Firewood Drying Time as a function of length

[cadyfatcat]

I agree on cherry firewood, lovely wood to burn. Freshly cut its relatively low moisture content, similar to Ash, but it dries even faster.

It's also great for carving and cutting boards. I have some cherry spatulas and cutting boards I made ~ 5 years back and use/abuse on a daily basis, still function great and clean up nice. They'll often be soaking in a pot/pan for hours but that doesn't bother them.

 

[Caw]

Cherry is my favorite wood overall. It's flexible and good at all of it: can burn it, smoke food with it, and it makes beautiful furniture. I love the beautiful deep color. It's also a wonderful yard tree.

 

[peakbagger]

Cherries are pretty rare up in Northern NH. It moves in fast after a cut or a disturbance in the woods but the other trees like Maples and Beech outcompete it. The larger ones I do find are very slow growing but its rare to see one much bigger than 12" DBH. There are some cherry specific bark diseases that can disfigure the trees unless they are widely separated. They also have a rough time with ice storms and I see many with significant crown loss that looks like ice damage. One thing unusual about them is even though they are on the ground and the bark and outer wood looks to be completely rotted, the core will remain great firewood for years once its put under cover to dry the outer layer of rotted stuff. Once under cover it sorts of petrifies and the rotted surface stuff seems to disappear with handling. It all goes in my wood boiler which is run during the evening so I rarely get the smell of it.

I have seen some monstrous cherry yard trees in older homes down near the Maine coast. On very rare occasions they can develop "figure" in the wood grain. I think its up for debate why it happens but I have seen pieces of furniture with tiger, birds eye and curly grained cherry and it can be spectacular but a major PITA to work with as grain tear out is major problem. Down in the Smokies on the Appalachian Trail there is a place called Curly Cherry Gap that it loaded with big cherries that all have signs of figured grain, if it wasnt in a National Park way out the woods I would expect they would have disappeared long ago.

 

[Caw]

Cherries are pretty rare up in Northern NH. It moves in fast after a cut or a disturbance in the woods but the other trees like Maples and Beech outcompete it. The larger ones I do find are very slow growing but its rare to see one much bigger than 12" DBH. There are some cherry specific bark diseases that can disfigure the trees unless they are widely separated. They also have a rough time with ice storms and I see many with significant crown loss that looks like ice damage. One thing unusual about them is even though they are on the ground and the bark and outer wood looks to be completely rotted, the core will remain great firewood for years once its put under cover to dry the outer layer of rotted stuff. Once under cover it sorts of petrifies and the rotted surface stuff seems to disappear with handling. It all goes in my wood boiler which is run during the evening so I rarely get the smell of it.

I have seen some monstrous cherry yard trees in older homes down near the Maine coast. On very rare occasions they can develop "figure" in the wood grain. I think its up for debate why it happens but I have seen pieces of furniture with tiger, birds eye and curly grained cherry and it can be spectacular but a major PITA to work with as grain tear out is major problem. Down in the Smokies on the Appalachian Trail there is a place called Curly Cherry Gap that it loaded with big cherries that all have signs of figured grain, if it wasnt in a National Park way out the woods I would expect they would have disappeared long ago.

Around here most of the cherry I see are yard trees as well. Almost all the logs I get are from local yard or around property exterior tree jobs so I get good sized ones here or there. The weird grain is surely from people messing with them or ice damage. I have one medium and one small one in my yard now I'm hoping to keep going. They should outlast me with proper care.

I actually have some cool trees on my 1 acre. A really nice big elm up front with a tire swing I added, two cherry, two crab apple, one butternut, and the rest are the standard red maple/red oak/black birch/pine local trees.

 

[bigealta]

Around here most of the cherry I see are yard trees as well. Almost all the logs I get are from local yard or around property exterior tree jobs so I get good sized ones here or there. The weird grain is surely from people messing with them or ice damage. I have one medium and one small one in my yard now I'm hoping to keep going. They should outlast me with proper care.

