Wow thank yall for all the help. Y'all have much more keen eyes than myself when it comes to ID'ing a species. This wood had a smell kind of like a sweet water or how honey suckle tastes. Kind of thought it was odd when I first got a whiff. No doubt it's going to be a bear to split though. It clings like white on rice. Hopefully my eyes will be as keen and my mind as sharp as y'all's one day for recognizing different species. Got some studying to do. So the consensus was that it is elm right? Haven't crossed paths with many willows other than while I am driving just out and about. Don't believe I have ever cut one. I will say this wood dulled a chain just shy of a tank of gas. Eric VW I didn't take it as you were downing my efforts at all. Only that were trying to help and I appreciate the honesty. If it was indeed willow that would be a very helpful tip. Scotty Overkill hate to hear that happened to your 041 but glad you rebuilt her and still have with you in the field. I will keep in mind that if I do come across a willow to cable it or strap it for extra precaution. T2 Tappin'
Since it's elm I believe I'll split it up and give it the summer to season. Then turn it into BTUs next fall/winter. The tree of ridiculousness might take carbide tipped cutters on the chain to cut A rescue chain from the fire department might do the trick haha T2 Tappin'
It might dry over the summer simply because it splits stringy but you might also want 2 years for that.
Red oak 24 mbtu's a cord, beech, 26 mbtu's a cord. Elm depends on what kind, but it's usually around 19 mbtu's a cord. Give or take a little. So, no, it's no beech or oak. It burns really nice though.
Now Im no expert I'm just remembering how burning cords was explained to me. If you compare cords of wood heat like you compare this and that cord of wood, you calculate how many cords of one wood it may take to equal a cord of another. So if You were to burn perfectly dried elm seasoned fully a cord, plus if you burned a cord of balsa wood(perfectly seasoned) you would equal the same BTU's if you burned one cord of beech or oak(roughly with deviances). It would take about 2 cords of douglas fir to equal one cord of Osage Orange.
Elm for sure, just not surd which type cause I don't cut much of it. I don't think its American elm. I'm with Dennis, you may want to give it 2 summers to season for best results. Good work and a good find.
Pretty much, you're on the right track. It is generally about the weight of the wood in a cord. The more dense a wood is, the higher the btu's. So Osage orange, and Hickory( along with all the heavy hitters) are great wood to burn when it's very cold out. If you burn poplar when it's -20° out, you'll be loading the stove a lot. Conversely, burning beech when it's 40° out, you'll be opening windows in the house. Douglas fir is pretty good on BTUs, it just doesn't coal up that well, and it burns fairly quickly, but has a lot of heat in that time. Elm's pretty decent wood, in the grand scheme of things. Plus, dead standing elm is many times ready to burn as soon as it's cut. At least the top 2/3 of the tree. The bottom 6-10' ( so many variables and you'd need a moisture meter to really verify) are usually pretty wet, and will need a few months to a year or so to be burnable. Outside of dead standing oak, there isn't much better heating wood available that you could burn the same day as it's cut.
I tried to put it as best as I could but we all have different ways of intuition. Now I try to think of wood in terms of a match. I remember getting in a science experiment with "matches" but it was actually just sticks of wood that they called them matches. They were fireplace sized and different species. You had the cottonwood, pine or fir, bamboo maple and something else (they said it was a hardwood but it was 15 years ago) the matches were set on fire and then we monitored the burn and rate of burn. We also used a certain spectogram to measure the possible heat it gave off in joules. What we noticed was that some matches sort of died but they coaled up and stayed lit more slowly, others more rapidly and one was hard as a ...well I won't mutter that here.... it just showed us a lot about how some woods are different burners than others(some are harder to light but burn great, some hard to light but burn like crap and etc.) Not a complete lesson but a perspective of how wood works on a small scale so its an understanding. What I am thankful for is we also had what was a punk, those sawdust sticks. It smoldered but still put out good" btu's" because of how Well the fibers burned even in a windy situation. Sorry this is blab-blab but definitely a cool lesson in pyrolysis.
