Some variety of alder? Could be a certain variety of elm too. Cut it down and show us some end cuts and splits!
It's used for all kinds of things from furniture from the lumber to medical usages from the inner bark. Also known as red elm.
Yes. I avoid it for the splitting issues. There is some sitting roadside right down the street from me and i havent touched it other than helping buzz-saw scrounge some.
Some old time pitchers used the sap to throw spit balls. My uncle tried it once and threw ball over the backstop. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
It out performs what the charts say, I have never had any issues splitting Red Elm. In my experience you can split it green & it still holds its heating value unlike American Elm which seems to total lose its heating value when split green. That looks to be a pretty good sized one, around here they generally die around 6” - 12” dia. range. Occasionally you will find one around 20”dia. but that is a rarity. It is a sought after wood around here.
Let it stand until the bark falls off. It splits fine after that. When I was a kid it was a staple for our heat
I have burned elm, but it was a nightmare to Split. The tree is alive, so I will let it live till another day.
I don't want to totally highjack the thread..... But can you please explain the above statement? I've never done much with elm and have never heard that....but it makes no sense to me...
In my experience American Elm is a strange beast: If when cut while alive, then bucked it may or may not start to season & dry down, sometimes it just rots in bucked form. If cut while living, bucked & split it is terribly stringy, does dry but seems to burn very fast & leave a lot of ash. If found standing dead with no bark it may be solid as a rock or punk from top to bottom but if solid it burns great, produces a lot less ash & a lot more heat. You can split those dead rounds & they burn the same as dead rounds but the green cut Elm that were bucked & split you may as well be burning toilet paper. Slippery or Red Elm in my experience has none of the weird tendencies. Cut it green, buck, split it burns no different than a standing dead Red Elm. Red Elm also will stand/lay around for years & not rot unlike American Elm. Maybe Backwoods Savage can explain it better or add some insight.
I think you’re close. Standing dead white elm was always a little mealy. Not quite punky, still had good weight, but acted like it was on its way out. Doesn’t dry well if not split. Red elm gets a tiny bit stringy, kinda like splitting a nasty piece of ash. But I’ve never seen it go punky if it’s standing.
Thanks JimBear. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that if the tree was living and turned into firewood it doesn't burn well, but dead first does better. I would really like to know the "why" behind it. I'm not good at id'ing the different elms. I have access to several big elms from the ice storm that I need to process. Hopefully they're the "good ones"!
