Comments on: 10/09/10 – Careful Around Woodpiles

By: charles

charles — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 03:49:48 +0000

All this talk of woodpiles takes me back to my childhood wood moving experiences. The San Francisco Bay Area winters are mild enough that a single fireplace will warm a house nicely and is only needed in the coldest months, so our family’s firewood was mostly construction scraps and wood from country cousins. However, my father insisted on either moving and/or re-organizing the damned woodpile every few months. Turned out it was his way of giving my mom a break from the kids and to burn off some of our over-abundant energy. Thus the beloved family story of a visitor asking me as I child working on the woodpile ‘how long have you been moving this woodpile’ and my darkly cynical reply of ‘my entire life’. Still I preferred woodpile moving to fishing the dead squirrels out of our above ground swimming pool. There was a protocol in place of triple bagging the dead rodent upon immediate removal from the water, to be followed by an immediate showering at high temperatures, immediate washing of clothes worn in heavy bleach, and the over chlorinating the pool for three days before swimming was allowed again. This is how I learned about the endemic case of Black Death in squirrels and ground squirrels in California. Ah memories.

By: War Pig

War Pig — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 07:43:27 +0000

As well as sassafras, you have to be careful with other woods. Satinwood, although rare, is toxic when burned. Fortunately neither species is native to America, but you can get some by accident from Jamaican shipments, or if you burn ruined Jamaican wood furniture. It’s used often as a veneer as it polishes to a near-mirror sheen,but usually the veneer is very thin and there isn’t much mass of wood in it. Satinwood burning in an open fireplace can put humans into a deep sleep and has been known to kill small animals such as canaries, parakeets and mice.

Cedar is not toxic to burn, but the sawdust when sanding is very irritating so wear a mask when sanding. Many fancy places use cedar planks to cook salmon and other delicate dishes, by placing them on the plank and grilling them. Funny, but we did that in the late 50’s and early 60’s. We’d also use cedar shavings from furniture making or making cedar closet panels to smoke fish and smoke bland meats, or to add flavor to other meats such as steak. Mom would buy a roast and cut it into thick steaks. We’d marinate it then pat it dry, then salt it and let is sit for about half an hour, pepper it and then grill it over open coals in the fireplace on the swing-out, iron grill. Better steaks were seldom eaten by man. The hickory or other hardwood (I didn’t discover mesquite until I was stationed in Texas) added great flavor. Even oak added a subtle flavor to the meat.

By: Don Ahe

Don Ahe — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 01:29:18 +0000

I went to school for forestry, and just love hearing all the species names mentioned above.. and how plants are used in different ways

By: JP Kalishek

JP Kalishek — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 22:33:35 +0000

For storage we had 5 trees in a square pattern that we used to support a bit over a face cord (the above description is a full cord, if the logs were cut to your preferred burn length a 4′x8′ section of them is a face cord) with the two close together trees acting much like a door, we then filled the “room” with split wood. We did not age ours as long as and burned pine and Poplar (called Pople by the folks back home) only every so often, They will coat the chimney and cause fires, also. But we eventually installed a wood furnace that burned the wood in a very hot bottom chamber, and then in a second chamber burned the gases. That prevented the creosote buildup, and allowed burning green wood. It even made a touch more heat on green hardwoods than aged. It also had inlets for water heating. My uncle’s house was heated by water radiators so he set his identical furnace up for that. He had an advantage as well in that he worked for a veneer company and the waste logs not burned to heat the factory were given to the employees. So he had scads of 3″-16″ inch logs 16″-18″ long perfectly round. Any over 5 inches were split, bigger ones quartered. He and several other relatives had powered wood splitters. We borrowed them but often I split by hand using an axe or a splitting maul. The Oak and Elm were saved for those times we had the splitters, Ash got made into kindling. Ash can be split one handed….by my then 6 year old little sister. Birches, Pines, Cedars, etc could be split nicely by axe, and I only used the too heavy maul for really twisted grained logs and the few times I had to do oak and elm with no motorized splitter.

We’d also keep a bit of Tamarack (and now. . . the Larch!) for quick heat, and getting coals back to a fire. Tamarack burns like gasoline! It also will creosote a chimney in no time, so we limited it’s use before the furnace (we had two other wood stoves before it, and a smaller one in the garage as well) and after we just never used it much but to start things.

Our house furnace was so hot that during the winter, the snow would be melted away from the house by 2-3 feet around the basemented portion.

By: Harena

Harena — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 19:51:00 +0000

Probably shouldn’t mention the time I accidentally set our woodshed on fire ;D

By: Joyce Melton

Joyce Melton — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 09:54:58 +0000

We couldn’t afford wood to burn. We had to burn rocks.

By: War Pig

War Pig — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 07:47:05 +0000

We stashed ours by the cord. For those reading who do not know, a cord of wood is a stack 4 feet wide, by 4 feet tall by 8 feel long. A cord of wood weighs between 3600 and 4500 pounds, depending on species and whether it’s logs, or quartered. An F-350 truck can barely carry a cord of wood without busting the springs, if you drive slowly. And a cord of wood is between 3600 and 4500 pounds when DRY. Wet (green) wood is much heavier.

We always let ours age for at least a year before burning it. We’d roll it into the buck and saw it into 2 foot lengths and then split 2/3 of it into quarters. We used the whole logs to burn overnight.We boys had to use a 2-man buck saw and it kept us from getting coll,d I can tell you, awing up a days worth of wood. Then we’d split it. Early on we had to do it with a maul and sledge,or a sledge and wedge, but later dad bought a splitter, looking forward to when we boys would grow up and be gone.:) We had a good-sized woods behind our place and it was full of ash, hickory, oak, black locust and walnut. We only burned diseased walnut as it was too valuable and was sold to wood turners and woodworkers. We got a great price for black walnut burls. We also had sassafras but you shouldn’t burn sassafras in an open place as the smoke its bad for you, as is the sawdust when sanding it. On the positive side we had lots of sassafras tea and made a small pile of cash making those twisted, two-tone walking sticks from sassafras and selling them at the county fair.

We learned as kids that pine was valuable as a starter. If you have a weak flame a dry pine cone will usually get it going, and that pine resin from old stumps was great, as was the wood of the stumps itself. It was called fatwood back then. A stick of that would light up like a candle, it was so full of resin. We kids would also collect paraffin and soak big splinters in warm, liquid paraffin to infuse them and they made great starters as well.

Did you ever soak a cattail (the plant, for you city folk – not real cat’s tails) in kerosene overnight and use it for a torch? If you dipped it in kerosene it would also help start a fire when the wood was surface-damp from a lot of snow.

Mom used to use pine stump rosin on us kids instead of Bactine sometimes. It was good for chigger bites as well as small scrapes, nicks and cuts. And she used some of it with her shampoo when she had dandruff problems in the winter. She learned all that from her grandma, a Blackfoot Indian.