Luigi Z. responds:

On Tue, 08 Feb 2005 09:03:48 +0000, Charlie Self wrote:

Most of the oaks work very well, as do hickory and pecan, beech, birch,
black gum, sweet gum (cross grain), elm (if you like splitting
crossgrained woods), locust, the ashes, maple (preferably hard),
Kentucky coffee tree, hackberry, persimmon, sassafras and walnut and
cherry (trimmings only, please).

Those of us who have nothing but spruce, pine and poplars to burn find it
absolutely disgusting and/or heartbreaking that you would even consider
burning any of those.

Trimmings, limbs, etc. are abundant. I could probably visit a logging site
tomorrow and come away with 2-3 cords of wood for the cutting, all of it 6" in
diameter or less. And sometimes there's not much choice, when the inside of a
huge old oak is rotted away and it comes down in a storm--I heated for nearly
two winters with an oak that had been about 42" in diameter and I have no idea
how tall--80' at least. Between the limbs and the outer 1' of that trunk, I had
myself an immense wood pile. I once cut a standing dead hickory, too. Talk
about hard! I didn't think it would ever fall, and then it was nearly
impossible to split...only about 12" in diameter, with center rot for some
reason.

It isn't necessary to cut lumber woods. Got a friend who just the other day
decided to clear his yard of some bigleaf maple stumps. Cut them to ground
level, started splitting and liked the spalted lumber that was in several of
them. He now has a stash of short (18" or so) narrow spalted maple boards,
along with a few chunks for turning. No waste there.

Charlie Self
"I think we agree, the past is over." George W. Bush