Sweep's chart says otherwise but to me, silver maple is the superior firewood of the two. Your thoughts?
Around me the silver maple grows much straighterer. For ease of processing alone I give it the nod over box elder.
Silver maple is straighter growing and therefore much easier to split IMHO. I heated my house almost solely with those 2 species this past burning season. I really couldn't discern a difference in burn time between the two................as my 13NC really only holds about 4 medium sized splits 16-18" long.......................so I'm doing good to get 4-5 hours out of both. Both are very plentiful around here, and I don't turn them down.
The difference between the two is very small on the BTU charts (and the Janka Hardness, which I prefer). Box elder edges out silver by a whopping 2% - probably not enough to notice a real difference. Unless you're splitting it, as others have pointed out. I'd also prefer silver for that reason.
Yes, the splitting and stacking can make a big difference. I think you'll also get more coaling from the maple than from the box elder.
Well that does surprise me they rate Boxelder higher then Silver Maple, they must burn about the same but as said above the Silver Maple is a lot more user friendly.
The few time's I've messed with box elder it was dead-standing and after cutting it I couldn't get it to split by hand. It was so water logged the ax head just kind of "squished" into the round and stuck there. I've never had that issue with silver maple.
I hate boxelder because you can never seem to get a straight piece out of it, it has millions of little rogue branches that stick out everywhere, it's usually saturated, and it smells bad. Silver maple is good firewood to me - right in that middle ground between pine and ash. I have one big silver maple that needs to come down, it's probably 34-36"DBH with several trunks and I am guessing I'm going to get 3-4 cords out of it.
I'm comparing silver limbs to BE. When you get into the larger silver trunks that stuff is more dense and often twisted severely. Burns great and almost completely silent. Nice blue flame from the coals.
There's tons of box elder here. I won't turn down either, but elder does grow gnarly. I see the elder has a slight btu edge in every chart, but I'd probably take silver maple over elder of I had to choose. Mostly for stacking reasons. Fwiw, box elder is part of the maple family.
I very much prefer the smoke from maple over BE when sitting around the campfire. I know a guy who makes BE syrup in the spring. He says you have to mix it with maple because it has a bitter finish but does have a unique taste when you combine them. He would often throw in a third sap too, but I don't recall which species. I know birch syrup is excellent as well.
Burned some BE last night out at the fire pit. Real nice blue flame once you get all of that stinky bark burned off.
