Wood ID - misery to split

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fabsroman

Minister of Fire
Jun 1, 2011
1,086
West Friendship, Maryland
Got a truck load of this stuff and the first couple splits have been miserable. They take forever and split really "stringy".
 

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Gum tree. The worst of the worst when it comes....basically everthing. Sorry bout you luck dude.
 
Gum will rot in one season in log form if left on the ground or unsheltered outdoors. I've never seen anything like it! I've burned my fair share of it, but it is not my favorite by any means.
 
Pagey said:
Gum will rot in one season in log form if left on the ground or unsheltered outdoors. I've never seen anything like it! I've burned my fair share of it, but it is not my favorite by any means.
Thanks...good thing to know. It's rated OK for BTU, but now I'm not going to take any if I stumble across it.
 
Pagey said:
Gum will rot in one season in log form if left on the ground or unsheltered outdoors. I've never seen anything like it! I've burned my fair share of it, but it is not my favorite by any means.

Well, this stuff is going to be stacked outdoors off the ground, but it will be exposed to the elements. Does that mean I should burn it this winter even though it isn't seasoned? How rotten will it be by next winter? I already have 3+ cords of seasoned wood.

The silver lining in the cloud is that two really big oaks still need to come down and I cut up a bunch of white oak today that I will be loading in the truck tomorrow. I have no idea where I am going to be putting all this wood and my wife is starting to think I am crazy. A stacking "party" might be in order.
 
Gum is good shoulder season wood, but I only work it up if: 1.) I have a splitter, 2.) I have storage space indoors in the barn, and 3.) it was an easy score. Gum doesn't split so much as it tears. Gum is a good name for it. Sourwood is a close second for being stringy, but I'll take it over gum.
 
Pagey said:
Gum is good shoulder season wood, but I only work it up if: 1.) I have a splitter, 2.) I have storage space indoors in the barn, and 3.) it was an easy score. Gum doesn't split so much as it tears. Gum is a good name for it. Sourwood is a close second for being stringy, but I'll take it over gum.

Thing is, would it be a good shoulder season wood for this shoulder season, seeing as how I just cut it down, split it, and the water was pretty much running down the wood as I split it?

I have a really large unfinished basement. Would I be better off putting it in the basement for a year and burning it next year? I do not have a shed yet that I can store it in. Maybe I will just give it to my dad. He has some room in his shed for it.
 
I personally would not put it in the basement. There was a thread on here recently discussing the fact that someone had mold growing in a basement shortly after storing wood in it. If I were going to venture into storing wood in a basement, it would be something more valuable than gum, that's for sure. If your dad has good cover for it, put it on him. Split it and give it 6-12 months, then see where it's at.
 
Pagey said:
I personally would not put it in the basement. There was a thread on here recently discussing the fact that someone had mold growing in a basement shortly after storing wood in it. If I were going to venture into storing wood in a basement, it would be something more valuable than gum, that's for sure. If your dad has good cover for it, put it on him. Split it and give it 6-12 months, then see where it's at.

Yeah, the mold might be an issue in the basement even though we run a dehumidifier down there 24/7. I split it all this afternoon and it is sitting in the driveway. It is actually shown on the left side of the splitter in the "My wife says you guys" thread. Yep, I think it might end up being a donation to my dad.
 
fabsroman said:
Pagey said:
Gum is good shoulder season wood, but I only work it up if: 1.) I have a splitter, 2.) I have storage space indoors in the barn, and 3.) it was an easy score. Gum doesn't split so much as it tears. Gum is a good name for it. Sourwood is a close second for being stringy, but I'll take it over gum.

Thing is, would it be a good shoulder season wood for this shoulder season, seeing as how I just cut it down, split it, and the water was pretty much running down the wood as I split it?

I have a really large unfinished basement. Would I be better off putting it in the basement for a year and burning it next year? I do not have a shed yet that I can store it in. Maybe I will just give it to my dad. He has some room in his shed for it.

Don't put it in your basement. You never know what kind of hitchhikers you may let in
 
I don't think it will rot if you make sure it isn't in direct ground contact. It is so ridiculously hard to split, takes my 22 ton 4-5 times longer to split than most other stuff. I have only split/burned black gum(tupelo) which is maybe a tad worse than sweet gum from what I hear. It is s decent mid-density wood and the number one best thing about it is that it basically has built in kindling if you think about it, awesome for getting a fire started.
 
Forgot to mention, that looks like black gum to me.
 
