Worked with my mother on trimming some trees. Took the load to the tree dump and found some mulberry....mmmm, mulberry.
No shoulder season for mulberry...it has almost the same btu ratings as locust and most oak. Its my primo wood for the heart of the winter, especially since I rarely stumble across oak in my neck of the woods.
I am a big fan of Mulberry. Love the spark show it gives (just not when the door is open!!!)!!! Congrats!
I like mulberry too. The literature I've found suggests it's closer to ash than oak or locust in BTU terms, but ash is nothing to sneeze at. It's also exceptionally rot-resistant. It's a very common tree around Pittsburgh. Just this afternoon an ad popped up for three (smallish) trees' worth, free, maybe a mile from my house. I wish I had somewhere to put it.
I turned down a load of mulberry and walnut the other day. A friend had 4 small ones in the yard they all grew up in a cluster. Long story short they had the beginnings of a barber chair and felt uncomfortable getting it down and called me like I'm anymore comfortable doing it but at least I used a 20 inch bar instead of a 12 inch like them and just had to barely make a cut and it cut loose They offered the wood but I have so much going on right now and that particular day to even mess with it
Very plentiful around here too,in city & rural areas.Its a rare year that I don't get at least 1 pickup load.Since I was a teenager its been one of my favs for fuel,woodworking (when decent quality pieces are found) & I started cooking/smoking with it a few years back also. Sometimes called "Poor Man's Apple" cause its flavor is very similar to that,plus its found when Apple can be rare locally or expensive in those little bags at retail shops. (Which I absolutely refuse to pay for) . Since 2013 I even see bags of dry Mulberry at a local grocery store chain - $12.99 for 5 pounds of golfball sized chunks. At that rate I have 4 grand worth of stuff sitting in the stacks. Hmmmmm......
BTU charts on various private websites seem very inconsistent so the document I go by, because it comes from a trusted source and lists so many species in the same format, is the USDA/Forest Service publication called "Specific Gravity and Other Properties of Wood and Bark for 156 Tree Species Found in North America." Quite a mouthful, eh? It doesn't mention BTU value at all, but other trustworthy-seeming sources have indicated that, assuming equal moisture content, BTU value tracks very closely with weight. So, this document doesn't do much for pinning down a particular number of BTU's, but it's great for saying how one species compares to another. It lists 48 different oak species, which vary pretty widely. Specific gravity at 12% MC: Black Locust 0.69 White Oak 0.68 Average for all oak species 0.66 Texas Red Oak 0.66 Northern Red Oak 0.63 Ash 0.60 Southern Red Oak 0.59 Mulberry 0.58 Silver Maple 0.47
Surpising to see Mulberry less than Ash, if for no other reason than based on drying time and density of the wood. Either way it was free...and that's always a good price
Well, that's the thing; it's not more dense unless you count the water. Mulberry starts out with a lot more water, thus the longer drying time. Edit: that's an oversimplification; cellular structure differences play a big part in drying time too, I'm sure.
I was thinking even dry it was more dense. But it wouldn't be the first time I'm wrong. Still happy with my find.
I would be too! I've got a lot of oak and locust, but with my very limited storage space I'm finding that the really hard stuff takes too long to dry, and I'm preferring mid-grade stuff that dries a little faster. Unless I can find standing dead stuff, that is, in which case I'll take the oak and locust.
