So I’m not sure if I’ve ever knowingly taken Cottonwood before. As I bringing some wood up front, I’m noticing this stuff I forgot about and don’t recognize. Some pieces are quite heavy and have that distinct looked of not being dry enough to burn. Anyhow, I split a couple pieces and tested it. Low 30s! This is sitting in one of my dry stacks right next to some Blackbirch of the same vintage. The black birch is under 20, even the larger pieces. I split up a smaller split of the wood in question, and very wet. Some of it feels very light too. My brother had recently asked if I can bring some wood over to his house so that my niece is Ken is it for the fire pit. G, I wonder which stuff I’ll be bringing over there?
I see what you guys mean and I agree. I guess that is good but man, the drying on this stuff is slow. Especially with the wet year we’re having. Oh well. I’ll push it off to next winter.
I’ll get a good amount of red maple usually. Hardly any sugar maple so it looks a little foreign to me. I don’t remember even cutting it but it’s with other wood that I know I cut 2 Springs ago. I was on a real tear back then with getting wood from a nearby state forest so I guess I just forgot about it completely.
It’s been a lousy year for drying wood here in Connecticut, that’s for sure. I have plenty of wood that’s 20% MC or less but I don’t think it’s any drier than it was back in the springtime. We just never got any hot and dry stretches this past summer. Whenever it wasn’t raining the humidity was unbearable.
I think its more related to the wet year than the wood. Basically anything I had uncovered is wet and over 20%. Even stuff I had CSS thats 3-4 years old soaked up all the water like a sponge. I have almost a cord of red maple that was 16% last fall and is now 26%
That’s good and bad to know. That’s consistent with what I’m seeing. I’m glad that this years wood has had some time to dry (some red oak cut in late 2019, other hardwood cut in early spring 2020. Two summer seasons would typically leave no doubt about the dryness. This year different. When cutting in the state forest, I focused on black birch, some yellow birch, and ash. I’m glad that I took less oak for the drying time it needs.
Bark and grain look like red maple to me Steve. As stated i dont think firewood had much of a chance to dry in our area.
I'm burning cottonwood right now and it doesn't quite look like that. The grain of the wood has some more color to it- yellowy in some spots, and kind of a bluish or greenish hint at times, but the wood has been on my wood rack split and stacked for 18 months. It's dry... burns "ok" but no real coals in the morning to speak of, if any at all. I can echo what a few other members have mentioned that the drying season here this summer wasn't too awesome. I'm at the point where I think I'm going to go ahead and roof my wood supply permanently. But low 30's. whew.
I ran that top photo through my plant ID app (not always that accurate) and the closest I could figure is callery pear. But nothing definite.
I'm in the same mind set that cottonwood is just 'ok' as firewood. I don't come across it often when scrounging, and forgot I even had any until I found some splits in the stack I'm currently using. The splits have been drying for two to two and half years and they burn ok, but are somewhat lackluster. I wouldn't turn down cottonwood, but it's at the lower end of what I would look for.
I had some bigtooth aspen that just wouldn't dry. Stacked but not covered. Burned it two years later just to stop looking at the stack of it all by itself. I had stacked it in the front yard where I cut down the tree because : "aspen is supposed to season fast". It still was heavy and smoked with almost no heat - and aspen is supposed to dry pretty quick. Didn't have a MM then.
