Stocking up on my smoking/grilling wood

Was bored last night, dreaming about picking up my new charcoal/wood grill and decided to re-process some of my splits into chunk smoking/grilling wood.

So I grabbed some cherry and hickory and headed down my shop, set up some saw horses and vice and went to town. Was actually a pain in the azz but was worth it when I saw the full milk crates full of fist sized chunks...I can just smell the BBQ. I think in the future, when I come across a good smoking/cooking wood, I'll cut 3" or 4" slaps while its in log form and then just split those up. This proved to be rather tedious.

Bonus was sweeping up all the saw chips for their future use of being made into fire starters.

 

I store mine the same way. I rarely need to cut good firewood into chunks, so many uglies and shorties that I have plenty on hand for the handful of smoking/ wood cooking I do.

 

My trees are all super models

Seriously, in the future I'll save the crooked ugly parts of the tree and slab that up for this purpose. Its just that I'm done processing until January and I want to BBQ before then.

 

That's what I do-- got a big stack of short pieces split down very small and sorted by variety. Believe it or not, maple has become my go to wood.

 

Funny you should mention maple. I was over a friend's house and they were doing some chicken on their fire pit. They were burning silver maple because it was all they had - they aren't wood burners. I have to tell you, sitting there that nice summer evening, with chicken glistening on the grill grate above the pit, that maple smoke wafting my way smelt down right divine. Seems like it would be the perfect partner for poultry.

 

Miter saw would have been perfect! Far better than this setup that's for sure! I only have a table saw so that wasn't an option for me.

 

Works great on stuff you don't want to over power, and also quite good on burgers! I usually pull out something "better" for steaks.

 

Nice boxes ready for the cooking season Razo.

I'm a maple fan as well, as that's our most common hard wood. I have some apple trees that I use the branches from after pruning, but no sizeable chunks.

How's that cherry? We have wild bitter cherry trees here, I wonder if it would be any good.

 

I played around with throwing a few cherry chunks on my gas grill while I wait for my charcoal grill to come in. I find the taste appealing, I was cooking chicken cutlets so they weren't on very long but there was definitely just a hint of wood/smoke flavor on them.

 

Or a nice chop saw. Zip!

 

Thanks for the tip about the bark. I'll have to experiment with that.

I originally tried it on the table saw, got squirrely the smaller the split became. If I had a sled it would be a no brainer but at that point it would be a bigger production than I had patience for.

 

Paper cutter? Paper is made out of wood, what could go wrong?

 

I have one of those! Bought it for $5 at a yard sale. I'll try it out tonight.

 

Get a good sized straight grained round and noodle it into slabs about 2-3" thick. Split the slabs into squares with a hatchet/axe/maul. Cut to length with whatever you got. You can make a lot of square chunks in a hurry that way...and you get some noodles too.

 

That's a pretty good idea. A nice big round would stay steady while noodling and the flat slabs would be able to be cut easily on a table saw or chop saw. Really can't believe I don't have a dang chop saw. I have a nice 1950's craftsman table saw and I'm looking at a 1972 craftsman radial arm saw. Might just the radial arm as a chop saw. I prefer the vintage craftsman power tools. Nothing beats American manufacturing quality from that era. Stuff was built to last.

 

I would think the radial would do a good job.