Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What Kind of wood ?

Can anyone identify this wood?

It is stringy and wet as all get out. When the splitter wedge pushes on it, the water just pours out.

wood 003 by weimsnks, on Flickr

wood 002 by weimsnks, on Flickr

Looks like cottonwood to me

yup

Cottonwood if it is really light weight the busted piece looks like chestnut oak is it heavy or light.

Could be sweet gum. I'm not all that familiar with cottonwood but sweet gum has no grain and when you split it it just "tears" apart. Once dry it burns well and leaves no ash to speak of but doesn't have a lot of BTU's per cord.

Bark looks heavier than sweetgum. I'd guess cottonwood.

Cottonwood/Poplar.


R.

Since it is so wet and splits like crap, what if I stack it on pallets and let it dry for a year before splitting ?

It was free and cut up so I am going to use it even though it isn't optimum.

That was my guess too, Mr.Coleman.

Sweetgum is not found in Kansas.

It's Cottonwood.

it doesnt split nice like harder woods, after while its not quite so stringy but that doesnt totally go away....its a light weight wood that doesnt produce much BTU's per chord but we burn a hell of alot of it up here cause the choice is cottonwood or ponderosa pine....the cottonwood burns cleaner been asked before why we dont burn something better and the answer simply is we dont have anything denser in anything remotely close to a good supply....every once in awhile someone has a maple or something in their yard that needs to come down and you feel like you hit the jackpot but other than that its cottonwood thats burned around here...

was a hell of an experience at AussieLad's house splitting and burning eucalyptus which is very dense and near impossible to split with an ax when wet, entertaining as hell trying it after a 2 year dry time

What about Mulberry?
If its recently been felled, it could have that much water in it..

I wouldn't know, but the Kansas Forest Service says they have Sweet and Black Gum trees.

Cotton wood to me.

Lots of Gum in Kansas.

Looks like Cottonwood to me. The sweet gun bark is not usually as deep as the cottonwood.

Thanks, I've never tried to split a Cottonwood, but we give a piece of Gum to somebody when we want to have a laugh at their expense. It looks like Oak, but an axe will stick in it like that sword in the stone.

Then I guess Wikipedia is wrong.

The bottom one kind of looks like cottonwood, but I've never seen cottonwood as dark as the top one. Most wood splits better once it is dried because the ends and outside dry and shrink more rapidly than the inside and middle, causing cracks. If it splits OK wet, which it often will with hydraulic assistance, sometimes I'll split it anyway, since it will dry out a lot more quickly than if you wait.

My parents burn more cottonwood and box elder than anything else. There is some green ash out there as well, but the others are easier to get.

It sure looks like locust to me. Heavy bark, yellow/greenish wood. Locust is my bet!

Bob