My Dad has a large pile of 100% red oak logs, and he asked me to come over and help buck. I show up yesterday, start on the pile, but the pile is so tight, with such large logs, it was terrible to try and move anything, so I told him to have the neighbor come down and break up the pile with his tractor. He then asks me to help with a downed tree down the road and come back later for the logs once the pile is ready. I drive a minute down the road and find a red maple fallen in a swamp. Not prepared for water, I'm ankle deep in muck and start cutting up the maple with my Dad. As I'm cutting the tree, I notice most of the tree is punk - for example, the butt was about 24" diameter, with at least 6-8 inches of bad punk before hitting a small cylinder of good heartwood. So...I tell my Dad that the tree is rotten and ask why the bloody hell we are lugging rotten wood through a swamp! "Oh, I'll burn anything - wood's wood"! So, I tell him that the punk is going to constantly soak up water, burn terrible, etc., etc., but to no avail. So, I spent 2-3 hours lugging rotten wood through a rotten swamp, with black flies swarming like no tomorrow. I got punked by my Dad! I though I was making some headway too - he is starting to put two years of wood up, rather than burn wood only bucked and split the summer before burning - back to the drawing board.......Cheers!