Whats Your Big 3 of Firewood?

[woodsteach]

1.  OOOOLD osage orange fence posts--- although kinda hard on the chainsaw
2.  Osage orange
3. ash

[Klunker]

That's easy,

1 cut
2 split
3 stacked

[Woodcutter_Mo]

My favorite 3-

1-Blackjack oak- for a rip roaring hot fire and starts easy

3- whatever else I have on hand, usually red oak, hickory, white oak, black walnut, black oak oak cross.


2-Post oak- burns good and leaves good coals so the fire doesn't go completely overnight ect. Usually add a good Round piece before I go to bed.

Edit: Sorry for the scrambled post, my phone did something there

[luvmexfood]

I have available oaks, hickorys, maples, sourwood, cherry, locust, beech and others. Where I have been logging I have offered some people I know free wood. So far no takers.

Did cut a standing dead locust the other day that was about 10 inches at the butt. Had been dead awhile. Just wanted to get it out of the way before it fell across the farm road. Best heating wood I ever had and I have burned a lot of locust. Cut a tank of gas and pass me the file. Only problem.

[brianJ]

I bet over the years of the ash borer has got everyone using 90% or more of ash for a few years.    Wonder how long ash would last in log form?

[stavebuyer]

Black Locust
Shagbark Hickory
White Oak

In the order listed.

[Al_Smith]

I bet over the years of the ash borer has got everyone using 90% or more of ash for a few years.    Wonder how long ash would last in log form?

If it's up off the ground ash will last a good long while .Same with white oak ,beech. Not so much on maple ,hickory, red oak ,cherry .Those you need to get cut split stacked and covered in a timely fashion .

[Al_Smith]

A lot could be said about storing fire wood .This year I had an amount of degraded stuff I had neglected for about 10 years but covered it this year around late September .It was popcorn dry and burned good but it sure took a lot more of it .We had some below normal temps for a few weeks and really the only higher amount of snow than usual for a few years .I was down to about a cord and a half until about 2-3 weeks when I let the fire burn out ,got too warm .
I'm about to restack the better stuff and slash pile the junk stuff and replenish my supply .If I'd do maybe 2 face cords a day couple days a week it wouldn't take that long . I don't move as fast as I used to but then again I've never been this old before .

[doc henderson]

Mulberry, oak, locust.  

[62oliver]

In this area the best I get is White Birch, Black Ash, and  Poplar, proper name is Trembling Aspen I think. Not my favourite but we got tons of it here.
Also don't mind burning a bit of Jackpine, but sparingly , as it gets things pretty hot.

[Tacotodd]

All that I've been exposed to: hickory, ash, red oak.

I've never had white oak to burn but LOTS of pine. I'd be more specific but my smart phone is persistent in changing it to some sort of smiley thing. Here, I'll show. Loblolly. I have tried for hours!

[Tacotodd]

It comes out as loblolly. I only cut for myself. I've not been exposed to much different around here.

[Corley5]

  To sell I and my clients like a mix of sugar maple, beech, and ironwood/hophornbeam.  Red oak is distant and only gets sold to clients I know stay two years ahead.  I'll burn it in our OWBs and sometimes get deals on it as not many want it up here.  Ash for dry in the winter but it's getting hard to find good solid dead ash now :( :'(  A lot of people don't want ash at all.  Same with soft maple.  I used to burn the junk off my log jobs that I wouldn't sell.  Pine, aspen, basswood etc.  I burned sugar maple and red oak this winter ;) ;D

[Al_Smith]

It will all burn from balsa to iron wood .Some just burns better than others .

[hedgerow]

My big three for firewood is Hedge, Hedge and of course more Hedge  {Osage Orange}

[brianJ]

My big three for firewood is Hedge, Hedge and of course more Hedge  {Osage Orange}

I suppose you have rows, rows, & of course more rows of Hedge.
Please don't put me in the wood shed for bad puns

[cutterboy]

Ash, hickory and red oak. I also like beech and black birch.

[Thomasjw4]

Larch, Doug fir and lodgepole.  its not much, but its what i have.

[KEC]

I'll say Honey Locust, Hophornbeam and mulberry. Realisticly, any decent BTU value wood. Any wood gets a better rating as it gets closer to the stove. My stove is in a large basement and I'll bring green wood in in October and November; I can burn it by mid-late winter. So if it's inside by December it's all good, just some better'n others. I've cut many spruce and pine by my house. Dropped one just out the sliding glass doors to a walk-in basement. Where do you think that wood ended up?

[Sauna freak]

I can only choose 3???  

I guess my favorite was sugar maple, but only in a large butt log that's easy to split.  Burning the rounds and knot pieces wasn't super fun in my small stove.

#2 Has to be black cherry.  Somewhat fast burning, but it makes the outside smell so nice and makes such a nice bed of coals.

#3 Is Red Oak.  Good all around wood that's easy to split, not too hard to light.  I hate the smell though.  Need to burn it hot to mitigate that aspect.

Close 4th would be any of Walnut, Yellow Birch, G/W/B Ash, White Oak, Red Elm, Honey locust (the urban thornless cultivar), and strangely Black Spruce.  ( like the way it pops and burns with a bright yellow/white flame to light up the sauna).  Everything else is just mutt wood filler, and unfortunately mostly what I end up burning here on the edge of the prairie since "my" woodlot decided to grow a subdivision instead of saw timber and BTUS.  So bad some years even Box elder makes the wood pile as I'm forced to scrounge what I can get instead of picking the logging leftovers and doing TSI thinning for free firewood.

[KEC]

I grew up feeding cows corn silage and Red Oak reminds me of that smell, not offensive. It's one of those odors that smell bad if you don't know what it is, but not offensive when you do.

[Sauna freak]

It's not the smell of red oak wood.  It kind of reminds me of crabapple mash from making wine :laugh:.  It's the acrid smoke I don't like.  As prevailing winds carry it into my wood processing area when I'm cooking maple sap and processing next year's firewood, I tend not to use any of it for the syrup boiler.  Burns nice in the sauna though, especially split small and well dried.  I usually put next sauna's wood on the top bench and let it kiln dry a little bit as the sauna dries out after use, then burn it when things are almost up to operating temperature to drive in and maintain that good 190F+ temp.

[jmur1]

Best Firewoods

1. Ash (most available heat for free right now)
2. Cherry (best heat for the money around my parts)
3. Beech (splits easy nice big logs good heat)

Not a fan:  Yellow Birch - rots too fast in the pile with a ton of ashes when burning.

[Al_Smith]

Mulberry is a second cousin to hedge ,it burns good .However the female plants when they berry out seems to be a favorite of starlings .Those pests gorge themselves on ripe berrys then make practice bombing runs on your freshly washed automobile with very good accuracy .--choot em 'lizbeth . :D

[Al_Smith]

I'm not sure about red oak but the saw dust from a table saw causes me to get in a sneezing fit, eyes water etc .You can cut into a creosote treated railroad tie that laid under a track for 40 years and still smell  it .