It's great wood
I'm getting a large Dogwood tree cut down in my yard. There's not a straight branch, or trunk on the thing. Is it worth trying to cut into firewood size, and split it? How easy does Dogwood split? It's going to be knotty as heck.. The main trunk is only about 3ft high before it starts to split.
Cut it as carefully as you can to get as many burnable pieces without splitting, then split or noodle the rest. It is great firewood. Recoup some of your cost of the take down. You can theoretically burn every single twig on that thing. Cut the little branches off and make a neat pile, when they dry, break them up with your hands and use for kindling. Everything above the size that you know you'll be able to break up with your hands later, cut to size to fit your heater.
It is like fruitwood, sucks to process sometimes, but worth it to burn.
Edit: dealing with bends and elbows on twisty trees you want to save, any species, cut a big cookie, not a full length piece. Cut *just* the elbow out so you can use it as-is, or it makes it easier to whack apart later. Then proceed again once it gets straighter on the branch. Always try to avoid cutting out long elbows, those always suck to split, unless they are small enough to fit into your heater like that.
If you have to split an elbow by hand, here is how to do it. Lay it on your chopping block so it is an upside down U. Put a couple chunks on either side to hold it there. Now whack that sucker right square in the middle.
And you can always noodle right on the branch as you are working down the tree, come to a twisty part, swing saw around and noodle in place, then cut the pieces off the branch with a normal bucking cut.
