The Best Wood for Kindling?

[ReggieT]

Just wanted to find out...I use the scraps off my splittings and so forth for starter.
Yet, I found out I may have been turning down some red cedar & pine bottoms that are better for kindling.

What is you guys experience as the best & simplest wood to harvest for top notch kindling?

Thanks

[LeeB]

I like pine and cedar because they light easily and burn hot. Cedar also smells nice. Having said that, I do the same thing you do and split kindling from whatever firewood I happen to be splitting.

[Ianab]

I agree. Pine is good for getting a fire started, especially if it's got a bit of pitch in it.

Get a good hot fire blazing with some larger chunks of pine, and then load up with the denser hardwood for the longer burn time.

Cedar will work too. The lighter woods like that seem to catch easier than denser hard wood.

Being less dense they don't burn for as long, but for getting a hot fire going quickly it's hard to beat them.

[thecfarm]

I like cedar,but anything dry will work good. I had some red oak that I thought I was going to make some shingles out of. It was drying for 5-6 years in pieces about 6 square. That went for kindling. Worked wonderfully.

[pineywoods]

You can't beat what us southern boys call fat lighter pine. Usually stumps and roots that are really full of pitch. Slightly less flamable than gasoline, burns hot and fast. It's rough on any kind of saw...

[beenthere]

The best, IMO, is what is readily available, is dry, and easy to light.... and that for me is the white ash debris (splinters, etc.) left over from splitting firewood. Accumulate it in some plastic barrels and grab a handful for fireplace, wood burner, bon fire, brush fire, etc. when needed. Light it with a match or torch no problem at all.

But I don't otherwise make additional effort to "gather" kindling.

[North River Energy]

White Birch seems to go off with enthusiasm.  Other than that, processor splinters or whatever gets cleared from around the field.

[WDH]

Reggie, in your neck of the woods, in Alabama, it is fat litered pine, hands down. 

[Banjo picker]

Here in Mississippi we simply call em pine knots....It can be just the inner skeleton of a slow growth pine in addition to the root.  I keep a few by the back fence...one of those bigger ones can light many fires....We some times use the expression "tough as a pine knot"  to describe a really tough person.  Banjo

 

[Ivan49]

 I like the big cedar powerpoles. They are not treated above the ground and are easy to split. The ones I am using now was put into the ground in 1940 and the dia of the pole above the ground is about a inch smaller from the blowing sand

[redprospector]

Our version of "fat Pine" is usually a byproduct of forest fires. The fire sets the pitch, and it's almost a waxy feel to it. Light it with a match and the black smoke just rolls off of it.  :D We call it New Mexico Rocket Fuel.
I don't look for it much anymore since I found a 25" rocket fuel log 30' long. Should be enough to last me, my kids, and my grandkids for the rest of our lives.  ;)

[Tim]

I like the big cedar powerpoles. They are not treated above the ground and are easy to split. The ones I am using now was put into the ground in 1940 and the dia of the pole above the ground is about a inch smaller from the blowing sand

Might want to be careful with those. They are treated through and through here. Part of the treatment tends to evaporate over time. We bag 10,000 to 12,000 bags of kindling here per year. It started out as a means to clean up the yard and were in the right place at the right time and met the right fellow. We're now buying slabs in from other mills in the area.

We were cutting material to split into kindling. I loaded what I thought was hemlock, looking at it with the cut face down into the jig. I came across more of it after that one was buried in the jig, noticing the creosote treatment. When that one in the jig got cut up you certainly could smell that it wasn't hemlock.

[petefrom bearswamp]

western red cedar from the untreated portion of utility poles, Eastern white pine, Hemlock in that order.
Here in the US the cedar is only what is called incised and butt dipped for treatment at the base.
I recall in my younger days, I think it was Herters advertising "Georgia fat wood" in bundles for kindling.

[WDH]

I got plenty of "Georgia Fat Wood". 

[Weekend_Sawyer]

Whenever I find an old rotten pine tree I kick the knots out of it. You can light them with a match. 

[NH-Murph]

A "Plow and Hearth" catalog showed up the other day... They'll sell you a fancy cardboard box full of kindling for your first born

[red]

No kindling needed just use a Road Safety Flare

[Tim]

Vitamin G

[Dave Shepard]

Whatever is handy and dry.

[gspren]

  For my OWB I use a few of the bigger splitter scraps and a diesel soaked corn cob. I use a plastic coffee can and stand the cobs on end, broken to just below the lid, pour about 2 inches of diesel and it wicks up. I don't need to relight very often but I also use these in the fire ring. One can full lasts a year.

[ReggieT]

A "Plow and Hearth" catalog showed up the other day... They'll sell you a fancy cardboard box full of kindling for your first born

Yep...looked @ some of their prices and their mighty proud of everything they sell...too proud!$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[ReggieT]

Whenever I find an old rotten pine tree I kick the knots out of it. You can light them with a match. 

Are those the same kinda knots you see in hardwood tree's yet they don't rot in the pines? ???
Not being a wise guy...I'd like to accumulate a mess of them if I could.

Thanks
Reggie btw...just read up on ze pine knots...."learn something new everyday...Dam it man! lol :P

[Weekend_Sawyer]

 Yes that's right, when a pine tree rots the knots don't.
and they really smell good when they are burning.

Jon

[ReggieT]

Wow Jon!

Brother this is really something...I really appreciate this.
between your advice and the YouTube video's of dudes gathering them by the ton...has got me headed to the woods with a couple of contractor bags or 5 gallon buckets to fill with pine knots! 8)
BTW...am I correct to assume that the roots of dead pines are pretty decent also? ???

Thanks Again,
Reggie

[WDH]

Only if they are pitch soaked.

[Weekend_Sawyer]

Yep you can feel them they will be heavy. Sometimes theres No Tree Left Just Knots.

[Banjo picker]

The quick growth stuff the paper companies around here have been planting for the last few 50 or so years wont ever make much of a pine knot.  It just rots.  Banjo

[ReggieT]

The quick growth stuff the paper companies around here have been planting for the last few 50 or so years wont ever make much of a pine knot.  It just rots.  Banjo

DON'T SAY THAT!!! say_what

[WDH]

Look for old stumps.  Bust away the rotten outside, and the fat liter will be in the middle and down into the ground. 

[ReggieT]

Look for old stumps.  Bust away the rotten outside, and the fat liter will be in the middle and down into the ground.

Will do! 8)

[TonyK.]

Old dry cedar cut between the branches about 10" long.

[Dixiebonsai]

 In my part of the country,Tennessee, I find that pine,cedar, sassafras, and sycamore start fires pretty good.Sassafras and dried sycamore burn like they have gasoline injected into them. I try to avoid cutting up a lot of this wood, I prefer shag bark and pignut hickory, white oak and red oak for my woodpiles.

[Magicman]

Fresh sawn, even heartwood, has too much moisture.  I only use the "good stuff" which is fat pine from old stumps. 

[rjwoelk]

We sell and burn jack pine and birch, nothing like a wad of birch bark to get it going, I throw all the lose bark and splinters into a tote bag lasts us for several years.

[WV Mountaineer]

For us in WV, poplar is hard to beat.  God Bless