Wood Heat Thread ~ post pics

It's my thread and madrone wins

 

Charts vs. reality... live oak is "crap" wood compared to madrone. Live oak is great for smoking meat but not heating a home.

 

Tell it like it is brother

 

You need to let the oak dry first.

 

I love this thread! I agree live oak sucks, I got tons of it around me and pretty much never use. It does burn hot but sooo much ash. I'm a huge madrone fan, by far my favorite wood. I like the way it looks, smells, so easy to split when wet or super dry, it's just an awesome wood. As far as pure heat I wanted to bring up manzanita, I don't know the btu rating for it but it burns really hot, it's one of the best for BBQs in my opinion. What do you guys think of manzanita? Anyone else burn much of that?

 

This one won't be made into pellets, or used in a bonfire!
Black walnut for sale.
Had to be dropped to make way for new power lines

 

White oak. That by the way is a 28" bar most of the oak we have around here is red oak. The white oak by far is the hottest burning stuff we have around here.

 

That's a big oak

 

Yeah we cut it with a feller/buncher damn near stalled it once. It will be fire wood I have pallet forks on the tractor and a vertical splitter I'm way too old to be lifting that stuff, around 300# per all I can do to turn the damn things with a peve.

 

I have a pine about that size that I am going to have professionals take down. My big chainsaw only has a 20" bar, not enough to take care of that tree. Should provide firewood for awhile once I get it chopped up.

 

Good plan, most really big pines are hollow in the middle.

 

I wish I had a picture of the standing dead red oak tree I took down last year. It was ~50" at chest height. Counted nearly 100 rings. If white splits like red the X27 made quick work out of the clear pieces. Just tipped them over and kept working around the outside.

 

I hooked up a tow strap around another pine I had here the put a really fucking big pulley on the end, hooked braided steel to a tree a ways off, went through the pulley, then to my truck to get more pull on the tree I was about to drop. Cut a wedge 1/3 of the way through the trunk, which was about 20" across, then started pulling with my truck to put a little tension on the tree for the back cut. Ended up pulling the whole thing over which scared me a little because I didn't think I would have the force to do that. Turns out the carpenter ants had pretty much ruined the middle of the tree and it was a good thing to pull it because it was leaning toward my barn and would have done some serious damage if it fell on its own. That tree is going to my outside fire pit.

 

We have oak in our area but it's Garry Oak and it's a protected tree , and I don't think I've ever seen one that big , the big decidous trees out here are maple , alder and cottonwoods

 

Damn quick growing tree

 

So Oz, I looked up pictures of madrone. How can you just burn it? That is gorgeous wood, and would be great for carving.

 

It's not very stable at all through the drying process , it grows all twisted and gnarly and has a high moisture content and when it dries it shrinks a lot , cracks and twists even more as it dries

I've seen lots of people attempt to cut lumber from it and it usually doesn't work out , however a local bowl turner has had decent success in turning bowls with it but he is very selective with the pieces he uses and generally his bowl blanks come from the base of the tree where I suspect the wood is more stable and growth rings more uniform

I have a 20" salad bowl he made which was given to me as a gift for letting him get first crack at a bunch of larger madrone logs we had to take down on one of my jobs , this size bowl of his normally sells for close to $400

 

I would be happy just to have some of the madrone to play with for splitting into firewood. I was splitting some of the maple I got recently, still using my double bit axe. It certainly takes a bit more work than pine, but I split the lowest part of the trunk (cut at ground level) and that came apart pretty easily. I attribute that to fresh cut (within a week) and straight grain.

 

You have to split madrone either immediately after dropping the tree or wait a year