I cut exclusively dead standing Red and White oak on our land. I need to take down a bunch of Maples. My question is how long to season live Maple after split and stacked?
Silver maple will dry fast 6-9 months. Red/soft maple a month or two longer. Norway and sugar maple a year. Full all day sun and wind will speed up these times. Smaller splits as well. Only some of my stacks get decent sun. Envious of FHCers with prime drying conditions.
"wild" grown silver are scarce in my area. Most seen are good sized yard trees. Red maple is the most common in CT. Better than one in four trees in CT are red maples. Its my staple for the bundles I sell. Have you ever referred to the FHC drying chart? Firewood BTU & Drying Chart
I cut a lot of red maple, some from the swamp. A year is usually good to go. Norway is about the same. Course, there's always "good enough", which might be less time. Might even do 6 months with ideal weather and cut short and small for a small stove. Big boy firewood you probably want a year.
Red maple dries a bit sooner than silver. I have cut some as late as April and burned it in late October. Of course that means it was split and stacked right after being cut and that is the difference. But I usually give more time because I cut most of the time in December and very early in January. Then I split in March and stack right away. Also, when stacking I never aim for picture perfect stacks because I purposely stack a bit loose as it is better that way for drying.
With maple, as with many other species, the time of year a live tree is cut also plays into the length of time it takes to dry. Cut it between leaf fall and late winter, if you can, before the sap starts to rise. If you have to cut a leafed-out tree, cutting it off the stump then leaving it whole until the leaves have completely dried out will also pull a lot of moisture out of the wood and shorten firewood drying time. If you have the time and room to do so, of course.
I had similar thoughts when I saw the thread title. For some reason I thought of maple-iced doughnuts.
