Yea I'm sure if my shop would ever burn my insurance probably won't be happy. They did a walk through of the property a few years ago and didn't say anything about the stove, but an adjuster for a claim would most likely throw a fit.
My workplace gets 4-6 pallets every week, and I take quite a few of them home. It's about a 50/50 mix of oak and pine. Usually I'm not too picky, I'll take either kind and just burn the junky ones and stack firewood on the good ones. I find that the oak pallets don't really last any longer than the pine ones on ground contact. Someday when I get a new bandsaw mill, I'm going to saw some black locust pallet boards and make my own permanent firewood pallets. I bet I can get 10-15 years or more out of a pallet by using BL.
Nothing like that available for me - I'd have to buy it. I like it though. I have two wood sheds so I just lay down the pallets inside the sheds. If I have an "overflow", which hasn't happened yet, I'll just line up the pallets in a flat spot and put heavy fence posts in at the ends.
I just know oak lumber when I see it, but look for these "rays" as they are called. This happens when certain oaks are 1/4 sawn.
You're the tops brother, be on the look out now. What's interesting is reading on some oak now that it rots(like anything does) but is it really that fragile?
Red oak is vulnerable to rot, white oak not as much, but even white oak in direct ground contact will be compost in a few years. Even the ones in my wood sheds have the bottom slats rot out after three or four years, dry or not. There's enough moisture in the dirt to insure decay sets in.
I split a round of locust today and im still finding the weight is something to behold. Its so dense that just a simple fall of the split wood easily smashes your fingers being so cumbersome. No way light like pine and just makes my hands look weak. A bit more handling this heavy wood and i might get better at it.
Alright. So apparently I actually stumbled on some oak pallets like weeks ago thinking they were just maple. No that was oak. I actually took a piece off last night and it burned like it was a hardwood. Now i just cut some of the stringer ends off. What hit me was a smell that I ain't never smelled before. Cheese. Like ..oh my goodness. I was almost just huffing the chainsaw fumes to mask the smell this is rank as it gets! Like you put cheddar in the smoker and then you left it in the summer sun for 6 weeks. Crime in Italy...
Oh this is the smelliest ive come upon. Ive cut some cottonwood at the ocean that just was rank. Cedar does a similar thing too when wet enough but ive just never found anything that smelly. I could have been around it and never realized what it was but i feel like ive smelled this before or similar.
I CS&S 3.5 cords of red oak in December, worst smelling wood Ive ever come across. It stunk up my neighborhood for a few months. It makes the white oak I just bucked and chopped last weekend smell like flowers in comparison.
Call me odd, and you wouldn't be the first, but I've CSS lots of red oak over the years and I do not find the smell if it to be unpleasant. Sent from my XT1030 using Tapatalk
Sensitivities to the smell of red oak may be similar to the taste of cilantro. Some people have an olfactory gene turned on and are (more) sensitive to an aldehyde that is in cilantro and soap. I can taste the soapiness to cilantro . But it isn't so strong as to make cilantro detestable. I think I've smelled what chemical in red oak some find offensive once. I split open a red oak round that had cracked once in the tree and there was a white cheesy growth in it that smelled very similar to vomit. Maybe, maybe not the same. But otherwise I don't find red oak smell unpleasant either.
the white oak i have doesnt smell bad at all but im wondering if it has anything to do with the soil. The smell i could say it smells of onions and sour cream. It was stronger when I got it as it was freshly cut the day before. That seems pretty interesting I never thought of it that way. I know someone who cant stand the taste or smell of cilantro, traits in you are responsible for this but they have degree of severities as well. Some may smell it a little bit or some may just double over smelling it.
One thing I want to mention is that the rings in this oak are plentiful. In fact I can see an area where the winter was so cold the summer must have been really short for about 5 years. The growth is like a mm or 2 i stopped when I got to my age number and that was barely half the block...so i can see where this possibly came from as far as general location based on its age. Definitely not local. The white oak aged about 20 or so but its growth per year was about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch in some places. Location sure makes a difference.
white oak smells like vanilla from the vanillin in the wood. The same vanilla flavor infused via white oak barrel aging ( or wood chips ) into chardonnay that has been "oaked". White oak also makes good aging barrels for other spirits as well.
My neighbor stacks unseasoned red oak and it is pungent for a few weeks, but not offensive. Kiln dried Red oak cut on a table saw or miter saw I think is fantastic.
last night my wife and I were sitting in the hot tub when we got a whiff of the white oak I brought home last weekend. I didnt say anything, but she looked at me and requested that I not "bring home any more of that disgusting smelling wood now that spring is here and she will be outside more"
