Black Locust

[Bruno of NH]

I stumbled on some black locust for the first time.
Wow what a great firewood!
I gave a friend of mine 1/2 of what I had for helping me out this fall with the firewood business. 
The tree company dropped it off.
I don't know where it came from.
I would like to find more for next year.
It's makes great heat and coals.

[Southside]

You could probably sell it as fence posts for a lot more than it's worth as firewood. They last forever.

[lxskllr]

You could probably sell it as fence posts for a lot more than it's worth as firewood. They last forever.

I have four huge locusts next to my drive that my boss wants for fence posts, but they aren't for sale at any price  :^D
It does make nice firewood. I've had some in the past that I scavenged from job sites. Burns hot and long  :^)

[nativewolf]

You could probably sell it as fence posts for a lot more than it's worth as firewood. They last forever.

Yep, $135/ton in 7' sections if they are sound.  Only issue burning it is the smell, not so pleasant but in a woodstove or boiler it is fine.

[Kindlinmaker]

Hottest burning firewood we have in the upper Mid-Atlantic area (and we have a fairly wide variety of species).  It will burn pretty well green but generally produces a heavy creosote chimney coating. Most experienced black locust burners dry for a minimum 2 years vs. the standard 1 year for other hardwoods.  My clay tile chimney has virtually no build-up from other hardwoods after 1 - 2 years continuous winter burning. Same tiles look like they have been coated with black glass after burning a season of black locust. Still like the black locust heat but I try to mix with other hardwoods.  We mill all of the big ones for exposure use lumber but yields are very low because of their "lobe" growth shape. All the scraps find the stove so nothing gets wasted. Friends fight over our locust slab wood when we have extra. 

[hedgerow]

Its pretty much what I have been burning the last couple of years as I cleared an area in my pasture that had a lot of black locust in it. The locust I am currently burning has been seasoned for two years and it is burning real nice in the Garn. I have a fair amount of hedge {Osage Orange} on the same farm so if I need post I make them out of hedge. 

[Don P]

I usually burn standing dead locust. It goes into the stove that night. If it has been laying on the ground it might get seasoned a little while. We've been cutting, splitting and delivering trailerloads like that without problems. I'm sure live locust would take a bit but there is so much dead around there isn't much need to burn a live one. I've never cleaned the chimney, it doesn't creosote but I burn dry and don't choke a stove at all.

[WV Sawmiller]

   It is a preferred firewood around here because of the high heat and low ash results but I almost cry when I see it advertised. I went over to see my next door neighbor yesterday and he was unloading a truckload of it. If it will make a fence post I save mine for that and if it will make a pole I cut it 15' long. My wood storage pole barn has locust uprights and I built a firewood shed with 4 decent locust uprights last year. I just square them on the mill for a flat nailing surface. I also have 2 shooting houses/deer blinds (one is 6'X8' and the other is 6'X6') built on locust poles. I sold nearly 600 posts and 20 poles for a pole barn 4-5 years ago. The lady who bought the poles could have gotten treated 6X6 cheaper but wanted locust. One guy hired a trucker who came over 250 miles to get them and take them back to the coastal area of Va.

   Its your wood. Use it however it does best for you.

[Don P]

Agreed, it gets graded into 3 uses here, the good straight solid wood goes to construction. If those open up to doty sections it is a raised bed timber, the rest is firewood. I'll firewood it down to about 2" branchwood for our stove.  Fenceposts would be another grade you can pull out of the mix.

This is a recent truckload of firewood grade. These were trees that had overtaken an old pasture. It is a short lived colonizer. These trees are mostly dead standing. I flipped them out with the loader last summer and we've been chewing up the pile this winter as well as dropping some of the larger ones I couldn't flip. We also have another couple of honey holes where they were pushed out while fencing and need to be removed from those neglected pastures. In my woods they have died out as the canopy has closed over them which is very common. The old timers say open grown locust is different from woods grown. Generally if they have conchs on them they are firewood the heart rot is already there. You can see that on the truck.

[moodnacreek]

Most of my fire wood is locust slab wood. The best firewood [ other than fruitwoods] is hickory cut live and split and stacked in the shed for 2 years. It can burn through the side of the stove.

