Best woods for fire???

Mostly oak. I season it for at least two years. If I have another wood (like maple) I'll generally put it on after I have oak embers. I like birch a lot - but don't get to cut much down.

Best,

Steve
 
Orange and Grapefruit wood were the firewood of choice in my home in central Florida. My dad would season the wood for a couple of years and then break up the logs with the back of an axe. This well seasoned citrus firewood makes a long lasting bed of coals that was good for heating a room and excellent for cooking.

Fat pine was best for starting the fire.
 
A buddy of mine gave me a pile of Apple last year before I went camping so I took some with me. That stuff was the best I've ever used. It burned very hot, loooong, and didn't give off a ton of flame. It worked great for cooking over. I don't recall ever seeing logs burn as long as that Apple wood did.
 
Hedge (osage orange, maclura pomifera, etc.) burns the hotest of any wood I've used. My buddy down the street heats his house with a woodstove (has for 30+ years). He uses hardwoods, mostly oak... and a hydraulic splitter (a gift from his son about 5 yrs back).

We're at the edge of some oak/hickory forest patches with quite a few walnut, ash, maples, & sycamores around. I tend to burn what ever I can get for cheap (or free).
 
I don't think it really matters. If you are heating with wood (we do), you burn what is most common and easily available in quantity where you live. None of the highest rated firewoods are native to the Northwest so we make do with red alder and big leaf maple plus small amounts of doug fir, Oregon ash and wild cherry. When I was at Wash State U. I had a buddy that heated his rental house with willow cut along local creeks. Other than cottonwood, that was about the only possible firewood available.

If I was camping, it would be whatever was easy and dry. Normally don't need huge quantities of wood for a camp fire anyway.
 
Sidehill Gouger said:
I don't think it really matters. If you are heating with wood (we do), you burn what is most common and easily available in quantity where you live. None of the highest rated firewoods are native to the Northwest so we make do with red alder and big leaf maple plus small amounts of doug fir, Oregon ash and wild cherry. When I was at Wash State U. I had a buddy that heated his rental house with willow cut along local creeks. Other than cottonwood, that was about the only possible firewood available.

If I was camping, it would be whatever was easy and dry. Normally don't need huge quantities of wood for a camp fire anyway.
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Thanks. This is all likely true. I guess I was just thinking about how little I actually think about the woods I burn. It would seem like if you had a choice in the wood types to utilize then discrimination based on know how might help you later on.

Willow is supposed to be good for bow drill, so I'm guessing its soft and similar to cottonwood for burning.

Maybe, I should ask of this thread the opposite, since I had so much good feedback.

WHAT IS THE WORST TYPE OF WOOD TO BURN. Aside from poison ivy, is there stuff out there that does nothing but zap your energy trying to process it and yield little good flame?
 
Worst? I wouldn't say its the worst, but pine doesn't do much except get an okay bed of coals for me. I use it in the woodstove, kindling. I didn't care much for willow, in the woodstove or the firepit. My favorite is oak.
 
I dig Oak the most. Recently I burned some wood in my fire pit out back from what I call the ivy tree. It's ivy that has grown to the thickness of a small tree. Beats the heck out of me what that's about, but the stanky smoke smell it left on my clothes had an unpleasant odor to it.
 
You always feel good, when you look at your firepit in the morning, and there is nothing left but white ash. Maybe a little bit of a heater coal still lit, but not a big stubborn stump that refused to burn. Gotta hate them stumpy stumps that stick around the fire pit. When you come to your campsite, there always is a stumpy stump stuck in there that somebody tried to burn and failed. Yet, you still try to burn that sucker don't you. You stack a pile of good wood around it. That stumpy stump rewards you by smoking prolifically. You go to sleep, and wake up to a nice pile of white ash.....Oh yah and a miserably Stumpy Stump - even more miserable than it was the night before :D
 
I'm finishing up a barrel stove (vertical, not horizontal) this weekend as "power out" heat for the winter, so I've been doing a bit of reading on the subject. I usually go with kerosene as a backup but figured I'd give wood a go (While still keeping my kero supply handy.).

After reading so much conflicting info, I've relegated myself to my campfire solution of just collecting dry deadfall of whatever's fell over or been struck down in my woods. Mostly thigh sized and smaller mixture of hard and soft. I may drag the chainsaw out and chunk up a couple car width fallen oaks, but ehh...

Anyway, I'm not qualified to speak on stoves, but I'll try to answer your questions from just woodsbumming knowledge.


If you are buying a cord of wood, how do you establish it has been dried properly?
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Dry wood is a lot lighter obviously. Cracks are a good indication. Banging logs together will make a different sound. Loose or no bark. Etc. Couple of hatchet whacks will make sure of soundness.

Do you prefer different types of wood for kindling versus burning?
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Cedar makes great kindling. Other evergreens as well. For the most part, softwoods will make short hot fires, and hardwoods will make longer cooler fires. Airflow and moisture can slow or advance this of course.

What are the hottest burning woods, the longest burning woods, the least smokey, least crackly?
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Depends on area. Cedar is pretty hot here. Longest would be a dense hardwood like oak. Smoke is related to combustion and will vary in any wood with moisture and air. Ash is fairly consistent and a good all around wood.

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut's only good they say,
If for logs 'tis laid away.
Make a fire of Elder tree,
Death within your house will be;
But ash new or ash old,
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold.

Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last,
it is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E'en the very flames are cold
But Ash green or Ash brown
Is fit for a queen with golden crown.

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke,
Apple wood will scent your room
Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom
Oaken logs, if dry and old
keep away the winter's cold
But Ash wet or Ash dry
a king shall warm his slippers by.
 
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The hottest woods Ive burned have been Black Locust, and Oak. Black locust coals will last forever. Last year a buddy and I split some 300 year old Oak that burns better and longer than anything I have seen. The norm around here for wood stoves is pitch to start it madrone or pine to coal it and oak to keep it going.

Its fun to burn different types of wood and see the differences in them. Looking at Pitdogs list it seems we have the hottest woods around here. Euc, Madrone, and Oak.
 
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