Trees are funny. I have seen barely a handful of red oaks around me (including a big three stemmed monster at the back corner of my lot) but if you travel down hill a couple thousand feet (fifty miles east as the crow flies) to the Connecticut River valley, they're everywhere. I don't know if this is a function of climate, as the river valley's sheltered landscape and warmer temperatures make it feel an awful lot different there than here, or if it's due to the way the land has been used. Around here the big business was dairy and sheep farming and mills, and much of the land was bare as recently as a hundred years ago, whereas the Springfield area was settled much earlier and urbanized well over a hundred years ago, allowing the forests to come back in unpopulated areas much earlier than ours here in western Massachusetts' hilltown areas. Thankfully, the sugar maple population is high and ripe for the picking, so we do have some rocket fuel available as needed.
Are we all talking about the same wood? It splits so easy you can split logs with a kindling hatchet.
This they do. It's pretty much the failure mode for this tree. I have one in yard that has a trunk that is easily three feet in diameter... Although it's not suffering from the crotch problem like the other two are, I still worry what is inside.
Yes, that is an issue around here, the ants. I like burning the lower btu wood like silver maple and box elder. It burns hot just not that long. It also dries quickly. I'll go for better wood if it's in the same area, but I'll take box elder. If it's close free and easy to get, yeah, I'll take about any wood and put it in the stacks.
It's not very straight grained, especially at knots or branches. Then it just chunks off. It's typically not great stacking wood due to this.
I got a trailer full of rounds that were all 8-16 diameter and nearly everyone was straight or slightly curved. I don't recall the knots being anything that tough. Certainly not like Elm... Now that is difficult wood to split.
