Struck Gold Today

[jk96]

..........At least when it comes to firewood. What's your favorite wood to burn and how long do you season it?

My stack of seasoned wood is about gone and had to start scavenging. Found a couple of huge osage orange trees (called hedge around here) with dead branches perfect for firewood. There is not much else in comparison to hedge trees for heat output. Just make sure you have more than one chain, especially for dead trees. Chains will dull quick and even throw sparks on occasion. A good quality stove is a must as well as this stuff is known to warp stoves if your not careful. And don't forget about the fireworks show it puts on when you open the fireplace doors and give it some fresh air.

 

[Member]

This chart:
https://chimneysweeponline.com/howood.htm
Puts "Osage" on top at 30,000,000 BTU per cord. I've never heard of it before and I don't think it grows around here but I hope to find some someday.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[jk96]

I'm in NW Missouri. We have a lot of Osage, black locust, honey locust, and oak on the property. The burn time and heat output from the osage is really impressive. I'd like to start clearing the honey locust on the property but the thorns are really difficult to deal with.

 

[MossRoad]

This chart:
https://chimneysweeponline.com/howood.htm
Puts "Osage" on top at 30,000,000 BTU per cord. I've never heard of it before and I don't think it grows around here but I hope to find some someday.

Thanks for sharing.

Its sometimes called hedge apple. Here's a picture of the fruit. You'll know it when you see it.... its the size of a grapefruit!

It was originally from Texas/Oklahoma/Arkansas area, but was transplanted to every state for use as windbreaks. That's where you'll find it mostly... along farm fields. Its really an interesting wood. It was prized by native Americans for making bows and clubs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maclura_pomifera

 

[Alien]

A bit like our Australian Ironbark that is sought after for firewood. My chainsaw sparks on it sometimes. Got a fair bit of Ironbark on my place including a lot of dead ones. Ideal.

 

[Looking4new]

I use 2 year old white Birch for kindling, the daily burn is either red Oak, yellow Birch or hard Maple. Over nighters are always Beech. All my firewood is two years old. I put up 6.66 cords every year. The two wood stoves are burned daily. The chimnies are swept and inspected in the spring at the end of the burn season.

 

[melmark]

Here in the Northeast with all the natural gas pipelines going in there is a glut of firewood. I have been burning ash for the last few years. The Emerald Ash borer is killing all of our ash so there is lots of it around. My usual "go to" wood is red oak.

 

[oosik]

The only trees here are Ponderosa pine. Its low on heat output but easy on the chain saw and I have a lot of it. I aged my split pine one year. I would inspect and sweep my chimney in the spring.

 

[forgeblast]

When we were burning fire wood I would use black birch. Dense and has a sugar content, split nice and smelled good as you were cutting (wintergreen).

 

[k0ua]

Its sometimes called hedge apple. Here's a picture of the fruit. You'll know it when you see it.... its the size of a grapefruit!

It was originally from Texas/Oklahoma/Arkansas area, but was transplanted to every state for use as windbreaks. That's where you'll find it mostly... along farm fields. Its really an interesting wood. It was prized by native Americans for making bows and clubs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maclura_pomifera

View attachment 455887

And those balls are fun targets. Some people claim they can be spread around your house to repel spiders, but I don't have any proof of that.

 

[polo1665]

I only use wood for cooking/baking. My favorite around here is Ash. Ash cures quickly, has decent heat output, and does not pop sparks onto food while burning.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

And those balls are fun targets. Some people claim they can be spread around your house to repel spiders, but I don't have any proof of that.

I suspect they do. When we first got married, we moved into an apartment that contained half the cockroaches in the county. After all the spraying and cleaning, we used hedge apples cut in half and placed under sinks, etc. to keep them at a tolerable level. It worked for us. BTW, we used to have a crutch factory here in town and they used Osage Orange to craft their crutches.

 

[Wagtail]

A bit like our Australian Ironbark that is sought after for firewood. My chainsaw sparks on it sometimes. Got a fair bit of Ironbark on my place including a lot of dead ones. Ideal.

I agree wholeheartedly, ironbark is the premium wood!

 

[MossRoad]

And those balls are fun targets. Some people claim they can be spread around your house to repel spiders, but I don't have any proof of that.

Yeah, I know a bunch of people that pick them up off the ground and put them around the inside sills of their basement and they swear that it repels spiders. Well, guess what? Anyone that takes the time to go around the inside sills of their basement to place these things to repel spiders probably also dusts their basement sills once a week, so that's where the spider webs are going. :laughing:

Its been proven that they have no effect on insects.

 

[MossRoad]

I suspect they do. When we first got married, we moved into an apartment that contained half the cockroaches in the county. After all the spraying and cleaning, we used hedge apples cut in half and placed under sinks, etc. to keep them at a tolerable level. It worked for us. BTW, we used to have a crutch factory here in town and they used Osage Orange to craft their crutches.

See! Spraying and cleaning. :laughing:

 

[2LaneCruzer]

See! Spraying and cleaning. :laughing:

Logic. Who needs it.

 

[mapper]

Looks like you don't want to try and split OO by hand. Looks stringy and tough.

 

[Helitech]

Holy cow....I'm sitting on a gold mine of firewood and didn't know it! We used these trees for fence posts on the farm. There are posts around easily 75 years old. I've hit them with a front mount dozier blade on a 1486 tractor and most of the time they will grab and pull out of the ground without breaking!

 

[jk96]

Looks like you don't want to try and split OO by hand. Looks stringy and tough.

If it is green I would think it would be very difficult to hand split. Sometimes even with my splitter it will have to be flipped and run the opposite direction. If you knock a couple of pieces of seasoned osage together it almost had a metal sound to it it is so dense. Makes for great fence posts as well. Claims of 30+ years in the ground seem to be common.

It's also extremely clean burning when seasoned properly. Clean orange and blue flames with almost zero smoke. I'm assuming the low smoke is due to how hot the wood burns. Here's a pic of my chimney this morning with a full blown fire in the fireplace. Anyone driving up to the house would never know we were burning wood.

 

[Creamer]

We have Osage here as well as Hawthorne. Most of the hawthorne are fenceline annoyances in that they have long thorns, lots of branches and no nice firewood. This year though there was a blowdown in a tree lot that I cut up. Base was about 18" and it was about 80' tall. In a tree lot they have to grow up to live so when you find one it is great. I think they are harder and more dense than the Osage with a lot of heat in them but they do not burn real well - it works better to burn them with some Oak or something whereas Osage burns great by itself.