Close-up elm

This, my friends, is why elm sucks to split. This is some kiln dried red elm boards.

 

As a hand splitter i avoid the stuff like the plague!

 

I split a third cord of Elm today. Hope I don’t have too many nightmares tonight. It was awful. I’ll take Red Oak.

 

Dennis gets more gold stars.
Once more elm grows following the sun without any, any, straight grain for splits.
Sirbuild and Msr. Brad need to split elm ALONG THE RINGS or slab splitting.
The fee can be sent to BS in MI.

 

Sounds like a lot of calculatin’

 

You can have all my elm!

 

Smart man! I have a 34T hydro and do the same. Just not worth the hassle.

 

Splitting elm is Girl Scout wood compared to gum

 

I love burning elm. It can be extremely difficult to split though. Push through hydraulic splitter for the win.

 

I've never tried it, but some say it splits well when frozen...

 

I got this elm load today. I drove by several times this afternoon and seen he had this tree down and working on it. After I got off work I had to go watch the granddaughter play volleyball. As soon as that was over I went over to his house to see if I could get the wood before he hauled to the dump. Water was dripping out of the trunk as we visited. I told him I could run home and grab a couple saws and come back and help. He said it’s just pizz elm and will take forever to dry. I told him that would be fine I would like to have the wood. The best part is there is also three River Birch laying underneath that mess. He also has three more Riverbirch that he is going to take down next week,he will bring that & one more Mixed load of Elm and Birch tomorrow to my house.
My plan is to get the soaking wet elm bucked up into rounds and stacked yet this fall. Then next winter I’ll get it split and stacked. That will put it in the very end of my 3 year plan. But the birch was a pleasant bonus! Only the second time I’ve scored any, the first score came out of the same yard, but I had to scrounge it out of the dump.
I’ll take elm,.... even green when it is easy

 

Phone went crazy, only supposed to be one pic. I get about 1 full cord of elm a year. It gets noodled, not sure what subspecies it is but like backwoods says it's good stuff if it's standing dead. This load was 1 of two from a tree my father wanted gone. I gave it to some people I know who had zero wood stockpiled for this coming winter.

 

I think it's funny when some call elm "pizz elm". You know if they would have allowed wood to dry more than a few weeks back then, that they wouldn't have called it that.

Pine got it's bad rap from these same people that didn't let wood dry before burning it.

 

I noticed yesterday that it’s really the dark wood that is super stringy. The lighter whitish colored wood of the Elm split pretty decently. The stuff I had had almost no bark, but some of the pieces could have still had moisture in them. Some of the pieces you thought may split great like a 8-10” dbh no knot piece were a nightmare, while a 20” dbh knotty trunk piece split relatively fine.

 

I've had almost white elm wood that looked like that tornado you mentioned...

 

Some think it smells like pee of some sort, and others don't. To me it has sort of a caramel type smell. Whatever the smell is, neither my wife or I dislike the smell. I was gifted well over a cord of what was dead standing barkless american elm in Spring because my buddy doesn't like the smell of elm. Fine by me, that will be future BTU's for us.