Favorite Firewood

[hupte]

honey locust. burns hot and long. and smells sweet when burning. also stays good for years without rotting.

 

[SteveSS]

I burn in an OWB, so most woods are fine for me. I burn mostly oak and hickory, and some elm when it presents itself. I have access to a bit of locust, but I feel bad stuffing it into a boiler when it could be better used for someone who burns inside. There's lot's of hedge around here, but I don't have any on my cutting locations.

 

[Ironworker]

Oak, hickory, and hard maple.

 

[Circle B MN]

I like a even mix of oak, ash, birch for my indoor stove.

 

[Red Elm]

Hedge
Honey Locust
Red Elm
Black Locust
In that order.

Have plenty of all four, all burn hot, all have different coaling properties, but all coal down well.

 

[Full Chisel]

The hottest burn I ever got was with elm...650+ surface temp on the soapstone with the damper fully closed. But I haven't gotten into the locust or hedge yet...got another season before it will be ready.

Oak seems to have the best combo of long burn, low ash and coaling for me.

 

[madjoe]

My favorite is anything that will burn

 

[blkcloud]

Bodock

 

[Bruce 46]

Black Locust
Ash
Cherry

The Black Locust may be the "perfect" firewood, with easy splitting, dries rather quickly for such an incredibly hard wood, will keep for many years without rotting, excellent heat output with long burn times and not much ash left in the stove. Very tough on chains when cutting, but well worth it.

 

[zogger]

for overall experience, staring at the tree to enjoying the heat, ash, Absolutely the easiest processing wood with the hardwoods and burns dang nice. With that said, I take very few, as we *don't* have the EAB around here yet, so just letting them grow.

After that, red oak taken from inside the woods so it is straight and easy to split. Shagbark hickory is fan freeking tastic firewood, but the bark collects dirt and rocks, dulls chains constantly, and if it isn't de barked and processed pronto, attracts bugs from several state over, they absolutely love it, so you have to process fast and get the sun and air to it.

For spring and fall, tulip poplar, processes just like ash, just half the btus, which is fine to keep a fire ticking over good when you want just some warmth and it isn't real cold out. Shoulder season wood, I am burning it 95% lately, just to keep the damp out of the house. It isn't cold, but a one split at a time fire is working. Plus they get hugemongous, fast. Just fun to cut into perfect rounds.

Everything else is in there some place, I take it all, just keep the absolute primo stuff separate. If I had a huge orchard, I could get by easy with apple/cherry/peach/pearwood and no splitting needed, just branch wood and mature culls.

Some good wood here is we get winged elm and dogwoods, the elm croaks at just the right size, either burn as-is or one noodle to half it for an overnighter. All the dogwood is small, right in the stove, I love that no splitting needed wood. Burns real good, seems to be just a scosh better than oak, but not quite hickory.

Tell ya what else is good wood, orange or citrus. I rented a house with a small grove in Fla, burnt it outside, the trimmings, in the firepit. I could see it would have worked well in a stove for heat. Smells great, too.

 

[longbowch]

A lot depends on the time of year , l sure wouldn't want to burn black locust in the shoulder seasons when its 40*. lol


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[robson1015]

Hickory

 

[ashy larry]

I like the way walnut smells a lot.

 

[svk]

I've had some cherry that smelled absolutely heavenly and other stuff that just smelled like wood smoke with no cherry to it at all.

 

[ashy larry]

Yea my cherry didnt smell great. Walnut smells like coffee, its awesome.

 

[Full Chisel]

I've had some cherry that smelled absolutely heavenly and other stuff that just smelled like wood smoke with no cherry to it at all.

My nut and fruit wood gets split small and into separate piles for cooking/smoking over. Right now I have a nice little stash of cherry and hickory, and have a lead on a dying pecan.

 

[Goostoff]

My favorite is red elm even though it is hard on chains and heavy as hell to work with as well as a PITA to split. If Ididnt have a splitter that would change.
Second would be ash. Easy to work with and plenty of standing deads around here. Getting hard to keep up with the EAB around here.
This year I am finding that hard maple is a really nice wood as well. I rand across a group of about 10 nice sized one that looked like woodpeckers or worms or something got to them and killed them. They were all standing dead and dry ready to burn. Nice wood.

 

[Deleted member 83629]

red oak
white oak
hickory
maple
hackberry
black locust
cherry

 

[ReggieT]

red oak
white oak
hickory
maple
hackberry
black locust
cherry

I like that hackberry choice...very underestimated wood.

 

[JeffHK454]

I like that hackberry choice...very underestimated wood.

Yep, I also think Hack is good firewood but can be a pain in the butt to split! I have similar feelings about Elm, great heat producer but miserable to split and all but extinct in my neck of the woods.