What Is Junk Wood???

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SPDRMNKY

SPDRMNKY

ArboristSite Dork
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the term "junk wood" only comes to mind when I detect the presence of the LAZY bug...in myself or others

never use the term otherwise
 
turnkey4099
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Anything rotten, punky, spongy, squishy, soft, soggy, produces an offensive odor when burned or goes “whoosh” when a flame is applied… which includes box elder, willow, basswood and cottonwood to name a few. I won’t even burn those four in my fire pit.

You're turning down some fair wood if you have to get rid of it anyhow. Willow heated this house for over 30 years.

Harry K
 
turnkey4099
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Cottonwood, willow, sycamore, pines, spruce are junk wood for me. I'll take some to burn outside in the firepit but I have easy access to a lot better wood so there's no reason to exend the energy on the others.

True but move out into country like this and your wood snobbery will rapidly disappear :) Suddenly what was "junk" where you were will turn into green gold.

Harry K
 
Whitespider
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You're turning down some fair wood if you have to get rid of it anyhow. Willow heated this house for over 30 years.

You're probably right Harry... But I don't "have" to get rid of it, or cut it, or even acknowledge it.
I only cut firewood for myself and only on my own property.
I can be choosy if I want... and I choose to be choosy about the kinds of wood I'll spend my time on.
I suppose if I were a wood scavenging city-dweller my attitude would be different... but then again, if I had to hunt and scavenge my firewood I probably wouldn't do it. I burn wood for heat because it's easy, accessible and relatively cheap, I basically cut my firewood in my back yard. If I had to haul it down the road... well, it probably wouldn't get done. Don't get me wrong, I love being outdoors and in the woods, but there's a lot of things I could be doing in the great outdoors that I would enjoy more than cutting firewood... Fish poles, my kids, some sandwiches and a box-o-beer comes immediately to mind.
 
Bushmans

Bushmans

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Junk wood - and you ain't gonna stack that:
221513d1328295836-100_1025sm-jpg

No but that #### will burn like crazy!
 
Mr Good Wood

Mr Good Wood

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Toledo, Ohio
Junk wood - and you ain't gonna stack that:
221513d1328295836-100_1025sm-jpg

yea right i can stack anything, it won't look all pretty like most like. no rot and decent looking= sell/ little rot but not bad= pole barn heat/ rot and pretty bad= owb


Yea yea i know, our owb won't support house and pole barn, but we got it at a screaming deal so.... not in pole barn much anyway and the old stove in there dose the job.
 
firewood guy

firewood guy

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so cal
Junk wood - and you ain't gonna stack that:
221513d1328295836-100_1025sm-jpg

I LOVE that wood! It weighs about 50 lbs per cord stacked right? On a lighter note, we all get crap wood here and there that we don't want to sell in load of mixed, so we give that stuff away to those less fortunate. It all burns, and free to people that otherwise would be cold is a good thing.
 
rarefish383

rarefish383

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"Junk wood" is an arbitrary term. As a professional arborist we only sold high quality seasoned hard wood to our customers. Anything else we sold by the truck load to a local vegetable stand that sold fire wood in the winter, as "junk wood". We charged him $50 per truck load, on a Ford F600 with a 12 foot dump box with 6' sides. It still burned, and he sold it, to his customers. His wife would joke and call it "Knott-Oak", like some species of really hard Oak. But, if someone complained, she would say I told you it was "NOT" Oak. Now that I'm retired I've turned into a real firewood snob. I can go to my cousins wood lot and "cherry" pick, pun intended, I love Cherry. I mark and cut basically all Oak, split, load, and leave the mess, for free.

To the home owner not making a living in the tree business, any piece of free wood is like hitting the firewood lottery. If it's wood, it burns. My UPS buddy is the biggest dumpster diver on the planet. He can't pass up anything free. He used to call me all the time saying some customer of his had a big dead tree he could have for free, just take it down. I'd look at it for him and say I wouldn't touch it for less than $3,000 bucks. The thing would be dead, falling apart, over 2 houses, and all he had to do was take it down!!!

So, if your heading home and see a Willow blown over in a front yard and the owner tells you, you can have it, firewood lottery. What he didn't tell you is I just left and told him it would cost $85 per man hour with a 3 hr min. I'd chip the brush, take the rest to our land fill, where they make mulch out of it, and be done. To you, good wood, to me junk wood, not worth waisting time and money to process, Joe
 
Steve NW WI

Steve NW WI

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I ain't quoting Jags again, the pic's been shown enough. That picture is proof positive that fat wedges are a problem looking for a solution. A thin sharp wedge would have made firewood out of that elm. If you want to abuse nice elm like that, I suggest you send it to me instead.

Trying to split wood with a bowling ball just doesn't work!
 
flyboy553

flyboy553

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Central Minnesota
Well, thanks for the explanations guys! Having internet issues at home so can only get online when in town.
Some of you mentioned crotchy stuff, knotted stuff, stuff ya cannot split. Crotches and knots are not an issue if you have a good splitter AND you know how to read the piece of wood to be split. Granted, I am talking about red oak as that is all I cut or split. There is always a clue in the piece as to how it wants to be split.

Crotches and knotty stuff are very dense and give off lots of heat, so they are the pieces I want for night burns.
The punky stuff I always leave in the brush pile in the woods.

Hopefully the phone company will have my line repaired monday so I can stay up to date on all the great info on AS!

Ted
 
artbaldoni
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Location
Newville PA
There is no junk wood for me. It all produces heat in my OWB. I won't load up the stove with all punky, fast burning stuff unless I will be around to reload, but I burn anything that fits in the stove. If I have to expend energy to get rid of the wood I'm damn sure going to get some energy back out of it! I have loaded stuff as small as 1 1/2" into the OWB. JMTCW...
 

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