Hey All! Would like to figure out what exactly I've got here. This is a load that I scored last weekend that I thought was Ash. From what I've read Ash should be fairly easy splitting. This will split by hand but takes more work than the locust I've been splitting this winter. Pictures are pieces all from the same tree. What do you think? Ash or ?
Looks like ash to me. I haven't processed all that much of it, but my understanding is that it's *usually*, not always, easy to split.
Is that a yard tree? Yard trees can be miserable when they have concealed and healed over knots from previous trimmings.
Thanks all for confirming. It is a yard tree and the little i've split by hand seems to have a slight twist to it making it a little tougher. I'm going to hook up the 3pt splitter to tackle the majority of this stuff. Can't wait for three years to burn what will be my first time burning Ash!
The corkscrew grain trees can indeed suck. I've had some twisted so bad that the wood was off the bottom plate on my splitter if I put it on square with the cut. Just a nightmare to split and stack.
Corkscrew grain wood - good term, I like it! It pretty well describes this load of ash. With rising temps and the ground getting squishy, against my better judgement I broke out the splitter and spent a few hours late today busting the big rounds into smaller chunks that I can easily split by hand. Made some nice ruts back where I keep and process my wood. My tractor/splitter combo:
Have some white ash that looks pretty close and split like hell. I like that corkscrew term, got a cherry like that, damm near impossible to split. Sent about half of it to the smoker.
I still think its ash, just a tough yard specimen. The piece that was on the splitter in the above picture, i was able to take a quarter of it and split it by hand fairly easily. I did find after quartering the big rounds many limbs that had been trimmed early in the trees life. That combined with the corkscrew grain has made this a little tougher to split.
rdust is one who got a beautiful ash tree but it was in a town. When it came time to split it was really tough going. Maybe he'll chime in on this one. For those who wonder, there is almost always a difference between a tree grown inside the woods vs one grown in a fence row, in town or in a yard. Especially so for those lone standing trees. Those can be really twisted and a bear to split.
This makes perfect sense to me now as most of the firewood I've collected has come from yard trees. It shows in my stacks/splits as I get a lot of stuff that doesn't stack real well and isn't always easy to load in the stove. Doesn't "nest" together very well.
