i know it is one of the most dense woods there are, but very seldom see people use it for firewood, I have several on my property, both standing and down, just wondering if it would be worth cutting up or not?
Thanks, I used to make homemade long bows out of it, we have probably 10 acres of hedge patch, I cut a few pieces yesterday I knew have been down for 10 plus years and still bright yellow inside! I have heard rumors that it burns too hot and damages a stove, any truth to that?
That's a cool hobby, I always wanted to do that when I was a teenager as there was 20+ osage orage trees on my parent's property, but I knew I didn't have the patience to let the wood dry long enough.
Just be prepared. If it is dead, it will dull your saw very quickly compared to other woods. Take a couple of spare loops or a file. If it's running sap it's very sticky as the milky sap seems to get everywhere. I tend to let it lay a few days as it gets all over your gloves and clothes. Depending on your stove. It's a good one to save for the colder parts of the year or for overnight. For wood working. It's bright yellow at first but turns a really nice caramel color over time. Buddy made a gun stock out of it and it was BEAUTIFUL.
I've witnessed an old Ashley stove that had the firebox looking like melted wax running down a wall on the inside from Hedge...heavy, hard to cut, hot, hot firewood.
Yep, worth cutting... as others have said, just make sure your stove is controllable and you should be fine. It'll coal up like no other, but the heat that it puts off is also like no other... Watch for the firebugs when you open up the stove door...... Keep the chains sharp if the trees are dead, and you still may see sparks fly.
Just one more myth when it comes to firewood. Sad that there is not more of this wood around. I know of only a very few trees around here.
I know from my bowbuilding expierience it is a beautiful wood, am fortunate to have plenty of it, I know after 2 years drying, build a longbow that pulls 70 lbs, and a year later it pulls closer to 80lbs! And it can lay on the ground for years and not rot, seams like it is impossible to break!
Well I guess that my area is the exception to the rule. Almost every section has 2-3 miles of hedge row on it. They are disappearing though- farmers are planting ditch to ditch and bulldozing everything in their way... Makes for a LOT of firewood to cut- as long as they haven't thrown a match onto the pile already. In my hay field/ pasture there are multiple clumps of hedge that have encroached into the productive ground. I've been spending a lot of time clearing it over the Christmas break- 2 cords of hedge CSS and 4 cords of locust cut.
That brings back memories. Worked 12 years on a family farming operation and 1 year they decided to clear out their rolling pasture ground. About 40 acres. It was mainly Osage because cattle won't touch it. What made it real bad was everyone of them had multiflora rose bushes all around them reaching up to the limbs all intertwined. If you've ever dealt with Osage they tend to grow in clumps and the split or lean to the ground so it was thorns EVERYWHERE. Many a time I'd go into clear a path and you would literally have to have someone pull the limbs, stickers and such as it would hold you like a velcro strip. Any direction you'd move, you'd get stuck. We ended up just using a backhoe to push a path in after we wised up. We'd log the big stuff but a lot of firewood was wasted as they wanted it done quick. There was some dead ones and when we'd start a burn pile it would burn the roots through the ground. Sometimes out 20 - 30 from the stump. Osage tends to have a lot of roots near the surface and I still remember the owners grandson walking up and kneeling down only to get his knee burnt as it was burning under there when his knee pushed through the dirt. He was about 30 ft from the coal piles edge. Lots of times when I'd come back the next morning you'd see puffs of smoke coming all over out of the ground. I'd cut trees for 4 hours in the morning and then after lunch the rest of the guys would come and start gathering to put on the burn piles. 2 fork tractor and a backhoe working another 4 hours to clean up. Those piles took 3 weeks to ash out and that was through rainstorms. Coal piles averaged 3 ft deep and 30 ft around. There were cedars in there too and that was like throwing a can of gas on the coal pile. Dump them in and back out as fast as you could but you'd still get burning embers coming down on you from all the down falling embers. Good times. LOL
Farmers are starting to use every square inch of available land, I've noticed here within the last 4-5 years they're bulldozing fence-lines and small wood lots. It sure makes rabbit hunting harder, they're destroying a lot of habitat.
