How Small (Diameter) is Too Small To Burn??
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I get the bulk of my wood as log length from a tree service, so that is mostly about 4" and up (mostly up) w/ no branches to worry about.
When I drop a tree on our property, I typically use a hand pruner to trim anything that it can handle - approx 1/2-3/4" and throw it on our brush pile.
Then I get a limb lopper and chop anything that it can handle (up to about 1.5-2") for use as kindling. It gets put into my "kindling bay" in the wood shed, and I bring it in separately from my other wood using a 5 gallon bucket.
From there up it gets cut into rounds, though I don't split anything under 4-5". The smaller stuff will season about as fast as a split as long as it's under cover. It gets mixed in with every thing else, although just because of the timing of when I'm cutting my trees vs. the log-length stuff, my shed piles look like they have layers of unsplit stuff sort of like geology rock layers.
What I've found though is that when burning 24/7 you don't go through that much kindling, and that it's almost as much work and about the same time to cut, carry and stack a 1/2" length of kindling as it is to do the same with a 6" split - and the split will keep you warm for a lot longer... As a result, I've been finding that my standards have been shifting over time, and I'm saving a lot less kindling than I used to.
Gooserider
When I drop a tree on our property, I typically use a hand pruner to trim anything that it can handle - approx 1/2-3/4" and throw it on our brush pile.
Then I get a limb lopper and chop anything that it can handle (up to about 1.5-2") for use as kindling. It gets put into my "kindling bay" in the wood shed, and I bring it in separately from my other wood using a 5 gallon bucket.
From there up it gets cut into rounds, though I don't split anything under 4-5". The smaller stuff will season about as fast as a split as long as it's under cover. It gets mixed in with every thing else, although just because of the timing of when I'm cutting my trees vs. the log-length stuff, my shed piles look like they have layers of unsplit stuff sort of like geology rock layers.
What I've found though is that when burning 24/7 you don't go through that much kindling, and that it's almost as much work and about the same time to cut, carry and stack a 1/2" length of kindling as it is to do the same with a 6" split - and the split will keep you warm for a lot longer... As a result, I've been finding that my standards have been shifting over time, and I'm saving a lot less kindling than I used to.
Gooserider
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