was out at my favorite firewood cutting spot today to pick up a load of seasoned wood and cut enough to replenish the stack. The good news is trees I'm working on appear to be either Yellow Birch or Black Birch, but for the life of me I can't tell the difference. Through some on-line research there doesn't seem to be much difference in appearance. Anybody have any way that I could tell them apart? I'm hopping Black Birch because of the BTU, but I'm guessing Yellow because they are more abundant in Dakota. The bad news, I hit some metal and broke a cutter on a 30" chain. It took 40, yes 40 strokes to sharpen the broken cutter, about 1/2 of the total tooth! So now 40 strokes on each cutter, plus working the gullet and rakers! Well at least I was able to salvage the chain! I'm interested in if it will cut straight when I'm done! happy CSS burn FHC
Oh No. I Never do that . it just don't pay to. 1 hammered tooth isn't much . if your running full skip. You might feel it. But it won't have a dramatic effect on your cut time , at all. You will feel it some , and that may bug you. It does most guys. But, your saw will still cut fine. I work them back into shape over 3 or 4 sharpening. Now 3 or 4 hammered teeth. The whole chain gets took back .
Is there any bark on it? Yellow birch has kind of a greenish-golden brown color to it, and black birch is, black. If it’s just one or two cutters, especially on a longer chain, I’ll basically let it go. I sharpen the rest and just take that one down equally if it’s salvageable. Otherwise you could just grind it down out of the way.
The yellow birch we cut in Maine. Was very distinctive. The bark was Yellow !! The bark was similar to white (paper) birch in that the outer most layer would furl back a bit and the tips of the furl would often be kinda frizzy. We had , what was called white birch, yellow birch and Grey birch. Which had smoothish bark. With patches of black color and black colored bark on the limbs.
Yes I saw that online. I smelled a small cut real close and I couldn't smell anything. Thanks Buffalo Plaid!
The main trunk and large limbs have what I would call typical bark for a large tree, pretty dark almost black, the smaller limbs and branches (1-4") have a darker "birch" looking bark. The bark is not flacky like typical river birch or paper birch.
Are you sure you do not have that backwards? Yellow Birch smells like wintergreen, or at least in Maine it does. In fact we used to tap Yellow Birch for the winter green flavored tonic that it produces. Kind of a maple syrup syrup, but with Yellow Birch trees instead. We do not have black birch here, but if it is anything like White or Gray Birch, the limbs will be rather uniform and straight. Yellow birch often have gnarly limbs, twisting and knuckled up; kind of like how the limbs on a beech can grow sometimes.
I love Yellow Birch, at least in winter. Walk out through the woods on a good winter day and then take a lighter to the bark down low, and stand back and watch the perspective. The fire goes right up the bark and in a flash the whole tree is blazingly on fire, sending up sparks and makes for cheap entertainment...at least for a few minutes! Just wait until snow is on the ground obviously otherwise the Tree Cops get kind of mad!
Sounds like it could be black. Black birck has a chalky grey color. The bark does not peel and curl like other birches. Its bark will begin to crack and plate up when it gets past 12” in diameter. Yellow can crack and plate also but it seems to be more prevalent on much larger diameter ones. I find that it and yellow birch both have that distinctive wintergreen smell but black is more pronounced to my nose.
One easy way to tell yellow birch is that you can almost make a blow torch with most trees as the bark tends to curl. Light it on fire and it will burn all the way up at least to the first crotch. Doesn't really hurt the tree, thankfully. Black birch and yellow birch.
Thanks, Dennis! The branches look just like the black birch picture, but the cuts did not have the wintergreen smell that I am hearing about. Would they have less sent in the winter?
To determine if it's black Birch or not, I simply take my thumbnail and scratch any part of the bark and see what the scent is. Strong wintergreen or spearmint tells me it's BB. Sent from my SM-T280 using Tapatalk
My experience is that it quickly loses the scent when it dies. You indicated it wasn't green in your first post. That could easily explain it right there.
Just be careful nobody is watching. They might think you are like me and some other folks here; crazy.
