I usually leave it on. If i cut deadwood or if it falls off ill put bigger pieces it aside for use as kindling/feeder wood. I use a lot in my firepit outdoors. We grill with charcoal in the warm weather and use the pit to start the coals. Most of the time i keep it going after.
Much just pops off when I bang it on a concrete ledge. If not, I use a bark spud. Really, it's just a thin steel pry bar. Not perfect, but works ok. If it wasn't covered by wet snow, I'd post a picture of my bark pile. It's pretty big. One or two years, then through the chipper shredder. I'll never buy potting soil again, and the garden beds are dark and rich. Tons of value that way and I still have plenty of BTUs from the wood. Walnut bark goes into the woods. Once you start doing it, and see all the nasty bugs that live between the bark and wood, it is hard to bring them into the house to wake up and keep you company. Unless you send them right into the crematorium.
This is the general idea. I will leave this green sugar maple alone for awhile, to see if the bark separates as it dries. Chipping it off like this would take too much time.
I used to try to knock off loose bark, but only for cosmetic reasons. Dodgy wood bark will gross up a stove glass in a hurry. These days I don't care, and I'll take the extra ashes along with the extra btu's.
Give it a year or two and that bark will slide off in your hand when you pick up the split, or peel off once it warms up in the house. Sugar maple is great at giving up its nice thin bark once it's seasoned. My wife will sit and peel the splits near the stove while she's tending the fire if I leave sugar maple nearby..
You'll love it! Hot like red oak, but seasons faster and seems to burn more thoroughly if that's a thing. MAybe my red oak just isn't dry enough, but it seems I need to stir coals and open the air sooner on it than I do on sugar maple. When that bark does come off, it will be thin and paper-dry if you've had it covered or indoors for a while - great to get some flames working off a weak bed of coals.
Question, is it liable to mold, if stacked tight when green? I'm in a bind right now with rack space, so I'm stacking it in one bay of the woodshed. Usually I stack green wood on a rack, only one split deep. This will be four splits deep in the shed.
In my experience, very little. I have had it green off the stump stacked three rows deep and the center row might get a little black on the ends, but that's about it. Never see the creeping white fungus like I get on white pine, or the weird pink stuff that grows on oak.
