Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Firewood Thread

i think you're right...haven't had a fireplace in a while, but think i remember it pops/cracks a lot, when not in the room, put the screen across!

I try and limit the pine as the pitch hunks things up.
White birch is ok but we get a lot of kills and they stay wet a long time. Hard on the saw...
Getting better at finding decent maple. A lot easier to carry sections of green maple than wet birch....

Major wood envy here!


I scrounge ash here and there all winter for my parent's Monarch out in the porch.

Enjoying all you guys pics and stories.


Sycamore, That wood is a couple feet or so under the eave, but it catches a little snow. It's not been enough to be trouble. The 'wall' of wood is facing SW, and catches any winter sunshine, so it stays dry enough.

Nicest places yet !

Very nice indeed.

A couple of late winter pics. I'll blow some of the snow away from the wood stack, as it is on the leeward side of the house and does drift there, but also catching some winter sunlight to help melt/dry.

I posted this on an earlier thread. 5.8 cords of dried madrone. I have another 2 cords outside on pallets and covered for the winter. We start fires with doug fir and then go to the madrone. We burn about 4 cords per year. It's been abnormally dry for this time of year, so I've been able to use the bulldozer to accomplish some additional fire proofing around our place and in that process start bringing in more fire wood logs. I like to cut the trees down in the winter time as they don't carry as much moisture compared to when they are actively growing.

Serious envy here.

But also a great feeling know this place harbors such people.

Nice stuff all you folks. I'm hoping my regular firewood guy can bring me some of his stuff that's been down for a few years already. As it was getting close to burnin' time a few weeks back, I got a cord from another fella. Not as well seasoned as I like it. I have it cross stacked sitting in the sun all day drying out some more.

logger, I used to love to get madrone leftovers on the landings at work, that and tanoak or bigleaf maple were the preferred woods down on the NorCal coast.

I got sick enough of tarps that I built a wood shed a few years ago. Damn nice to have bone dry wood all winter and not be digging it out from under a frozen tarp.

I feel the same.

...and thanks for the compliments on my little piece of heaven fellers.

Here I am last April sawing up a locust. This is the best firewood. Twenty years ago a blight swept through the NC mountains and killed them all. This one had been dead standing for years and it keeled over last winter. My brother and I each got a Nissan pickup load of this locust.

Splitting locust with the ten pound hammer and the aluminum splitting wedge.




This is my second back up wood pile. The main wood pile is my wood shed. My backup pile is 14 x 5 feet right below the kitchen window. This is my second back up wood pile, two piles side-by-side under the carport. These two piles are 16 feet long and 4 feet high. This pile is locust, white oak, and ash. If the wood has any rot in it, it does not go into my wood pile.



This my #3 back up Wood Pile. All my wood piles were full, but in June a giant black walnut keeled over down in the meadow. What makes this good firewood?
#1 Close by. Only had to drive one mile to get to the tree.
#2 Close to the road. You could drive the pickup right up to the tree. If the wood has to be carried 50 feet up a steep hill, Forget It.
#3 Decent firewood. Black walnut is not as good as oak or locust but it is pretty good. About 21 million BTU in a cord.

All three of my big firewood piles were full but I couldn't stand it. I figured someone else would get down there and cut up the big black walnut. I got my big ladder out and laid it in the yard, and I brought up 2 1/2 Nissan truck loads of the black walnut. Looks like chocolate to me I want to go out and take a bite of it.
This pile is 14 feet long and 4 feet high.

"I love the smell of two stroke smoke in the morning." I love to cut up firewood, it brings out the Neanderthal in me. I split it by hand with the Monster Maul.


I built this addition onto my log house five years ago. This is a great room for a wood stove.




Daisy likes the wood stove.

I’m one of the few with a wood stove here in Texas. We have a big fancy one like the one I had when we were growing up. Burn live oak and post oak primarily. We do actually use it to heat the house though, even though our winters tend to be mild. The house is all electric, so it definitely helps keep those costs down. I’m an arborist so wood is never hard to come by and it’s always free for me.

What is the story with burning pine/softwoods? I’ve heard people express concerns of increased likelihood of an overfire or chimney fire. I guess y’all just have to be sure to keep your chimney clean?

It's not peculiar. You don't have adequate return air.
Your fan is pulling air out of the room the furnace is in faster then
air can get in. Creating negative pressure. The chimney then becomes your sir supply.

I had that problem when I installed our furnace.
Also, we have a powerful range vent. Running it on high, we can pull smoke with it.
Opening a window a crack eliminate the smoke and allows the vent to work better.

Code now requires a fresh air pipe from outside to supply combustion air to
any fuel burning heater. That helps to eliminate this as their shouldn't be an air path
between the furnace and your house.

The easy answer is to picture air as a fluid, like water.
It can't leave an area unless it can be replaced by more air.

Simon,
Locust is the most desired wood here.
Some of the sellers of wood keep it separate and charge a premium.
Funny, they don't discount loads with ash or poplar?

I don't know wood from everywhere, but I do know ours,
and I'm willing to bet that you won't find much that's any harder than
dried locust. I have often thought I had rocked my saw, it just wasn't
cutting good. Then try something else, and it's fine. That dry Locust is just
so damn hard that the teeth don't bite it like they do other stuff. Even Oak.

If you Google it, you can find charts of BTU output of various wood.
Locust is near the top.

I am having some OCD envy.

Yes, dillonbuck, locust is about 29 million BTU per cord, nothing better here on the East Coast.
I know what you mean, that dry locust is very hard to cut. Will dull your chain real quick. I got about one more Nissan truck load on my property, dead standing, and after that the locust will be all gone.

I sweep mine twice a year, sometimes three times for the year.

Built a new woodshed this summer. The first one was scabbed together with leftover pallets and building supplies when we built the house and has a bad lean to it and is undersized at 3.5 cords. The new one should hold ~12 cords which should get us ~3 winters. By the time I had it finished enough to start loading it up fire season was upon us and I didn’t fill it completely.

As with most of my projects it went overboard and over budget with the addition of the kid’s play house up top. Anyone have a good siding idea for the playhouse?