Calcified wood ash?

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wrx-snowdrift

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Anyone experienced hard, calcified ash chunks when cleaning out their wood stove/furnace?

I normally burn Ash, Hackberry and a little Burr Oak but I recently came into what I think is Red Elm that was dead and had just fallen over. It was dry (19%) so I’ve been burning it. I normally get the usual fine powder ash but with this Red Elm I get these hard nuggets that remind me of coral. Is this a tree species thing? Something about the tree standing dead for years?

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@wrx-snowdrift Your picture looks like locust. I burn mostly standing dead or fallen locust and get these "clinkers" from that wood more than anything else. I think it's pretty neat and should add some nice aeration to the compost pile. If you let it build up a lot, it starts to get even weirder where the resulting "coral" has multiple stratified layers and looks like it liquified and resolidified, maybe several times.
 
@wrx-snowdrift Your picture looks like locust. I burn mostly standing dead or fallen locust and get these "clinkers" from that wood more than anything else. I think it's pretty neat and should add some nice aeration to the compost pile. If you let it build up a lot, it starts to get even weirder where the resulting "coral" has multiple stratified layers and looks like it liquified and resolidified, maybe several times.
I have no experience with Locus. It certainly could be, I know there are some Honey Locus and a few Black around. I just assumed this was Red Elm because I helped take down a massive Red Elm in the same park as this one and the wood had a similar look and smell.
I add some of my ash to the compost. Some goes to the chickens for dust baths and the rest gets spread around the yard.

Still curious to know if it’s because of the type of wood or that it was dead standing for so long or something else. Maybe I’ll know more when I burn that other Red Elm that I know is Red Elm.
 
I stand corrected. Ya'll are in the Midwest, I'm in the Appalachians. It looks like the Black Locust that we find long-dead here. I don't think we have Red Elm, just American/White Elm and maybe Slippery Elm. The American Elm has a distinct reddish center and swamp-like smell. The Black Locust has very little smell and uniformly tan to yellow wood.
 
I got them when I was burning coal in the basement stove. And I had more of them when I added coal to an old fire, clinkers for sure. They are as hard as volcanic rock and sharp edges but no weight to them. Now days my OWB has tight packed fine black ashes when I shovel the box out but no clinkers.
 

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