Late last winter I bucked some cedar on my sister's property. Tree had been down, leaning with the crown about five feet off the ground, for many, many years. The stuff weighed nothing, and some of it looked like it was approaching sawdust stage, but it was all solid, so I brought it home, stacked it on the bottom of a stack of smaller rounds that I planned to burn shoulder season. Wasn't very optimistic about the wood. Well. I just put a round in with my coals to see how it might assist a burn down. It caught before the door was closed, produced secondaries almost immediately, and burned almost like a massive supercedar. Great stuff. I wish I had more than I do....think I'll go over to her place this weekend and see if there is any left...I don't remember, but may have stopped cutting because I was definitely disappointed at the time with the weight and appearance of the wood.
Sounds nice. I love cedar. Not the best firewood but good wood in general. One of the best smells in the world if you ask me
And now inquiring folks really want to know when a piece of really dry becomes really, really, really dry, just when is this change happening? All kidding aside, I'm betting you really, really liked that stuff!
Pictures. Yes. Well. I have to overcome my tech shortcomings. Have to figure out how to post pictures.....
My computer, I drag the pic, drop it in . Sometimes works sometimes not if site is busy. click "upload a file" bottom right, select the pic, click thumbnail
That's how I learned G-kids taught me click, drag, enter this & that , no fear keep poking at it till it does what you want. LOL
Had a couple handfuls of cedar shake shingles that after splitting into 1" strips made the next best firestarters ever. Dang near as good as SuperCedars.
No, it's not. I was just playing with my memory card to see if I could post following Bogydave's kind directions. That is the maple that I had a disagreement about with the tree surgeons last Spring. I told them it creaked so badly in any wind last winter that I was afraid to walk near it. They told me it was healthy and would be fine for many years. I told them to take it down. Glad I did. It was right next to our road, very near the hydro line, would have taken out the hydro.
The funny thing was that the tree looked fine. No dead wood anywhere. Big healthy crown. And, if you look, you'll see that only the first two rounds were hollow. Solid wood above...so, of course, a lot of weight stressing the trunk in heavy wind. You needed heavy wind to be frightened by the tree.
Lots of times you can tell by listening real good and knocking on the trunk. Hollow trees sound different. Especially one that hollow
My tree service people are actually remarkably able..considered among the finest in the province. I live on limestone, have about an inch of topsoil in many places. bedrock is right there. A huge tree can blow over and have a massive rootball that spreads a great distance and is inches deep. Many, many of my trees are hollow inside. But few of them creak like that maple did, or present an imminent danger. . An instance: when we built almost 40 years ago, a sugar maple in the front yard, about ten feet from the house, about 12 inch DBH, had a hole near the bottom and was more than half hollow. It looked healthy. When they blasted to make the hole for the basement a lot of large rock pieces hit the tree...some were lodged high up in branches. I figured we had to take the tree down for safety's sake. A friend (the same one who recently split all that wood for me) convinced me that the tree would be fine for a good fifteen years and I should leave it up. Almost 4o years later, the tree has a huge crown, has grown to be about 26 inches DBH, the hole has almost completely closed over, and there is plenty of good solid wood all the way to the base. The tree has a lot of room for root spread because of the hole blasted for the basement and the piping to the house from the well, which is near the tree, and no competition for sun and nutrients, as the other forest trees were cleared near it at the time of building. This Spring, the tree service took the lower branches off, as they were negatively impacting my roof. I told them the the story of the tree and the younger laughed and stated that in thirty years he MIGHT be helping his son take the tree down. Meanwhile, as my children grew up they watched many a robin raise a family five feet from their bathroom window.....
