I would say not really. When spruce splits, the trunk surrounding the knot gives way,but you are left with a nice hard branch that sorta dowels the pieces together. (Those little branches burn hot). I would still split full length, unless you benefit from loading perpendicular. Once dry, that spruce is still heat. Like Dennis said. Just limb the tree proper. Spruce is nice pit wood though. It is bright, burns fast, and pops. Burn down to coals before cooking like any other wood. Winter is long, and brutal for you and I. Can't get enough wood!
Hmmm , about spruce ... Knotty wood it is lol I burn a fair amount of it , seasons real fast , burns hot , leaves very little ash
If you are going to "drop" any softwood, becareful about it "snapping" at about 1/2 way thru the cut. Where hardwoods cut almost 99/100 before snapping, if they do at all, softwoods can snap anywhere after 1/2 of the diameter has been cut, so beware, many have injured themselves by being unaware of this characteristic danger of softwood. So ease up on the cut after 1/2 way thru, till you learn the snap point of the softwood you are cutting. I would caution anybody putting any "needle" rather than "leaf" tree, until you know the characteristics of the wood you are cutting. Always be safe, danger comes to quick, to counting on being able to react. Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
Spruce is a fast drying good softwood to harvest. I would pick lodgepole pine, doug fir and larch (in that order) over spruce but if you called me today and said lets go drop a few spruce trees Id be in. Spruce makes up about 20% of my current stacks. Ignore those who say you should leave it unless you are space challenged. Edit. Even at -30c spruce will keep you very warm as long as you are around to feed the beast a bit more often.
Just burned a full load of spruce in my AS last night. Up to that point, We had only burned lodgepole. The spruce and lodgepole were both equally dry. Around 5% average. The spruce burned just about as long as lodgepole. The engelmann spruce did leave less ash than the lodgepole. The ash was more white, and less.
Ha-ha, that's what the Blue spruce was like here. Grew in the middle of the front yard unimpeded by any other trees. A bazillion branches. Splitting it was no joy. Not just the knots but it was rather rubbery-ish. I would pass on another one even though it does burn a tiny bit better than pine. (At least I would another specimen tree from a landscape planting )
Just always remember that cold and the UP go hand in hand. Yes, it does occasionally get hot too but not often. It is very common even when other places are burning up with heat to have the temperatures in the 50's up there.
Tight growth rings are what counts , I've cut some black spruce 6" at the butt , over 100 yr old , dense and heavy , red maple 6" at the butt , 12 yr old , light and ashy .
Froze my arse off up there a few years ago in late July I should have researched a tad more. I was on a ride around the perimeter on a motorcycle. Cant wait to get back up there!
Up here in central Alberta, my normal wood is spruce and pine. This is the first year Ive had a splitter and I made out fine before this. If there's a birch (the best wood you can get here) I'll obviously take that first but there aren't that many around. I've kept the house plenty warm with spruce in -30c temperatures with no problem at all.
That sounds like a good ride for sure! I remember taking the circle route around Lake Superior. That was in a car but I was imaging what it would be like on a bike. It would be an amazing ride. And one thing about Superior is that you have to be prepared for chilly weather all summer long. In winter, prepare for some really deep snow.
Just got home today and the weather up there was rather cool with lows in the 40's and highs in the upper 60's to low 70's. Nice change from what we had been having here and it it warm and humid here at home again. Pics and stories coming in a seperate thread later.
Yep spruce is a pain in the neck. I have some here that I started to split and decided heck with that and noodled it all.
OMG! I know now why in Russia, Rocky Balboa while training to fight Ivan Drakko was chopping and splitting spruce to get in fighting shape. I hand split about a 1/2 cord on Saturday and have decided that what is left to go pick up is getting noodled to a semi manageable size and stacked for the camping fire pit wood collection! Give me ash any day!
Speaking of spruce I have 44 that line both sides of my property that got the blight that is popular up here in PA. The beetles moved in and are killing them. I'm going to cut down half in the spring and the other half in late summer next year. Oh the branches! I'll process the wood but man I'm dreading the branches and mess. The beetles are even getting the white pine around here. The pine I processed this year from a neighboring property is infested. All you can hear is c runching coming from those stacks and wood shavings all through them. When I pull some bark off I've found some gnarly big white grubs with big fangs boring into the splits and tiny little brown and black beetles that look like mini coffee beans boring tunnels between the bark and wood.
I wish I wood have thought to take a pic. When we got done loading my trailer we piled about half the branches and lit them up. When the bark burned through and the sap got to cooking off, OMG did it burn black for about 5 minutes. Neighbor a mile away came down worried that the house was burning it was such black smoke he could see rising.