I actually have some cool trees on my 1 acre. A really nice big elm up front with a tire swing I added, two cherry, two crab apple, one butternut, and the rest are the standard red maple/red oak/black birch/pine local trees.

You can graft on edible apple varieties on the crab apple trees. I've done it starting about 3 years ago and got my 1st 2 real apples this year.
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[cadyfatcat]

Cherries are pretty rare up in Northern NH. It moves in fast after a cut or a disturbance in the woods but the other trees like Maples and Beech outcompete it. The larger ones I do find are very slow growing but its rare to see one much bigger than 12" DBH. There are some cherry specific bark diseases that can disfigure the trees unless they are widely separated. They also have a rough time with ice storms and I see many with significant crown loss that looks like ice damage. One thing unusual about them is even though they are on the ground and the bark and outer wood looks to be completely rotted, the core will remain great firewood for years once its put under cover to dry the outer layer of rotted stuff. Once under cover it sorts of petrifies and the rotted surface stuff seems to disappear with handling. It all goes in my wood boiler which is run during the evening so I rarely get the smell of it.

I have seen some monstrous cherry yard trees in older homes down near the Maine coast. On very rare occasions they can develop "figure" in the wood grain. I think its up for debate why it happens but I have seen pieces of furniture with tiger, birds eye and curly grained cherry and it can be spectacular but a major PITA to work with as grain tear out is major problem. Down in the Smokies on the Appalachian Trail there is a place called Curly Cherry Gap that it loaded with big cherries that all have signs of figured grain, if it wasnt in a National Park way out the woods I would expect they would have disappeared long ago.

I am pretty far south of you in the NYS, Western MA area, and here at 1400 feet elevation they seem pretty iffy, like it's the edge of their range as well. Though the few examples of larger healthy Black Cherries I do find around here tend to be in stands of White Pine.

 

[weee123]

Down here in south NJ, black cherries grow like weeds. I’ve cut trees down and they sprout right back up. Which is actually kind of nice, because I’ve had to cut some down that wisteria killed. They then sprouted new shoots out of the stump and with some pruning have started growing into healthy new trees.

 

[ajzzara]

 

[warbonnet]

Hi all,

I’ve been wondering how the length that firewood is cut to (not the width that it is split to) affects it’s drying time. My stove (BK Ashford 25 insert) takes 16 inch splits N to South. Sometimes I end up with some longer logs that I put in east west. These may be 22 inches long. And sometimes, like recently, a tree service guy giving me wood dumps some rounds on me that are about 10 inches long. In my case I’m mostly dealing with Red Oak, Ash and Soft Maple.

1. Am I right that shortening the length of a log will speed up its drying time (and I would even go further to assume that this has a bigger impact on speeding up drying time than chopping smaller width splits)?

2. When I look up average drying time of different species of wood, what length is it most likely applying to?

3. And lastly, is there any chance my 10-16 inch oak splits will dry in a year if they’re outside, covered and off the ground here in the Bronx?

Thanks everyone!

If the oak is all you have and must burn it,If you split small right now and keep in the sun covered single stacked you’ll be able to burn it this coming winter. We all don’t have cords and cords of wood stacked for years on end.

 

[stoveliker]

Firewood length is a very important consideration in drying time, indeed length and width are both important factors. Due to the cellular structure of wood, relatively more moisture actually comes out of the ends than the sides when drying. Especially with a rough grain ring porous species like red oak. To display the point, If you cut a two inch wide cookie/round slab off a large red oak log, even if it’s a 30” diameter log, that’s going to dry out to nice burnable levels in a few weeks in summer temperatures. The same mass of wood, say 2” wide and 30” long, would take a much longer time to dry.

It's an old thread, but I just read it.
In my experience red oak dries about an inch per year from the sides in, so a 2" split 12 ft long would be fine in a year...
I do think it dries about 2" per year from the cut ends in. I.e. a 4-6" cookie might be just okay to burn, but a 10-14" split that's 4-5" wide I would not burn in a year.

Bummer the OP did not respond back.