Black Locust Road Trip

Im exactly the same. I wont save it for the most part unless for the firepit. Mostly gets frisbeed into the woods.

 

As long as you're ahead a little bit on split stuff..... it'll come off in the stacks. I like your idea to have bark and barkless piles. Sounds like something I'd do.

 

I am. Ive had sugar maple bark pop off of green splits. Nice and clean. Ive saved stuff like that.
BL gets separated out into bark on and bark off stacks.

 

Ive burned a fair amount in the fire pit. When it’s wet and slimy it’s almost fireproof. I’ve watched a pile in a hot fire for hours and it was still holding together with a web that reminded me of a fiberglass screen. When dry it certainly seemed to give off more heat than anything else in the pit. Gave off a purplish/blue glow in its coaling stage that heated my bare legs more than anything else in the pit. It was the hot nucleus that kept everything else alight.
That being said it seems as if Locust dries harder and faster without it. Locust gets better with age and the faster you can age it the better. I’ll take it bark on or bark off tho.

My purely non scientific rambling all over the road post for the day

 

That resembles cottonwood.....well, I've never seen Black Locust before

 

You know difference when you lift it!

 

Wet cottonwood is pretty heavy too though...once dried, yeah, no comparison.

 

The barks are very similar. Cottonwood is very heavy in the round as is BL, but CW as we know dries to feather light.

 

Makes sense to me and similar observations/experiences here.

 

Split enough to finish top off a half cord. Gotta figure where to start another bark on BL stack.

 

I hope to get to something this week. It's a bit of a project to get into my woodyard with my truck this time of year. The back way I have is a cemetery that has no winter maintenance, and then through my yard, which is now mud or a glacier, as it was for the past 2 weeks.

 

I have got to say that river of ice looks pretty cool...

...in someone else's yard.

 

With a glacier like that in my yard, id put my hoarding efforts on hold too. Hoping that BL is still there for you when the time comes.

I chuckled to myself when you posted that thread as i had already lined this up with Eric. Just had to make time to get there.

 

Bark on BL storage? I know of a place ~90mins northeast of you.

 

Be glad to give you some Mike.

 

I split/stack a lot of chestnut oak and do not spend any extra time removing bark. A lot does fall off and I set it aside. Then after seasoning, most falls right off. It coals up a lot more than you’d think. If I can remember, next time I’ll take pics of that coal bed. It burns a good long time too.