Question on scraps

[chutes]

Hello all-
I've recently finished putting away a couple cord of delivered wood and there was a good amount of bark and pieces of kindling left over. I've taken all of the larger pieces and put them into an old trash can for kindling, but I have quite a bit of pieces of bark, smaller splinters of wood, etc., left over. My question is, should I just sweep this up and use it for mulch or burn it in my outside pit, or is that scrap useful for indoor kindling? I'm trying to think of an item of equivalent scale and size, and I guess I would say that the pieces of bark I'm talking about are equal in size to an empty man's wallet. What say you? Save or discard?

Thanks

 

[Hogwildz]

If your going to be burning 24/7, you won't need much kindling. Maybe enough for a few cold starts, but that is about it. If your burning more start & stop & sporadic, then put it in a container and use it as kindling.
If you have plenty and still more left over, burn it outside in your fire pit, pile etc.

 

[Girl]

You can always throw them in a paper bag twist it up, and you have a kindling fire starter...
Up to you what you want to do...

 

[chutes]

Hogwildz-
I do plan to burn 24/7. I work out of my house (10 feet from my insert, so hope I won't be too hot here at my computer. There is a window right next to me though, so I suppose I can always crack it). I do hope that I will have good coals each morning to just keep things going all the time without having to restart. PS - love you siggy. It is funny to think about these questions when, as you mentioned, our precursors had done a fairly good job of managing to figure out fire.

Girl-
That's a really cool idea. I never thought about that before. Thank you. Think I'll go ahead and keep the scraps for that purpose. As you and as hogwildz suggest, at the very least I can use that for my pit. Sometimes, in the middle of summer, it is easier to come by wood than it is the kindling to get the fire started.

 

[Hogwildz]

As you get more wood, you will find you always have lots of this stuff laying around. I split & sometimes cut my own here. And I have a mound of this stuff. Had to use my snow plow to push it around. I will pitch fork it into my dump truck and burn in a pile in the field. I'd save more of the wood pcs than the bark. Bark leaves more ash.

The sig was earned when another former member and I had a disagreement, wand I was called a Neanderthal.

 

[chad3]

Wife hates to see the small scraps that are left over after splitting a good amount of wood. She will pick them up. As for kindling, even though I burn 24/7 I still use a few pieces every morning and I've found that I can get the best ones at any of my friends building sites. See if you can scrounge scraps from a new building site. Great wood for what you want.
CHad

 

[InTheRockies]

During heating season, I burn 24/7. Like everyone else, during shoulder seasons, I have to start fires periodically. I put the stuff, along with saw dust from using my chain saw to process big pieces, pine cones, and pine needles in paper bags. The mix burns well as fire starters and I'm not wasting anything. (I hate waste.)

 

[myzamboni]

I have two 32 gallon trash cans of 'scraps' plus 2 more cans of 'chunks'. I think I will start bagging the noodles I just made cutting some large rounds into a more manageable size.

Save it all. Use it all. In the stove, firepit, or as mulch. To each their own.

 

[d.n.f.]

You can always throw them in a paper bag twist it up, and you have a kindling fire starter...
Up to you what you want to do...

I use plastic.

 

[myzamboni]

You can always throw them in a paper bag twist it up, and you have a kindling fire starter...
Up to you what you want to do...

I use plastic.

I hope you are referring to credit cards. . .

 

[EddyKilowatt]

I've tried the bag-em-and-burn-em route but wasn't too happy with the resultant fire (bag burned away, scraps tended to fall in a heap and smolder).

I've come around to the view that the heat content of small scraps usually isn't worth the time and fuss to collect, store, and burn them. This year I'm just tossing scraps under our fruit trees, figuring they''ll mulch down eventually and help with the organic content of the soil there.

Eddy

 

[Cluttermagnet]

I don't burn bark, that goes in a mulch pile, and is useful around our yard. Little wood strips in all possible sizes are lying around after a lot of splitting. I have found it very much worth it to pick up and save all those little pieces, Most of it around here is Oak scraps, and when dry, it's terrific tinder and kindling for fire starting. It takes off well- you could almost just hold a match under it. All this might not make sense for those who work with huge quantities of wood. There are only so many hours in the day, and there are more productive things to do on the woodlot. But for us homeowner types, it makes great sense to 'police the area' and pick up everything.