Silver Maple

[Jan Pijpelink]

Last week we had major T-storms in the area, 2 nights in a row. Really bad. A tornado as well. Hundreds of trees came down. This one on the shed of my neighbor across the street. He asked if we wanted it. Lady and I hauled it yesterday and today. Heavy stuff. Is it Silver Maple?

 

[brenndatomu]

Much better than SM...that's beech! SCORE!
Beech is excellent firewood...doesn't take forever to dry either.

 

[begreen]

Sorry for your neighbor, but nice score. It's not that big of a tree. Maybe a son of a beech.

 

[Jan Pijpelink]

Sorry for your neighbor, but nice score. It's not that big of a tree. Maybe a son of a beech.

That's not the whole tree you see there. We had 5 truckloads and 21 big trunk pieces too heavy to lift on to the truck bed, so we wheeled them across the street with a hand truck.

 

[Jan Pijpelink]

I have 450+ hours vacation left, so I will take some time off to split, stack and kiln it.

 

[peakbagger]

Plan on setting up your kiln setup for drying, beech is great firewood but its right up there with oak for long drying times. Usually lots of crotches and bends so a splitter is essential (although the wood in the pictures look fairly straight. I used to hand split and beech was not a favorite. Depending on your stove, I would suggest you over split the wood, beech is nota fast burner, once it burning it lasts a long time, but when starting with cold stove it does take a bit longer to get going.

Definitely a nice score. With my new wood lot, its going to be my primary wood for the future.

 

[EODMSgt]

Awesome score! Beech is my favorite wood to burn and I scrounge as much as I can get annually. I usually have good luck open air drying it in one season (6-12 months with no kiln).

 

[peakbagger]

Awesome score! Beech is my favorite wood to burn and I scrounge as much as I can get annually. I usually have good luck open air drying it in one season (6-12 months with no kiln).

My guess with my beech drying experience being contrary is that since it was such a pain to hand split I tended to leave the pieces large so they took longer to dry?. Now that I have a gas powered splitter, its not much of an issue to split them smaller. I do save the big rounds and slab them into wide 1.5 to 2" think slabs for boxing in the corners of my stacks. I used the same technique for the base under my solar water tank I had posted on the green room .

 

[Diabel]

Awesome score! Beech is my favorite wood to burn and I scrounge as much as I can get annually. I usually have good luck open air drying it in one season (6-12 months with no kiln).

Same here beech is my favorite firewood to burn. Very clean, no mess bringing it in etc. But please allow it to season at least 3yrs. you will yield the benefit of its btu much better.

 

[brenndatomu]

beech is great firewood but its right up there with oak for long drying times.

My experience has been more like 1 year drying in perfect conditions, 2 years max...oak is certainly slower IME...as you mentioned, I'm sure split size plays into the equation, as always...

 

[EODMSgt]

My guess with my beech drying experience being contrary is that since it was such a pain to hand split I tended to leave the pieces large so they took longer to dry?. Now that I have a gas powered splitter, its not much of an issue to split them smaller. I do save the big rounds and slab them into wide 1.5 to 2" think slabs for boxing in the corners of my stacks. I used the same technique for the base under my solar water tank I had posted on the green room .

Good points. I agree that beech can be a PITA to hand split and with all the knots, even using the gas splitter can be a challenge. Not sure other than the split size why there would be such a difference in moisture content/drying time.

 

[peakbagger]

My traditional wood stacks were not in great locations and they were three rows deep. They were on the north side of my house backed up to softwoods. The sun gets to them during the day but shadowed in early morning and evening. I based my two years observation on those stacks. I did space between the rows so it was not a tight block but it was obvious the wood in the center row was less seasoned than the front (sunny side) or the back (never gets sun). With my switch to beech as primary wood, I switched to double row stacks with a gap in between spaced out by long sticks and moved them to the front of my house on the sunny side. The stacks get far more sun and air flow. The first of these stacks will get moved to my woodshed this fall. with a slightly newer stack following it. I had dropped a lot of trees over the past winter at my wood lot and they got bucked up, hauled, split and stacked during the recent Covid 19 lock down.

