Still Learning About Wood

It looks like we have enough wood under the eaves to get well into March.  All the wood I process now is going into the barn. In years past we have depended heavily on black oak snags, which are pretty well seasoned out when we cut them.  We have learned over the years that wet black oak will dry well enough in about a month to make a good fire. Black oak is one of the red oak group, and the spring wood is made up of large pores, which allow water to evaporate out quickly.  Trees in the white oak group close off their pores with tyloses (This is why white oak barrels can hold fluid.).White oak and post oak need a couple years in the barn before they make a good fire. 

This year we have a bunch of logs on the ground from the pipeline clearance work done last spring.  Many of those logs are cherrybark oak; one of the red oaks.  They do not dry quickly as I thought they would, even though they have the open pores in their spring wood.  I think it is a function of the width of the growth rings.  Black oak will have 8 to 12 rings per inch, but the cherrybarks are much faster growing, and they will have growth rings 3/4" wide, and sometimes wider.  All that dense wood between the spring pores hangs onto its moisture, and after a month of drying split wood under the eaves the cherrybark is just beginning to show seasoning cracks.  That will speed it up a bit, but it will be at least another month before I want to try burning any of it.  Split a piece and check it, and it is damp. 

Hickory is a dream.  I have been blocking those out, bringing them to the house and splitting them.  The big chunks have seasoning cracks in them by the time I haul the chunks to the house, just an hour after they have been cut.  Split them and stack them, and in a week they have lots of cracks, and in a couple of weeks they burn with a hot blue flame.  We are cutting wood a couple days every week, because that hickory needs to be put in the barn.  Leave it out and hickory is a smorgasbord for the bugs, and it turns to dust.  White oak logs will be the next priority to shelter, because it takes a long time to dry.  The logs from the red oak group will be the last ones we put away.  They have more insect and rot resistance than hickory, and they will dry fast once we put them under cover.