Ive only burnt it in kindling form. If dry it'll burn. I took down a living spruce on Thursday and it all went to the dump. Sticky mess. Wear old clothes if the tree is living and prepare for saws and gloves to get sticky,
It's very lightweight and as Brad said if dry it will burn just fine. I'd suggest using it to start the fire and then transition to something more hefty like oak or maple. I took 10 truckloads in my tacoma of a gigantic spruce and split most of it into firewood and the shorties I turned into kindling. Just found some more at the local dump along with some nice pine and my work cut out for me in the kindling department.
I'll be finding out in a few weeks how well it does in the stove. I took about 1/2 a cord of blue spruce from my buddy a little while back and will probably grab another few loads for spring burning if it goes well.
I have burned a little of it. For those of us in the west where we do not have access to a lot of hard woods the spruce does just fine. Not quite as good as the lodge pole pine I get but if I have some offered to me for free I will take it.
I've cut a bunch of standing dead here. It was gnarly to split with the hydraulic. The wood seems dense where the branches whorl out of the tree, so it seemed like an easy decision to stack it for burning. I hope to try it this year.
Spruce and fir are all part of the shoulder firewood and all the wood for the hot tub. Blowdowns on trail work, getting the softwoods cleared for hardwood felling. \It is the dominant regen species Downeast.
I burn about a half to a full cord of spruce every year. Its great for shoulder season wood or when you are kicking around the house and dont mind loading the stove every four hours or so. I also like to use it as a filler in between longer burns if I find my timing a bit off for a more important burn like my overnighter. I like to pick my firewood out of the stacks for specific burn times so short burning and long burning have a place in my stacks. That being said I wont go after spruce to hard. Its everywhere in our woods like aspen. I should be able to drive my truck up to it otherwise forget about it. I live in the wood though so if I lived in the city I might work a bit harder for it. Here is a neat pic I found of some spruce sap. I call it my spruce snot pic.
I love spruce sap. I take it and spread it all over my axe and maul handles. It's a bit sticky at first and it doesn't last that long but I love the smell of spruce and pine. Hell, I love the smell of all the different woods I've split minus cottonwood - that stuff smells like cat pizz!!
I went out to the garage just now just to take a pic of my spruce sap blob. I keep it there and just grab it when I need some temporary grip.
looks like something "did its business" on the log! Three of my saws, gloves, pants and boots got it and smell better than sweat. Its worn off the gloves now as they got a hole and are history. Some sticky stuff for sure. Bucked up a couple fresh pine logs right after Isaias and i thought that was bad. I dont work softwoods that often. Have a couple hemlocks to fell soon. Not too sticky thank God! My boots tonight. The black is all sap, not mud or dirt.
I cut it doing trail maintenance. I prefer it over poplar. Doesn't leave a mess like poplar and about same btus
Like I've said numerous times on here, I use pines and spruces to start a fire, they light easily with just a couple pieces of newspaper, but after I get a small bed of coals, that's when the hardwoods go in.