The perspective is compressed but here is the current inventory taken from my office. The white covered pile in the foreground to the right is the first one destined to burn this winter. It will be two years plus and mostly beech. There are good signs of checking in the beech on both sides. I posted a photo of it previously that I copied below from several months ago. All the wood in there is hand split. The new experimental stack is the one in black plastic. its got an electrical conduit frame built a couple of inches outside the stack. The roof is slanted towards the back and there is an air vent near the front peak on both ends. Its not obvious due to shadows but the front and back sides are spaced up from the grass . If I close up the vents its gets hot and humid inside real fast. The next two stacks are a year plus old, they are covered with salvaged galvanized roof tin from a 200 plus year old house in VT and at least one or possibly two will get burnt this winter. The pallets and wood on the top is to keep it flying from high winds. The front row with the red roof is a mix, the right end is a year old and the left side is new within a few weeks with the red roofing went on this past weekend. There is actually the beginning of a another row in front of it that is not visible. Despite the perspective there is minimum of 5' between the stacks. I am big fan of the tin roofs with some overhang and a gap between the top of the pile and the tin. It lets any humidity coming up from the stack into free air and any breeze takes it away.

I also have a year old cord in the back of the house that's my traditional stacking with a roofing tin treatment similar to the white one out front.

 

[EODMSgt]

@peakbagger, I remember seeing some previous pictures you posted a while back, I think they were in response to a question about top covering.

I have the advantage of good sun and wind where I stack for seasoning (well, as much annual sun as one can get in close proximity to Mt. Washington). A couple examples are in the pictures. The first picture was from about a year ago. The splits were processed late spring/early summer and left uncovered until late August/early September. They were then moved into the firewood shed in early November and 6 of the 8 cords were burned last season. The second picture is the setup I am using currently. 4 of the stacks were processed last fall and top covered over the winter. The 5th stack was processed a couple months ago. These will be top covered late summer/early fall and will be moved to the firewood shed before the snow flies. The stacks are a mix of ash, beech, silver maple, white birch, and long dead red oak (all other oak is in a separate pile waiting to be processed for a 3-year turnaround). The firewood shed itself is an open design so it gets plenty of air to continue the seasoning process.

Going back to the original question about beech, I'm finally getting to a point where I will be 2-3 years ahead, so hopefully everything will have a minimum of 2 years to season. The third picture is what I have been scrounging this year (so far) and that will all be processed and stacked before winter. With that being said, over the last 11 years of using this wood stove, I haven't always had the luxury of having 3-year seasoned firewood and I never had an issue with birch, ash, or beech that only seasoned for a year (or less).

 

[cbst09]

@peakbagger, I remember seeing some previous pictures you posted a while back, I think they were in response to a question about top covering.

I have the advantage of good sun and wind where I stack for seasoning (well, as much annual sun as one can get in close proximity to Mt. Washington). A couple examples are in the pictures. The first picture was from about a year ago. The splits were processed late spring/early summer and left uncovered until late August/early September. They were then moved into the firewood shed in early November and 6 of the 8 cords were burned last season. The second picture is the setup I am using currently. 4 of the stacks were processed last fall and top covered over the winter. The 5th stack was processed a couple months ago. These will be top covered late summer/early fall and will be moved to the firewood shed before the snow flies. The stacks are a mix of ash, beech, silver maple, white birch, and long dead red oak (all other oak is in a separate pile waiting to be processed for a 3-year turnaround). The firewood shed itself is an open design so it gets plenty of air to continue the seasoning process.

Going back to the original question about beech, I'm finally getting to a point where I will be 2-3 years ahead, so hopefully everything will have a minimum of 2 years to season. The third picture is what I have been scrounging this year (so far) and that will all be processed and stacked before winter. With that being said, over the last 11 years of using this wood stove, I haven't always had the luxury of having 3-year seasoned firewood and I never had an issue with birch, ash, or beech that only seasoned for a year (or less).

Wow, you have a very impressive area there. I like how neat everything is. Very nice