... with Sugar Maple.
What's not to like about it?
Pros: Slightly higher BTU than White Ash (may depend on what source you look at) and only slightly lower than White Oak; splits by hand like a hot knife cuts butter; smells WONDERFUL while cutting, splitting, and just anytime you walk past the stack; it has a pleasant smoke, no sparks and good coals.
What's not to like about it? Is there anything bad about Sugar Maple?
The reason I say this is because I never considered it a good wood before, but I was looking over charts and saw that it has a pretty high BTU content, and noticed that my latest source of wood had one there. So I cut it a whole truck load, and I split it all by hand yesterday morning. It smells good! I also saw on a chart that it seasons fairly quick, almost as quick as ash does.
So today while cutting more at my source I walked the area and found 2 more good Sugar maples. One of them looks like a pretty good score, probably 2 truck loads. Also found a couple white oaks on the ground. Looks like I'm going to be cutting for a while yet. I'm trying to get as much as possible before other scroungers find out; there are already a few that found the source but they're cutting much slower than I am. I've got 1 load of ash, 1 load of maple, 5 loads of oak, and 1 load of poplar hauled out so far. The poplar isn't really ideal, but it was in his yard and he wanted me to "take the bad with the good". I have one more load of poplar to haul, and then I can go to town on the remainder of the oak and maple that is in his woods (2-3 loads of oak and 2-3 loads of maple left).
So back to the question, is there any downsides to maple? If not I may replace the highly desired oak with maple in my searching.
What's not to like about it?
Pros: Slightly higher BTU than White Ash (may depend on what source you look at) and only slightly lower than White Oak; splits by hand like a hot knife cuts butter; smells WONDERFUL while cutting, splitting, and just anytime you walk past the stack; it has a pleasant smoke, no sparks and good coals.
What's not to like about it? Is there anything bad about Sugar Maple?
The reason I say this is because I never considered it a good wood before, but I was looking over charts and saw that it has a pretty high BTU content, and noticed that my latest source of wood had one there. So I cut it a whole truck load, and I split it all by hand yesterday morning. It smells good! I also saw on a chart that it seasons fairly quick, almost as quick as ash does.
So today while cutting more at my source I walked the area and found 2 more good Sugar maples. One of them looks like a pretty good score, probably 2 truck loads. Also found a couple white oaks on the ground. Looks like I'm going to be cutting for a while yet. I'm trying to get as much as possible before other scroungers find out; there are already a few that found the source but they're cutting much slower than I am. I've got 1 load of ash, 1 load of maple, 5 loads of oak, and 1 load of poplar hauled out so far. The poplar isn't really ideal, but it was in his yard and he wanted me to "take the bad with the good". I have one more load of poplar to haul, and then I can go to town on the remainder of the oak and maple that is in his woods (2-3 loads of oak and 2-3 loads of maple left).
So back to the question, is there any downsides to maple? If not I may replace the highly desired oak with maple in my searching.
