

[Pennsyltucky Chris]

Jeez, it's great stuff! I have a lot of it this year, and I'm licking my chops over it. But like just about every wood, it has its characteristics. As a super-dense hardwood, it doesn't ignite as easily as lightweight stuff, which is as it should be. It's not a criticism, just an observation. The OP seemed to be worried there was something wrong with his stash, and the rest of us were just reassuring him it was normal behavior.

Yeah, it's normal. I have a good bit of Hickory for next year, and maybe a quarter cord for this year. I'm up to my eyeballs in ash..... and I've got cords more to scrounge. I'm kinda getting sick of it, but once I put a major dent in the pile of Ash trunks, the trunks at the bottom are Hickory. Awwww, yeah!

 

[gyrfalcon]

Yeah, it's normal. I have a good bit of Hickory for next year, and maybe a quarter cord for this year. I'm up to my eyeballs in ash..... and I've got cords more to scrounge. I'm kinda getting sick of it, but once I put a major dent in the pile of Ash trunks, the trunks at the bottom are Hickory. Awwww, yeah!

It's funny, where I live in rural Vermont, where nobody has an EPA stove but me and everybody burns "seasoned" wood (ie, cut down in the spring, split in the fall), ash is the firewood that most makes people drool with happiness. I like ash a lot, but it alone wouldn't keep me warm through these winters unless I had a much bigger stove. Gimme the hickory and beech!

 

[Pennsyltucky Chris]

It's funny, where I live in rural Vermont, where nobody has an EPA stove but me and everybody burns "seasoned" wood (ie, cut down in the spring, split in the fall), ash is the firewood that most makes people drool with happiness. I like ash a lot, but it alone wouldn't keep me warm through these winters unless I had a much bigger stove. Gimme the hickory and beech!

Yeah, Ash just doesn't quite burn hot enough. It's great for processing and drying, but come January and February? Gimme Beech, Red and White Oak, and more beech. I LOVE Beech. Absolute favorite wood.

 

[DBoon]

If I'm reloading with hickory, I'll usually reload at a slightly hotter temperature (maybe 375 degrees F) than if I were reloading with Ash or Maple (300-325). I wouldn't even try to reload with Hickory if the firebox was only 250 degrees F or so. If I did (and I have) it just smolders for a long time. Therefore, I reserve my hickory for overnight burns.

 

[Hogwildz]

Hickory & Oak filled to the brim, makes for a nice long, hot fire.

 

[Craig S.]

I have about 1/2 cord of hickory in my stacks ready for this year. That stuff burns hot ... waiting for it to get a little colder before I start mixing it in. Got one big score of it ... haven't come across any more in a while. Around here, 80% of the firewood grabs are some sort of oak.

 

[gyrfalcon]

If I'm reloading with hickory, I'll usually reload at a slightly hotter temperature (maybe 375 degrees F) than if I were reloading with Ash or Maple (300-325). I wouldn't even try to reload with Hickory if the firebox was only 250 degrees F or so. If I did (and I have) it just smolders for a long time. Therefore, I reserve my hickory for overnight burns.

Yah, there you go. I do the same.

 

[jillybeansisme]

@gyrfalcon . . . they're asking for pictures with no jammies -- is that wood porn?! (just couldn't help myself -- I had to ask!)