2 nice tree service scores a few weeks ago that delivered right to my front yard. Mix of oak, gum and maple. I'm about 2/3 of the way finished splitting and stacking and I'm estimating 3 cords between the 2 drop offs. All this wood is for the 2024 season and beyond. 1 drop off was a FB marketplace lead (they were advertising chips, I asked about logs and they said they could drop some off to me when they were in my area, a week later I get a message saying they had some for me) and the 2nd was Chip Drop (2-3 month wait after putting in a request but a local company did respond and deliver). It's been about 3 years since I last did this much bucking and splitting. I wish I had a bigger yard for more lol.
Yeah it was part of the load, had to take all or nothing lol. Wasnt too bad to split, better than elm.
+1! The gum I've run into was, dare I say it, worse than the dreaded elm. But like you said, in that situation ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
20-21m btus per cord from what ive read but it burns quickly. This is good wood to mix with better hardwoods. I found it easier to split from the outside and work towards the center. Side sections would "pop" off along the grain then I would take those pieces and split them down the middle to make them narrower. The closer I got to the center the more twist I found in the grain. I guess it helped that the tree was only about 18" wide and I used a hydraulic splitter. I separated the gum from the maple in order to knock the gum out first since I knew it was going to be a PITA to split. The maple was a dream to split afterwards. I still have to split the oak. I plan on lining the back fence line with a single row of oak to help with drying. I have some 5 year split and stacked red oak that I burned this past winter that still hissed and foamed. That oak was stacked in three 8' rows like a standard cord. Going single row will help air flow.