WoodPyro said:
I don't think it will rot if you make sure it isn't in direct ground contact. It is so ridiculously hard to split, takes my 22 ton 4-5 times longer to split than most other stuff. I have only split/burned black gum(tupelo) which is maybe a tad worse than sweet gum from what I hear. It is s decent mid-density wood and the number one best thing about it is that it basically has built in kindling if you think about it, awesome for getting a fire started.

Yep, it was the longest amount of time I spent splitting a truck load of wood. I just could not believe how terrible this stuff split. I have about 3 snow shovels full of trash from all the stuff that peeled off of it during the splitting process and I was extremely happy that I bought a hatchet the other day. The only bright spot about the splitting is that my 4 year old daughter asked to help and she ran the splitter lever, and she did a pretty good job at it. Not only that, but she stuck at it for 30 minutes. Today was a good day, gum wood and all.
 
Sourwood. Thick, rough bark. Hell to split. Pretty tree though.
 
I had to split almost two cords of that crap on Friday so I feel your pain! Btu wise it's not the best but it's also not the worst
 
Loco Gringo said:
Sourwood. Thick, rough bark. Hell to split. Pretty tree though.

I am leaning towards sourwood, too, on closer inspection. It has that dark spot near the center, and it's overall darker than gum. Sourwood, in my experience, does not rot in the round like gum. You may be in better shape than you thought.
 
I am 99% sure that is not gum atleat it aint the southern variety we have. It looks and sounds like elm of some kind to me.
 
Loco Gringo said:
Sourwood. Thick, rough bark. Hell to split. Pretty tree though.

Yeah, it is pretty as long as you don't intend on splitting it. All of these trees are really tall and the woods are really thick, so you really don't get to appreciate any of the trees. It isn't like my yard where I have a maple, oak, a couple willows, and some pine trees out there by their lonesome. My maple and oak are well leaved. These trees that I am cutting down only have leaves at the very top of the canopy, which are so high up that I cannot make out their shape to try and help me identify what they are.
 
Pagey said:
Gum will rot in one season in log form if left on the ground or unsheltered outdoors. I've never seen anything like it! I've burned my fair share of it, but it is not my favorite by any means.

That's strange. I used to put my gum on the bedpost overnight and it kept quite well. Did that for many nights.
 
Elm. I leave it to rot. Good luck with it.
 
Flatbedford said:
Elm. I leave it to rot. Good luck with it.

Elm trees I have heard about being around here. Never really heard of gum trees around here. Then again, I am no tree specialist. So, if it is elm, how bad is it going to be Does it rot even faster than gum? Is the btu rating on elm worse than pine? I am going to have to think 4 times on ever getting this stuff again just based upon how long it took to split it. If the btu content and storage also suck, I'll have to think 10 times about it, and that will be if I am down on my luck with wood.
 
fabsroman said:
Flatbedford said:
Elm. I leave it to rot. Good luck with it.

Elm trees I have heard about being around here. Never really heard of gum trees around here. Then again, I am no tree specialist. So, if it is elm, how bad is it going to be Does it rot even faster than gum? Is the btu rating on elm worse than pine? I am going to have to think 4 times on ever getting this stuff again just based upon how long it took to split it. If the btu content and storage also suck, I'll have to think 10 times about it, and that will be if I am down on my luck with wood.

I didn't even read the thread after I read your first opst and saw the picture. I do not know if it is Gum, sure looks like Elm to me. Elm is very hard to split, but I hear it makes good fire wood. I don't think I have evr burned much of it because I have never been able to split it. I do not think rotting is an issue. the Elm rounds that I tossed in the woods a few years ago because I could not split them were still there last time I looked.
 
I've never seen elm in person, so it very well may be elm. I will say this: it looks a lot like the sourwood I've seen; however all the sourwood trees here are MUCH smaller. I'm sure they can get larger, but I've never seen one on the Plateau here the size you have in your pic.
 
fabsroman said:
Flatbedford said:
Elm. I leave it to rot. Good luck with it.

Elm trees I have heard about being around here. Never really heard of gum trees around here. Then again, I am no tree specialist. So, if it is elm, how bad is it going to be Does it rot even faster than gum? Is the btu rating on elm worse than pine? I am going to have to think 4 times on ever getting this stuff again just based upon how long it took to split it. If the btu content and storage also suck, I'll have to think 10 times about it, and that will be if I am down on my luck with wood.

It is not Elm. I have seen a bunch of gum trees and elm trees and that is a gum tree for sure. I didn't take very close pictures of this wood since I was more annoyed that I had to process it but look at some of the bark in the second pick as well as the tell tale heartwood and splinters everywhere and I know the tree I was splitting was a gum tree.

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/79067/
 
OK.
 
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