Welcome to FHC neighbor! zoodayz Larch is my favorite wood. When I drop a larch its always standing dead. Once its down and delimbed I will unzip it as the saying goes. Run your saw down the trunk of the tree so that it breaks through the bark a smidge. Be careful that you don't trip! Once this is done you can commence bucking. I find half of the trees I do this to will have the bark detach on its own once Ive bucked up the tree and some of it has to be manually removed but its normally pretty easy. Doing this in the bush means that you dont have to bring home a mess. I would also suggest that without the bark it will dry quicker. I love finding it as buck skin larch which means standing without any bark at all. Some larch that I have in my stacks has some bark on it still as I don't go to far out of my way to remove it if its being difficult. Larch as you know can have quite thick and gnarly bark and I prefer to fill my stove with wood not splits with inches of bark but that's just personal preference. If I can find a picture of a zipped larch I will post it.
I don't put any effort into debarking anything, including larch. Bark burns. If it is loose I will knock it off to reduce mess, otherwise it stays.
The first picture is a larch with thick bark that I prefer to de bark. Some larch trees have thin bark that I will just leave on the rounds.
Thanks for the post's. I see. I do agree it is a messy wood. So it sounds like a preference thing. One last question any reason why people sell it mixed in with other wood ie: fir? and not a whole cord of it Is it because it burns so hot? Thank you
As my screen name implies i love larch firewood. Larch can vary greatly from tree to tree, and different regions of the country. I wont cut larch unless it is dead enough for the bark to be falling off. Green larch takes a long time to dry out, like i would say 3 times longer than pine.
Very true. I remember scooting over the boarder this last summer to do some camping with the family in Montana. We stopped at this place to buy firewood. It was a good price for the amount of pine you get. I was chatting with the fellow and noticed his monster log splitter and asked if I could check it out. We started to chat about wood. He didnt pay attention to wood btus from what I could gather and said I was one of the few people who he'd spoken to that could id the trees. He mentioned to me that he wouldn't bring in larch because for some reason it took forever to dry. I explained to him thats because it was a denser, higher btu wood.
Not sure why people would mix it. Maybe because they can get more money for a cord by mixing it with a lower btu wood like fir? Also larch is often harder to come by compared to fir and pine. Everybody and their dog wants to burn it. I dont buy wood so Im just guessing. Around here I see people selling cords of larch and man is it expensive! Do you process larch yourself or buy it?
Hey there zoodayz and welcome! Sounds like you've got good answers to your opening/intro post, but like Backwoods Savage, no Larch for me either. Got some Oak varieties, some Black Locust, some Osage Orange, among others, though. But really it's all Hang out around the fire and share what ya know! And ask what you don't......besides this thread that is
I get it myself here were I'm at in Montana there is ALOT of Larch, Pine and Hemlock. I am having a very hard time believe it or not finding Fir. In fact I have noticed that when they log here it appears they leave behind one tree standing and that's Larch.
Thats to bad, I love fir as well. We dont have as much dead fir around here as I would like otherwise it would probably come close to replacing my lodgepole pine in my stacks. Ive been out scouting and have found a few dead ones that Ill be cutting into once the snow lets up.
Hardly any dead lodgepoles here where i live, and the forest is only maybe 10% lodgepole anyway. Sucks cause its better wood than ponderosa imho. One of the things i love about larch is the ones that get blown over by windstorms take alot longer to rot or decay than any other softwood species.
We dont have any ponderosa here but can find lots when we drop out of the valley to the south about an hour but like you say its a lower btu wood so no reason for me to bother really. I find most of my larch die because the tops break off I presume from wind storms. Many are around 17%-22% mc.
Don't forget that there is another name for a Larch tree, around here we call it Tamarack. same thing.
From what I understand the ones out your way are a bit smaller. Ive never been out your way to observe whether this is true or not. What do you find? The ones in my picture are by no means very big.
Welcome zoodayz, can't offer any more than a warm weclome. Glad you found us. I'ts a great place to hang out