[WV Sawmiller]

   I love black locust. Green they smell like fresh picked raw peanuts. One bad feature is they are shallow rooted and they grow on steep slopes. In winters we often have several days of soaking rain that seriously softens the ground then we have a hard ice storm and the locusts are among the first to uproot. When one falls it will take down 2-3 below it which take down the ones below them in a domino effect. I have seen long strips where the whole mountainside got uprooted. Looked like where I used to hunt in S. Ala where a tornado I had come through and taken out a path.

[gspren]

I know you guys are probably more careful than me and never get splinters, but I find that locust splinters tend to fester and get sore much worse than oaks or maples.

[hedgerow]

I know you guys are probably more careful than me and never get splinters, but I find that locust splinters tend to fester and get sore much worse than oaks or maples.

I was just loading the Garn over the weekend with locust and didn't put my gloves on and got a splinter and now its festered up. It reminds you in a hurry to put your gloves on. Hedge is bad that way too. 

[samandothers]

Helps push the splinter out.  :D

[doctorb]

No argument here.  My favorite firewood.  Splits easily, lasts forever stacked.

[OntarioAl]

Well Folks
Black Locust is considered an invasive species in Ontario
Just blew me away
Attached is the bureaucrat's reasoning
 http://www.ontarioinvasiveplants.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Black_Locust_BMP.pdf
Al

[Bruno of NH]

I ended up with the black locusts from the tree company. 
I dont know where it came from.
I want more but it's hard to come by around my area.
It makes the best coals of any firewood I have ever burned.

[doc henderson]

The head of security is moving back to his family farm and asked me to see if I wanted a stack of ERC logs.  This I believe is locust on his log splitter.  I guess he trying to keep people from stealing his firewood.



 

[lxskllr]

That's not black locust, at least not the kind we have here. Honey locust maybe?

[hedgerow]

Doc
In my area that would be thorn type honey locust. Those are the first tree to go when I buy a farm. Those go straight to the burn pile I am not dealing with thorns on the bark. I get enough dealing with thorns cutting hedge {Osage Orange } on one farm we have. I am currently burning some thorn less honey locust in my Garn. Honey locust make great firewood takes some time to dry. 

[doc henderson]

I should have said honey locust.  I just said locust but in a black locust thread.  I will ask him what it is.  It sure looks gnarly.  would not want to fall on that. Honey locust is a very heavy, strong dense, and pretty wood.  

[wisconsitom]

Definitely honey-locust.

tom

[wisconsitom]

I found "the bureaucrat's reasoning" to be sound and complete, regarding the invasive potential of black locust in Ontario.  Thus it is here in Wisconsin as well-one sees colonies of this non-native tree invading in many areas far to the north of its original range.  It is the displacement of valuable native species that is the problem with black locust.

It is personal taste to some extent, but I'd much rather see the northern mixed-wood forest, the birches, firs, spruce, pines, white-cedar, maples, aspens, hemlocks, etc.......than solid patches of black locust.

All that said, I truly wonder what all this northern forest land is going to look like in 100 years.  Part of me thinks it may have to transform into oak-hickory as things warm up, with such conjoiners as the black locust, black walnut, sycamore, etc, riding along.  I hope I'm wrong about this.  But it may be the future of the Western Great Lakes forest.  Again....I dearly hope to be wrong about this.

tom

[doc henderson]

 

 

Who would have thought that our head of security was into sculpture.  this is what he uses the honey locust for.  I just thought he was having theft of firewood problems.   :D

[TKehl]

Cool idea.  I actually have found one Honey Locust that has a particular repeating thorn pattern (large flat blade with two smaller ones coming out the side) that I spared for craft type ideas.
 
Honey Locust thorns will go through tractor tires and boots.  However, when girdled or felled 2 years, they give up the fight and crunch like any other little branch.
 
My goats love the leaves more any anything other than maybe hedge.  I call it "goat crack".  Sometimes I wonder if eating around all those thorns is like trying to get every morsel of crab leg for us.  :D
 
I lot of times when Black Locust takes over, it's because of soil depletion.  Locally they don't get much bigger than good fence post diameter before dying (maybe too crowded).  As they success out, after adding a nitrogen to the soil, any other understory tree can overtake them.  They are only in a few isolated areas on our farm.  Frankly, I wish we had more of them here, but they are hard to establish with browse pressure.  Once established though, they are pertinacious!  Since the established root system can quickly send water sprouts over browse height.