It does have some impressively thick bark. I bet good percentage of the btus in cottonwood is in the bark, but I'm not a big fan of stuffing a stove full of the stuff (lots of ash).
OOPH! That's a tough one. That's a lot more then SOME cottonwood. How soon could you process it? Are you a hand or hydro splitter? At least it isn't all gnarly/knotty. I agree with the loosening bark and slime factor. Dealt with it mainly on black locust. Prefer to process any wood ASAP in warm weather for that reason. Bucked, stacked off the ground and top covered should help with the deterioration factor. With ample other SS woods here its not some I take unless a small amount and its easy to grab. Love Norway myself. Easier splitting of the maple IME and make nice splits too. Plentiful around here, but don't score it often enough.
Find a mill or pallet manufacturer, see if they are interested in some nice large diameter cottonwood logs of various lengths. I believe that a lot of pallets are made from cottonwood.
Years ago my Mother backed into a stack of logs (not bucked, full logs) on the edge of our driveway. Lucky we had them there, it was a cliff on the other side!
Try to find someone with a portable sawmill. Cottonwood makes pretty darn good framing lumber. If that is not an option and you have a hydraulic splitter, I would get it processed right away. I don’t actively seek out cottonwood anymore, but have burned tons of it over the years. It is great when it gets bitter cold because it burns fast and extremely hot and doesn’t load the stove full of coals like the higher btu wood does. Doesn’t work well for overnight burns, but will run you out of the house if you can tend the stove regularly. Will also keep you warm running out of the house to bring some more in to burn! Lol
I've got access to a Countyline 30 ton hydro (from a neighbor) and I have a 22 ton 3-point hydro on my tractor. (I've also got my own stand alone 35 ton Yardmax in need of a cylinder rebuild or a new cylinder.) The splitter on my tractor is slow since the tractor only feeds it 6 gpm, but it's every bit as powerful, if not more powerful, than a 30 ton stand alone splitter. Maybe I'll post a separate thread about this, but a hydro splitter behaves differently when it has a decent size diesel engine powering the hydraulics than it does with a smallish gas engine on a stand alone splitter. It's slow, like I said, but there is something satisfying about how the splitter operates with a 1.8 liter diesel engine powering it. Maybe I'll try to split some today, although I remember getting frustrated with big rounds of freshly cut cottonwood in the past. It is heavy, stringy, and water squirts out of it. Stringy wood that doesn't want to split cleanly is frustrating with big rounds since it's hard to half and then quarter the rounds, which is how I usually approach big rounds. Everyone says to noodle them, but my two biggest saws (Makita/Dolar 79cc and Makita/Dolmar 61cc) both have full wrap handles which make them horrible for noodling. The bottom part of the handle prevents the noodles from exiting the saw. I need to find a regular handle for one of those saws. As for Norway Maple, I bet the reason you don't score a lot of it is because it doesn't blow down in storms, or die young for no apparent reason, like a lot of silver maple and red maple. Lots of sugar maple and black maple around here, but I don't score much of that for the same reason. But I get silver maple and red maple all the time from the tree guys.
I hear you on the full wrap. I often use my Stihl ms400 that has a full wrap and west coast cover so noodles do jam it easily. I usually go 3/4 through then roll and finish. Yes it is a PITA on big rounds. Only one experience with big CW rounds. Noodled on site then loaded. At least they are in your wood yard. Nibble away and it'll get done. Keep us posted on your progress. One favorite saying on FHC is "it burns better than snowballs" Norway very common "weed" tree around here. Yard planting disperses seeds and they grow on property lines going unchecked and get big. When I would scrounge full sized tree service chunks I'd score more Norway, Its just a matter of luck and timing now.
Your sarcasm was not missed. I doubled down on sarcasm by saying I would show your comment to my wife, because she does not think logs are a landscaping feature. My house is about 100 yards back from the road, and they dump the logs out by the road. There is forest between the house and the log dump. I'm the last house on a dead-end, rural, private drive, so having a wood dump by the road doesn't hurt anyone's feelings. The tree guys like to dump here because they can park, dump or disconnect trailers, etc, on an 80 foot wide cul-de-sac with no traffic. It's a great setup for receiving free logs and wood chips. If you look hard in the photo you can see a little bit of the roof of my house thought he trees on the right. The cottonwood logs are where the splitter is in the photo.
I don't mind burning cottonwood! I work from home so having to reload the stove more often is no big deal. It's the processing that I'm whining about. Norway is a yard tree around here, but for whatever reason, doesn't seem to compete well in nature. It has never established in my oak-hickory forest, and poplar / elm / willow seems to dominate property lines, the edges of farmers' fields, etc... It's pretty wet where I live, and poplar / willow outcompete everything if they get enough water. Many people around here plant silver maples as shade trees. They sure do grow fast, but I've seen big trees literally snap in half in a wind storm. If I wanted to plant maples, I would go with Norway, or even red maple, but stay far away from silver maple or box elder.
Interesting idea since the logs are cut to about 8' length already. I've never heard of framing with cottonwood, but I can see why it would be good. Flexibility and nail holding ability are key for framing, and I bet cottonwood is good in both regards. I used to think pine and other softwoods were used for framing only because they are cheap / plentiful, but a builder explained to me that any wood (within reason, maybe not balsa wood) is strong enough for normal framing, and softwoods are used because of flexibility and nail holding. You would need a heck of a nail gun to drive framing nails into oak or hickory lumber...
I figured I ought to show at least one piece of the Norway maple that caused me to accept this mess of cottonwood. (36" bar for scale). I cut this piece today. I couldn't figure out why the saw was fighting me a little bit during the cut. When I finished and saw the grain, I understood. The round is from right below a huge crotch, and it's got grain going in all different directions. Would have been nice for turning if it didn't have a little bit of rot. You know something is up when you're bucking a round and the saw starts to throw noodles.
I changed my mind and started processing the cottonwood today as well. I'd like to say it was light, dry, and smelled like lilacs, but the truth is -- it was back breaking heavy, dripping with water, and smelled like a dead raccoon in a urinal. I bucked and split two cords before my stomach couldn't take any more of the stench. For all it's downsides, it sure does have some handsome bark.
I’ve shared this video before but it’s appropriate here with all the smelly cottonwood talk. This was a 36” plus size cottonwood that absolute soaked my pants with smelly open sewer sap when I cut into it. Made for a pleasant rest of the work day. This was at the tail end of the gushing sewer sap:
I’ve been soaked many times by the water and chips of a big cottonwood while dropping them. I’ve never thought of it as sap though, just lots of water
Yeah me too. I’m usually too slow to remember from the last time I worked on one. I thought I was in the clear with that one since this was just a 30 food stub I had already topped. Not so much. I hear ya sometimes sap makes us think sticky conifer sap. If it’s a liquid and it’s coming out of a tree like in the video it’s also considered sap.
