First off let me say I love cutting in the back yard. Still not more the 100 yards from the house after 9 years. Cut this dead standing red oak this morning and it read 22-24% on the bottom half. And 20-17% on the top half.
Check the wood after indoors for a while so that most accurate reading can be taken. That said, looks pretty dry.
Yes, that looks dry. It no doubt has been dead for quite some time. Wish I had some of that on our place.
A few years back I brought home almost ten cords of dead standing dead oak from near Myricks Airport that looked just like that. Was some nice burning red oak. It keeps, especially if it is covered.
The MC will read a bit higher if you split it and stick the meters pins in parallel with the grain. I realize that you just cut it, so splitting it will only expose wood that is the same MC, but that is the only way of going parallel. And as was mentioned, the wood needs to be somewhere around 70* too. Not that the MC really matters if you are just adding this to the stacks...just clarifying so someone that is not familiar with checking MC will not be confused if they are reading this in the future. That is some pretty darn dry standing dead Oak though normally only get stuff that is ready to burn from the smaller upper branches...
That stuff is gold, iv been burning stuff like that all season! I have the same moisture meter too. Nice work!
I cut some dead limbs off a blown downed white oak I was processing. Cut em to length and stuck them right in the stove that night. Not a single his out of any of em.
I believe it. A little sacrilegious to post here but that's what we cut, split and burn within a month or two at the hunt camp every fall. Burns clean and hot in the Drolet wood stove even when completely dampered down.
Looks like it’s been standing dead so long all the sap wood has rotted off leaving solid dry heart wood. Scotty Overkill got into some like that. Awesome.
I had a decent sized red oak blow down in a storm this past summer (rotten in the middle, knew it’s time was coming but it wasn’t going to damage anything on the way down so I let nature finish it off). Lots of dead limbs at the top. Anything 4” or less diameter went right into the wood racks. It burned great.
A Moisture reading of 20% At 32 degrees Is only 4% higher Then the reading you would get at 68 degrees (MC 24% ), Not a big deal , Colder than 32 the percentage gap would be greater . Real nice to find Oak that dry already, I had some like that
It happens. Found about 5 small red oaks near each other like that. Split and toss right down the basement. Nice when you can skip a few steps
That tree looks ready to go! Love me some standing dead oak that's devoid of its bark and sapwood, it's like a woodburner's dream come true! We did this big, half-dead pin oak a few weeks back, the entire top was bone dry, took it right from the tree into my garage stoop. Burned hot and clean!
Hec of a score!! Few months back I got lucky and found the same exact thing. I found a split trunked tree, one was much bigger and alive and the other was smaller but dead and not rotted or eaten by bugs. I dropped it and split and I got 20% or below on all my readings. That stuff was gold, burned hot and long. I also found it to be very hard when cutting it with the saw. Now I am always on the prowl for dead standing trees like that. Problem is most of it is all rotted!
