Just happened to be on the way to the grocery store this morning (unsupervised) Let me quickly go down this dirt road a few miles out of the way that I know is a dumping ground for people’s yard waste. Found some cut pine, not bad. Oooh, what’s this? Some type of cedar I presume? Load it up! I’m guessing northern white cedar? Has anyone burned it or is it better to save for woodworking? Also on the way found this nice made in the USA dolly for free, just have to buy a set of wheels. Another successful scrounge.
So she sent you to the store and you came home with wood? I see we are cut from the same mold. Nice find and scrounge! Never burned EWC but hear it makes great kindling. I love the smell and its almost ashamed to burn it IMO!
Yeah I think at this point she knows whenever I go out, more often than not, I'm going to be coming back with something extra in the bed of the truck lol. I can't drive past a pile of wood and not yearn for it to be mine, or pass a bulk pickup at the side of the road without at least looking to see if I have a need for any of it. I always have some project in the works at home and I like keeping metal and construction materials on hand. As for the cedar, it looks pretty dried out as it is so I'm going to use it this fall for shoulder wood (which I need more of anyway).
Thanks for the input. Cedar is somewhat scarce in my area so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how it'll smell in the stove on a cool fall morning.
Cedar is GREAT for kindling. Catches fast burns hot. Does not burn long but that’s unnecessary for kindling. ASNR!
Sheesh, these things do come in threes. First the pine this morning, then the cedar, now my good buddy calls me up to offer up a load of semi-seasoned blue spruce... do I want to subject myself to this torture?!?! I've never burned it but heard horror stories about how hard it is to split it with all those knots... maybe I can noodle my way through the worst of it... I'm still in need of shoulder season wood so I'll probably go and cherry pick whatever looks decent enough. .
I can understand why completely... there's no shortage of reasons to dislike them. Since I have no personal experience with it yet and have heard mixed reviews I'll proceed with caution. This could end up being decent shoulder wood for me or a learning experience. I'm open to either or.
I burn a lot of blue spruce. It can be a little tougher to split by hand due to the knots, but it's not that big of a deal. It burns well. I'll take it, if you don't want it
I have very little conifer species in my stacks so far, mostly because my area is such a mixed forest. I imagine a man could make out pretty well hauling tri-axles of black locust, oak and maple logs from the flatlands up to where guys like you live
Yeah, the Denver metro area and Eastern plains in CO are loaded with hardwood, but I'm too lazy to go get it most of the time. So I mostly burn conifer (douglass fir, pine, spruce, cedar etc. + a lot of aspen). I have an arborist buddy that drops hardwood from the city at my property every couple of months. I pay him mostly in Modelo and Crown Royal Plus I save him the cost of dump fees.
Started processing the spruce from last night. I threw together a simple "shed" out of pallets and stapled an old tattered tarp to the roof. I'm looking at it now and thinking I'm going to need another one to house it all. This stuff is a bear to split. The soft wood just absorbs the impact of the maul and the knots make it even more unpleasant. Oh well, I'm going to grab one more load of this stuff and probably borrow a splitter. By the time I'm done I'll have 2-3 years worth of spruce which is fine by me. I'm more or less taking it because my buddy was begging me to lol. He cut down about 2 dozen of these trees at his house. There are mountains of wood chips all over his property where he chipped all the limbs. In his words, "trying to give this stuff away is like trying to give AIDS away. Nobody wants it" Ugh. Yeah man, I'll help you out and take some of your mediocre BTU, knot-festooned, sappy wood. Hey, it's still better than Balsa wood *note* the small stack on the pallet in front of the shed is oak.
This one here's for buZZsaw BRAD ! Finally got an FHC-worthy amount again! I went back to my buddy's house where I already took out a couple loads of blue spruce 5 months ago. Here's one more load, and I already have plans to take the rest of what he's got. He's been slowly getting rid of it in his outdoor pit on weekends. I think I can put it to better use and find a warm spot at my place for it I love the smell of this stuff, and the burn quality is decent too. Glad I have hydraulics to process it though, otherwise I wouldn't subject myself to the obKNOTxious torture of hand splitting it all.... Here's what I left with today: Here's the bulk of what's left:
Nice! Was it all gummy and sticky? My 170 still has spruce pitch from August. Is that your hydro in the pic?
This stuff was dry as a bone with no sticky mess. From what I gather, all these spruce trees were felled back in the spring and were either dead or dying which probably helped keep the sap content down. That little electric splitter belongs to my buddy, although I didn't take a good look at it to see the tonnage. I remember him telling me he was bucking sections about 8-10" long otherwise the splitter didn't have the oomph required to power through. My 25 ton had no issue but did slow down on the really bad ones.
Ive noticed a lot of yard spruces dying. I think there is a blight or something killing them off. I took one down last May that was a few years dead. The gummy mess was a living one!
