I was out in the woods yesterday in a snowstorm working on some ash. I needed a change of pace from all the red oak I've been cutting, and the ash was sure pleasant. Cuts quick, and it's sure lighter than the oak. This ash was something of mysterious tree as I couldn't figure out where it had come from. There was no stump visible above the snow anywhere in the area. There were no damaged ash trees close by that it broke off. With snow cover on the ground, it looked like it had been dropped out of a helicopter into the woods. I can't remember every cutting up a downed tree wondering how it got there. The saw is sitting on the stump here. The bottom was totally rotted, but only for <18" or so. The piece the saw is sitting on, that I think was the stump, is all punky on the left, but 100% solid on the right. There wasn't any other rot in the trunk. It was as if it rotted fully for the bottom 6" and nowhere else.
That's how a lot of the ash I scrounged around here was about 4-5 years after being killed by the EAB. The bottom rots and it falls over. But the rot in the bottom 3-4 feet can surprise you when you are falling them.
I’ve got a lot of dead ash on my property. Unfortunately most of it is on steep ravine banks or already fallen over and hung up on other trees making them too dangerous for me to try and process. There are a few on field edges but nothing too substantial.
If it makes you feel any better, I split some of it this afternoon with my maul. I had forgotten how fibrous standing dead ash gets. It's not elm, but it's a bit of a pain.
Awesome, I always like getting ash when I'm not expecting it Nice looking pile of wood and a good looking place to work on it!
I love to cut and split ash as it’s high production per unit time. The challenge I have is that my stove eats ash like a fat kid eats Oreos, so trying to limit ash to should season. I bet there is a void where that tre came from that will show in the spring!!
Alot of the eab killed ash on my property was like that. I figure the stump was rather wet and just decomposed quickly.
Typical of eab killed ash. It starts rotting just a few inches underground then in time the roots just crumble and the tree falls. Cut off a foot or two and the rest is good wood. But I've never had splitting problems with it.
All my ash are that way the root rots first working up the tree if the ground is frozen it'll break off at the ground. If not it just rolls over with a small root ball.
I wonder if that's part of it, the standing dead gets harder to split? That's the only ash I drank with is standing dead ash, so I just deal with it with my hydraulic splitter. I figured that my ash trees were stringy because they were yard trees, and not forest trees. Well, I'll test that theory out soon as I have a whole trailer of dead standing forest ash that I need to split up.
Probably rotted from the rootball and fell over? Cavity filled with leaves etc? Seen that plenty on times around here. Ash would be a welcomed change over oak. Always peaceful cutting while its snowing. Hoard on and cut safe!
Ash as SS wood is pretty funny. It's probably more like ash will be wood that will be burnt before the oak since oak takes so long to dry.
Yeah that’s the stump there. Ash doesn’t tend to have much of a butt swell at the base of the trunk. Like Backwoods Savage said above the roots tend to rot just below the surface first on eab ash. I’ve dealt with probably several hundred now just like that in the last 15-20 years. I’d be surprised if that tree wasn’t standing very close to where that stump is. Probably would be easier to see without snow on the ground.
I got a chuckle from that too. I’ve burned almost exclusively white ash here for the past 8 years. Shoulder wood has been spruce, pine, poplar, box elder/soft maple, etc… It’s been a good run with ash but alas it’s getting hard to find now around here. I might get one more season with it and then it will be a rarity in my stacks. Red oak is my favorite wood…………….. To sell
IME, given equal sized splits of ash and red oak, red oak is burning much longer in my fire box. So if all you have is the 2, what are you loading up when it's very cold out? I would personally save the shorter burn times for when it isn't as cold out. Maybe I'm an outlier...
True. I would do the same. Oak does burn longer than ash. I just have access to a lot of lower BTU wood that dries super quickly. So that's my SS wood.
