wood ID help please

[SeanG]

Hi all,

I found this pile yesterday. It was cut three weeks ago. Tried to split the big 20" diameter trunk pieces but my maul just bounced off of them. Still very wet from the marks where the maul sunk in, which was only about 1 cm.

Thanks,

Sean

 

[shoot-straight]

soft maple, silver, norway or red.

 

[claydogg84]

Soft Maple.

 

[Applesister]

Red maple

 

[Applesister]

It could be imagination but some trees have seemed stringier to split in the spring versus late fall cutting. It could just be individual trees, but I see it in Cherry and Black birch and Ash.

 

[SeanG]

Thank you both for the quick ID.

I don't have any experience with cutting in fall vs. spring since I'm new to burning and cutting as well.

 

[osagebow]

Welcome, Sean. Get it cut, split, stacked and covered and it should be good to go this fall. Silver maple doesn't throw a lot of heat but helps you get dry fuel together quick.

 

[SeanG]

Hi Osagebow. I'm going to work on splitting it this week. However, I couldn't make a dent into it with my 8 lb. maul. I need a splitter. There were a lot of smaller 6"-8" rounds. Should I bother splitting them?

 

[osagebow]

6-8 might dry OK. I stack mine in that range as is and periodically cram a bunch in a tire and whack them into kindling during the burning season. Fun and productive way to split bigger stuff, also.

 

[Wood Duck]

That maple had a lot of knots, crotches, etc. Any tree with lots of crotches will be hard to split.

 

[tigeroak]

NOT soft maple it is hard maple. I burn 80% soft and hard maple. Give this 2 years and will be good to go. Soft maple in the knots and crotch turn it up side down and will split by hand, I do it all the time.

 

[Ncountry]

Maple. Leaning towards hard maple.

 

[Pennsyltucky Chris]

The top 2 are Red Maple.

The bottom 2 kinda look like elm, but the bark might just be funny.