One of my wife's friends has a bunch of old silver maples that are near the end of life. As "branches" fall they deal with them. We went over to visit yesterday and she asked me to bring a saw to clean up a branch that fell. I always forget the branches are like trees! Not a big "score" but it will add to the pile. Here is what I ended up with. Remember its just a branch.
You just reminded me, I have a similar sized pile of silver maple at my mother in laws that the power company trimmed.
I am thinking the tree is possibly dying and you should drop the entire thing before someone gets hurt!!! Not the best wood, but not bad.
They're all dying! They want one of them to fall on their "small" garage so they can rebuild. Most of the trees are on the property line and away from doing any property damage. I enjoy silver maple, it's plentiful around here and seasons fast. I can get easy 12hr burns with it unless it's mid 20's or colder.
I burn about 80% silver maple at any degree from 40 to -10 and will keep my house very warm. I only use hard woods on over night burns when it is 10 and below. I let mine set for 2 years before I use it. Just got 14 loads of silver here a couple weeks ago.
I have a lot of large "branches" that came down over the years that are in my stacks. Not a lot of wood, but it all adds up. The other option is to let them rot in the woods. I like a mix of softer woods mixed in anyway. Great to light fires and get some quick heat in the morning.
Had about 3 cord of Silver dumped here last fall. Great shoulder season wood. Nice warm fire & short seasoning time. Can't complain about the stuff at all. It'll be dry by next year.
There are branches off trees and then there are these huge trunks that look the size of a small silo that have these big protrusions coming off them. What you have rdust is not a branch!
This brings up a question I've been meaning to post but didn't want to start a new thread for. I've also got a bunch of silver maples that I've been thining out; mostly ones that were from trees cut down long ago that now have 3-6 spindly suckers that have grown to 30-40 feet but are no more than 6" in diameter. What size of branches or "rounds" do you guys consider too small to bother splitting? There are many branches or smaller diameter trees that I cut down that I think is a shame to just throw in the brush pile so I cut them to length. Then I get them to the splitting pile and I dont know how big they can be without splitting but still dry out in a year or two (especially with silver maple that dries pretty fast). What size of logs do you guys not bother to split? I mentioned in another thread my amazement with my moisture meter how wet even older rounds can be; just haven't tested unsplit smaller ones yet.
I am burning some silver maple that has been drying for 3 years. I split a 4 inch piece and it was around 17% in the middle of a fresh split. Oak pieces that size I would have split because Oak dries really slow if not split.
I have a lot of old hug (mainly) oaks that border our fields. These giants always grow towards the light which of course, is over the fields. I've had them drop "branches" that I've split 4 ways before considering them easy enough to handle!
We like to burn some rounds and this picture shows a sample of what we keep. Usually nothing over about 4-5" diameter. Anything larger gets split. Of course, some of the determination of size of rounds has to do with your stove. With our stove I don't like loading anything over 5" because the firebox door is not that large, I think around 8 or 9" wide. Bigger rounds tend to make for pinched fingers. Also our firebox is not that large so large rounds are too hard to fit in there nicely. But we do like to put a round in the bottom rear for night time burning as this will tend to help on the longer burn times.
