I got some red oak going right now and some pine tops about a month old. This pine doesn’t burn worth a crap, but I’m sure there’s worse….any stories?
Worst firewood you’ve ever burnt?
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If you cut the pine about a month ago and it was green--that's you're problem. It's not seasoned.
cottonwood
Whitepine has to be the worse. I have put huge brush piles out trying to burn that junk. On the other hand, once dry and the bark falls off, it will make a fire as hot as heck.
Cottonwood, Tulip Tree, then Sycamore.
Green hemlock, (pretty much any green softwood for that matter)
Seriously! Cut some basswood and try to burn it, then report back. It is the antiwood. Even dead dry it has a hard time burning. The only thing it is good for is duck decoys and trim for a house and that is marginal! Cj
Sycamore. Sure, it burns, but it gives off very little heat, and fills the stove with ash - I swear that junk leaves more ash than you had wood to begin with! Never again.
Never had any problems with pine or tulip. Never burned cottonwood, hemlock or basswood.
But wood must be dry to burn well. Most every wood burns poorly when it's green.
Never had any problems with pine or tulip. Never burned cottonwood, hemlock or basswood.
But wood must be dry to burn well. Most every wood burns poorly when it's green.
When I was new to burning wood I had some year one year seasoned white oak and sugar maple. I thought I was in wood heaven until I tried to burn it. It was hard to start, moisture was sizzling out when burning and I really struggled. I had a terrible problem with creosote also. Little did I know that dense woods like oak and maple need 2 preferably 3 years of seasoning in my area.
woodsplitta
ArboristSite Member
Willow because it stinks when burned and low heat output. I found black walnut to be super ashy.
InTheNorth
Joshua 1:9
We have a tree up here the locals call "bam" or "bambagilia"....I believe it is a hybrid poplar or maybe jack's hybrid. They grow about a 100 feet tall and then the top almost always falls off usually on someone's cabin or something. They are very wet inside when cut and never seem to dry out but rot instead. If you burn them they burn faster than cedar making little heat and leave a weeks worth of ashes with just one stove full. Cut down probably more than a hundred on my property over the years and still have huge piles that I should probably burn this year. I always believe God doesn't make anything without a purpose but failed to ever found any from this tree. This year my dislike for them turned to love when I realized after they die and fall down and rot for several years an incredible tasting mushroom named herricuum ramosum grows on them and one can easily gather 10 plus pounds in an hour or so.
johnsayen
ArboristSite Operative
Cedar 
I once made some Swedish candles out of willow. If you bumped it after it burned awhile, it sent up so much ash it looked like it was snowing.
Cody
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I was going to say Linden, why I put in the work/time to split some to sell as campfire wood I don't know. I suppose because it beat just letting it lay around. I also mistook a boxelder for a hackberry last fall, bark sure looked like hackberry and there was very, very little red in it. Split probably 20 cu ft of it so we'll see. Wish I had more hard maple to burn.
Cedar
My Wife LOVES Cedar.
I don’t consider it a long burn wood, and sure don’t go out of my way to fill wood sheds with it.
But Cedar has some redeeming qualities, it has got to be about the Best kindling wood that I have ever used, it Smells GOOD, and Seasons Fast.
We had 3 large Cedars taken down from our yard, I kept some for milling projects, and about 1.25 cords became firewood. Better to make BTU’s than Bills out of it, paying to have it hauled away.
We burned it while watching TV, and were around to load the stove more often, burned it rather than the Better wood, when it was convenient to. It burns a bit quickly, but puts out decent heat, and burs very clean, with very little ash.
We don’t see much hardwood around here, my Wife’s cousin gave us some well seasoned Black Walnut, I have no idea where it came from, probably a yard tree, I will take Cedar over that garbage any day. It didn’t seem to put out any more heat than Cedar, didn’t seem to burn much longer, but the ASH
, OMG, that stuff seemed to produce a greater volume of Ash, than the volume of wood loaded into the stove, I would take cottonwood over Black Walnut in the future, and that is sayin something, I’m no fan of SpongewoodDoug
Cottonwood and palm tree wood.
I have never burned Palm, no Idea what it is like
Cottonwood, AKA Spongewood, can hold absolutely amazing amounts of water, but it can also dissipate water faster than any other wood that I have seen
I have burned a fair amount of Spongewood over the years, but I don’t consider it a serious heating wood. Growing up at our boathouse on the Columbia River, there was an abundance of Spongewood available. When there wasn’t better wood available, we would burn cottonwood in the fireplace, as much for Ambiance as Heat.
The cottonwood would often be on the higher parts of the Islands, and during the winter, the river undercut the banks, and the weed Spongewood, would fall, with their rootball up the embankment and the tops laying on the beach, that would leave the majority of the trunk suspended off the ground, by late summer, the saving Grace of cottonwood, it’s ability to dissipate moisture would be evident, and we would cut the dry suspended sections out, and using the boat tow them to where we were camping on McGuire Island. The short time in the water wasn’t enough to make a difference. We would target logs mostly 6-10” diameter, and cut them about 8’ long, which would be light enough to handle manually, we would then Teepee them for a Bonfire
We were camped right under the prevailing flight path for PDX, and joked that the Air Traffic Controllers would use “O’Grady’s Beachfire” as a reference point for Pilots landing a couple miles down river from us
Doug
