Yellow Birch for firewood

[barbender]

I would imagine it is an issue of deer browse around here. But we do get on certain sites that are thick with YB. Typically wetter soil, on the edge of black spruce/cedar/tamarack. Or on nice moist hilly upland sites. But on the nice hardwood sites, all you see are old growth with no regen.

[moodnacreek]

Don't light a match near the tree .

[peakbagger]

The claim in one of the Pike books is that newbies to the logging camp would be bet that they could not climb a yellow birch. Once the newby was up there they would light the birch curls on the bark and the flames would travel up the tree. I am not sure how true it was. 

[moodnacreek]

Sounds like 'Spiked Boots'.

[Oliver05262]

Yellow birch makes nice furniture. H T Cushman here in North Bennington, VT used it exclusively. I don't know all the reasons, but the one I was told was that or takes stain more evenly than a lot of other woods. They had a " secret sauce" recipe for their maple colored stain that other furniture manufacturers tried real hard to duplicate.

[petefrom bearswamp]

Not much Yellow birch in my woods.
There are a number of BTU charts on line.
BTU content is right up there slightly below White ash.
Black birch is just above the ash.
My splitter doesnt care about difficult splitting.

[wisconsitom]

We had to run up to Wausau to pick up my winch (woo hoo, new skidding winch) and driving from there to my land, we traversed what's got to be this state's best yellow birch area.  High rocky country (for the Midwest), moist upland mixtures of sugar maple , white ash ,(too bad what's coming for the ash), beech, not diseased, hemlock, and some others.

I tend to think of that area as having some of the finest forests in WI.

Then we hit the Menominee Reservation.  That IS the finest forest in the state!

Our postage stamp is just the other side of the res.

[barbender]

I've heard that the Menominee have a fine forestry program and timber.

[wisconsitom]

Yo bender, not me, but others have at times described the Menominee forestland as best east of the Mississippi.

I can believe it!

[cutterboy]

I thought I'd give an update since I'm now burning the yellow birch I cut last March. It is as good as everyone says it is. It gives a nice even burn and as an all nighter it does well leaving hot coals in the morning. Let me tell you, put a piece on live coals and the little curls of bark will light up in a flash. Instant flames!
All in all, I'm very happy with it.

[KEC]

I think I delivered a trailer load of Yellow Birch to that mill in Vermont from Central NY in the mid 1970's. My brother was yard man at the mill I worked for and he loaded the trailer up enough to have a gross weight of 89,000 lbs. The tractor was an International with a 238 HP Detroit and 10 speed roadranger. It barely had enough power and gears to climb those steep grades and nearly stalled out.  

[barbender]

The sound from that Detroit pulling those grades at #89K is probably still circling the earth!😂

[OntarioAl]

We built a tanker for fire control purposes IHC Tandem Detroit (same Hp.)
RTO 13 over, 2500 imperial gallon tank (used SS milk tank)
Straight pipe
We named "Rolling Thunder"
Cheers
Al

[SwampDonkey]

We get about a 10% yellow birch mix with sugar maple. The amazing thing is on a  clear cut it will come back 90% yellow birch. I was thinning all last fall on ground like that. Millions of yellow birch grew up and scattered maple through it. Just the opposite of the mature forest around it. :D

[wisconsitom]

Yeah, the y. birch is less shade-tolerant than the maple.