How long before oak isn’t useful?

I have some split oak that’s been out for a while. It feels extremely light and almost like it’s lost much of its value to burn. Any help with this? Secondly can anyone identify this wood. It’s from maryland.

 

I tossed some oak in the trash pile today, because it was mostly punk. The wood in the pic looks like sourwood.

 

Oak either red or white will have the outer sapwood rot but the heartwood stays solid for many years IME. Stacked tight uncovered will obviously accelerate this.
I felled some long dead (gypsy moth killed five or so years ago) and the heartwood was solid but lots of the sapwood, especially with bark still attached, had gone punky. I separated out the splits into all heartwood and those with some sapwood. A friend buys the all heartwood oak from me.

Not sure on the Maryland tree.

 

Punk meaning “no good”?

 

I guess what I’ll do is split a few pieces and see what the middle looks like. Thanks

 

Yes, it was too decayed.

 

Are they rounds or splits?

 

The "baseball bat" test is good too. Knock a couple splits together and if they made a thud the wood is good. No thud and usually not good. Wood with some punk is still usable, but i dont like the mess factor.

 

Splits

 

That stuff we cut a year or so ago at Marks place was dead and down for quite a while was kind of punky outside but really nice inside. Some is stacked in my driveway now and the rest out back.
Might not win a beauty contest but will make heat probably sooner that I want to think about.

 

We cut up a white oak trunk at Lefty's 5 years ago. He said it was junk due to wire in it and had it laying there for over 10-years. Like others have said, sap wood was gone, but heart wood was perfect and like it was cut down yesterday, and no wire.

 

White Oak heartwood lasts a good long time. Red oak heartwood doesn’t rot per say but it does lose “caloric content”. Gets very light and splits real easy, at least when soaking wet. Burns faster but still gives off great heat. Eventually the red will rot and you’ll see yellow/white specks in the wood and you’ll notice it might break against the grain instead of split or shear. That’s the point it becomes not worth it in my opinion.

 

Ive seen white with the specks inside to but it was still pretty dense and tightened up when it dried out.

 

Here’s some red oak that is all punk. It would probably burn, but I won’t sell it and I have plenty of better wood to use in my house.

 

Looks like good compost though. I try to not have any punky stuff in saleable wood. If i do i state it. Usually its ash or oak.

 

That goes it to the shoulder wood or campfire wood categories.

 

I have had some pin oak stacked tight uncovered for three years and still no rot whatsoever…tree was live when i first started splitting

 

I have a bunch of red that I would never sell and a lot of folks may trash , was dead when cut, had a couple inches of punk on the outside when cut and split. I don’t cover my stacks but wood like this gets stored in the lean to and out of the weather. It seasons nice and the punky makes it easy to light.

 

I have some white oak dead standing still, killed by gypsy moth infestation stress and it's getting rather soft. I should have cut it all down years ago. I'm kinda surprised at how soft the heartwood is because red oak heartwood usually stays solid for a long, long time. It's possible the leaf loss year after year affected it somehow.