Anyone know what kind of red oak this is? Just got this monster mega load bucked and dropped off at my house from my most trusted tree guy ( sirbuildalot I'm looking at you!)....and man these are big. 30" in diameter!!! No leaves but a few of the small limbs looked like pin oak to me but the meat of the wood doesn't look like pin oak to me on the big round I just split (with the x27) The tree said he thinks it's black oak. I never heard of black oak but then again I'm a noob so what do I know?
I can smell that stuff from here. Used to hate the smell of split red oak when I was a kid, helping my stepdad with his firewood business. Now I can't get enough of it.
The inner bark of black oak is supposed to be more yellow than red, so unless the true color isn't displayed proper, that's probably not black oak. Problem with red oaks is you really need the leaves and acorns and even then they can naturally hybridize such that you really don't know what you've got beyond premium firewood if it is in good shape.
There is a black oak, I'm not sure of it's distribution. In dendro class, we were taught if we took our pocket knife and "bored" a small hole in the bark, once we got to the inner layer, it would be quite orange. I cant tell by the pics if the inner is orange enough..i guess it could also dull from being exposed.
Either is easy to split. Wouldn’t mind if all the wood I got was Southern Red, or Black. Will make some high and tight stacks.
In this pic it looks pretty orange just underneath the bark...then a yellow layer about 1.25" thick....and then the red layer. Definitely not cherry. It's got that telltale ketchup smell to it!
Yeah the pic shows some orange, but when we bored into it, it was like almost blaze orange. It was quite dramatic surrounded by the dark outer bark. I like the smell of red oak, but can't say I've ever associated any like ketchup... I'll have to pay more qttention and think about that next time I bust some red. I have, however, smelled many a truck loads worth that smelt lile cat pizz....
I think different people smell the same thing differently. I've heard this before. From the first time I split red oak I smelled ketchup! The only oak that smells swampy/nasty/cat pizzy to me is pin oak! That stuff is DENSE, stinky, and almost impossible to split by hand....for me....
