Seasoning Firewood

[Gary_C]

The bark coming off depends more on the season when it was cut than anything else. Trees cut in spring and sometimes even during the summer will have loose bark. By fall and thru the winter the bark is held much tighter.

But even winter cut wood will shed it's bark but it may take two or three years of drying.

[SwampDonkey]

I know your right on that Gary, depends a lot on season. But in the last 10 years my wood was cut in dormancy, and most of the time we cut our own in winter except the last few years when dad was still farming and he sold most of his timber for stumpage. Still we always had lots of bark to clean up if it seasoned out doors uncovered. Anyway, we always had good dry wood and never no flu troubles here.

[Gary_C]

Anyway, we always had good dry wood and never no flu troubles here.

You must have all your flu shots up to date. 

Some years the bark sticks to the tree very well and there's some years you can't pickup a stick of wood in a grapple without the stick come shooting out the end leaving the bark behind. I don't know if it's weather related or not.

[Dean186]

Does the BTU output of wood get increased or decreased by burning the bark.  When its dry, doesn't seem to have much mass to it and therefore would not necessarily have much fuel value. 

DoctorB,

In my opinion, the BTU per cord of wood would decrease if the bark is left on it.  Like you stated, the mass of bark is less than the mass of the wood it is covering.  However, it's not worth intentionally removing the bark.  The question I have is;  When one has lots of bark left on the ground after blocking and splitting, do you burn the bark or ...  ?

[SwampDonkey]

Mine gets burned, if it's on the ground it goes to my outside fire pot and in the basement it's kindling.

[doctorb]

I save the castoffs of wood and bark for kindling.  I pile it into a trashcan and keep it in my shed, with the trash can lid off.  I tend select the "splinters" of wood over the bark, but a good study bark piece certainly can make it in.  The rest gets raked into a pile, put in the cart, and over the hill into my "long-term" compost pile.   When bark comes off in the shed while loading the furnace, I just chuck it into the fire to save having to move it anywhere else.  I agree, it's not for heat or energy value, just the easiest way to discard it safely.  Doctorb

[mad murdock]

We have a pile of Doug fir bark that we stacked by the woodshed, and we throw a piece or two in the stove with the wood from time to time.  Man that stuff puts off some heat, and it burns long as well.  On some of the larger diam. trees the bark can be several inches thick. It can pile up to alot of fuel.

[northwoods1]

I save the bark from white pine for starting fires I have a bin in the woodshed that gets filled with that and any small stuff. For fire starting I go out in the woods where there is a lot of paper birch and find logs that are on the ground that are completely rotten. The bark is just like the when the tree was growing though. I take the poll of an axe and just smash the rotten wood apart and pick up all that paper birch bark I can and fill sacks with it that I use to start the woodstove and my forge in the blacksmith shop. Paper birch bark burns like nothing else. You could soak it under water, take it right out and put a math to it and it will still burn like crazy.

[mad murdock]

being a boy scout in Northern Wisc. birch bark was the fire starter of choice, aside from a good piece of char-cloth.  The birch bark was always a welcome part of the mix.  Always could get a good quick fire going with its help. Out here there is a light greenish moss, that grows in the branches of the big timber, known as "old man's beard", which if collected when dry, and kept that way, will light up almost like a piece of steel wool, great at catching a spark, and blowing into a flame.  When we cut a stand of Doug Fir, we go back a little while later, say a few weeks to a few months, and cut off the stumps, as the roots will do a great job of pumping the stump wood with pitch, that stump wood when split up in smaller pieces makes exellent "fat" wood, that is some of the best fire accelerator going.  Still need a little heat to get it started, but once the fat wood catches, you can really pile the wood on, "flame on".

[SwampDonkey]

I tend to use yellow birch here, if I get in in the firewood. Yellow birch is as good as hard maple and beech for warmth. White birch tends to be a kitchen stove wood here, and even at that it's not a 'cooking' wood. You always had to have a good supply of the denser woods to get an oven hot for baking. I know this as my grandmother cooked over an old wood stove and my uncle still does in the cold of winter, not the summer though. I also know this from steaming wood, if you just feed white birch into my setup you will never get the heat required for steam to travel in enough volume to fill the chest.

[SwampDonkey]

Here you can see the bark separating from my seasoned firewood. The wood was cut in fall/winter 2009, delivered May 2010. There are slabs deep in the stacks with bark separation as well, not just the more exposed stacks. I don't know how it couldn't, drying wood shrinks Watson.   By February it will be falling clean off.

[Mooseherder]

One Man's firewood is another man's bowl.

[SwampDonkey]

I know what your saying Glen, but 99.99% of the sticks are checked from one end to the other. 

[Mooseherder]

They'll burn better that way.

[SwampDonkey]

Won't feel so bad about it anyway.