Your Favorite Type of Wood to Burn?

[WDH]

I like hickory for its heating value, and usually the bark is tight and does not make a mess all over the place when you bring it inside.

[SwampDonkey]

Hardwood I mentioned will slip it's bark just from the furnace drying it all the time. I like it though, because it's a good fire starter in fall and spring. Lights quick with some newsprint wadded in.  ;D 8)

[DDDfarmer]

well we dont have those exotic woods here, so I will list what we have in my prefered order,

tamerack, birch, white spruce, black spruce, popular, balsam, bam.

[Dodgy Loner]

I like red oak because I split everything by hand, and there's nothing easier to split.

However, if there is a pork shoulder involved, then give me white oak or hickory ;D

[Corley5]

Ironwood (Eastern Hophornbeam)

[SwampDonkey]

I get a stick of hornbeam once in awhile in the firewood stash. It will definitely throw some heat as good as you can get. It's not rare in the woods, but mostly no bigger than fence post. But I have seen some large ones on fence row.

[taylorsmissbeehaven]

I like the oak and hickory for long burn time. Locust is a treat in our area, but lost a bunch of old dogwoods to drought last year and while they are small in diameter they are dense. Man do they put off some heat! Anybody else have experience with dogwood?

[doctorb]

I agree that the dogwood is small but mighty!  Talk about tough, has anyone had any experience ciutting / burning American Holly?  It also is a very dense wood.

[SwampDonkey]

Serviceberry is to, and we get some 6" or 8" on occassion.

[Magicman]

One other attribute that the Red Oak that Dodgy Loner described above is that it leaves very ashes.  Some species such as White Oak, Pecan, and Ash seemingly leaves as much ashes as the wood you feed it.

[WDH]

Not to mention sweetgum.  I would not mention sweetgum because this is a family place  :D.

[pineywoods]

There's 3 problems with sweetgum firewood.
1 IT's wet, takes a long time to dry
2 Hard to split, but easy if you slab off 2 inch chunks off the side.
3. Leaves a LOT of ash

Otherwise, it really is a half decent firewood.

[JohnW]

Oh yeah, sweat gum, what a treat to split.  I think I have another formula to try.  Drive a wedge in in the middle, but near the outside edge (and excuse me for such a terrible discription).  Drive a second wedge in the same split on the other edge.  You will, thereby, split the wood in two, but it won't be falling apart due to all those hanger on things up and down the full length of the split.  So knock out one of the wedges and use an ax to cut all the hangers on things.  You should be able to complete a split in 5 minutes or so.  So it warms you twice.  Much better than most wood while you're splitting, and probably not quite as well when you're burning it.

[SwampDonkey]

 :D :D

Reminds me of "Rock" hard maple I split this April in the yard. I had to score the 200 lb rounds with the chainsaw, some half way down through just to bust it up so I could handle 50 lb chunks onto the splitter. It usually took the first 20 swings to make a crack. I would pound the splitting maul with a post maul and some times both mauls bounced out of the split.  Best time we found to split hardwood was in the winter frozen solid. Usually March was when we got to it, sun feels warmer. But it's a few months to winter, and it had to be cleaned up in the yard. Hard way to make a living. ;D ;)

Some rave over apple wood. I've tried it. It would be OK for fall or spring wood, but nothing like rock maple, beech, yellow birch in winter. ;)

[JohnW]

Thank God for Rock hard maple to keep you humble, SwampDonkey.  Has anyone ever tried splitting persimmon?

[thecfarm]

Never seen sweet gum or split it. When growing up we had to split,with wedges and maul,elm a few times. My father would leave it behind the shed to "get the life out of it". Leave it there for a year and than it would split much better.

[tcsmpsi]

My sawmill is my wood splitter.   ;D

[Magicman]

Thankfully I am in a area where I can be very choosy regarding my firewood species.  Red Oak only.   ;D

[WDH]

I burn mostly red oak, too, because that is more of what is dying from stress and the drought.

[RobertJoseph]

Hornbeam, Maple, Hickory, Ash and Yellow Birch.....in that order.

To be honest, I burn whatever blows down or gets thinned, but those are my favs. Have ridiculous amounts of hornbeam and maple so they make up 90% of my firewood. Hickory is fairly scarce on my lot and much of the ash has been dying from ash yellows. Yellow birch and ash are nice for startup and use in the cookstove.

Also use the maple and hickory for grilling. Nothing beats cooking over wood.

[lynde37avery]

haha, you guys are gonna laugh. we burn about 5 or 6 cords and about 1/3rd of my wood for the season is trimmed ends and knots off from logs that go to the mill. and stump wedges from felling. and i get about 1/2 cord or so of slabs from the mill usually. but my favorite fire wood to burn would be cherry or round sticks of hard maple. burns all night loaded with those.

[thecfarm]

I burn alot of that stuff too lynde. I hunt down my dead trees and any ugly looking ones too. I burn just about anything that holds together to get into the fire. I'm am not fussy with my fire wood. And I have about a 150 acres to be fussy with too.

[ohsoloco]

I used to gather up all of the bumps, knots, really short pieces, etc. and burn them in my bonfire.  Finally wised up and now collect them in crates I can move with my skid steer.  I probably gather at least an extra cord of wood every year from these ugly pieces that wouldn't make the wood pile 

[ibseeker]

Eucalyptus or pepper, doesn't matter which pepper...any dead pepper is a good one. Then again, my burning is probably a bit different from the rest of you.

I'd be interested in what wood you DON'T burn and why.

[PartTimeJack]

Eucalyptus or pepper, doesn't matter which pepper...any dead pepper is a good one. Then again, my burning is probably a bit different from the rest of you.

I'd be interested in what wood you DON'T burn and why.

Hedge...takes 10 years to dry, a 2 foot long piece weighs 100 lbs, and can melt your stove if it is a lighter stove... :D

But on the plus side it does burn for about 3 days... :D ;D