What do you use for kindling?

[Gibbonboy]

...my Sunday go-to-meeting clothing!

OMG. I thought I was the only person that still used that phrase.

Well, some of us actually go to Meeting on Sunday! Very few anymore, that's for sure.

I was cutting some wood for next year today, there was quite a bit of small dry locust twigs that I brought home. I process wood down to 1 1/2" diameter or smaller. All the small limbs, twigs, small pieces from splitting, and scrap lumber from construction sites all go into the kindling pile on the end of my big stacks of splits. We use a lot of kindling in fall and spring, lighting a new fire every night.

 

[Gooserider]

I don't particularly make special "kindling" wood. Like several others, I just pick up the scrap from around where I've been splitting and that is MORE than enough to supply my needs. A couple sheets of newspaper and a few handfuls of my "magic splitter crap" is plenty to get a fire going, though I usually try to start off with the smaller splits, and the littler branches I cut to length when I take down a tree. I chop up anything from about thumbsize up, though I've noticed that my "brush size" has gotten bigger since I started burning - the smaller stuff is hardly worth the saw gas to cut it.

If I was purchasing "cut and split" I would consider some of the other suggestions folks have made about chopping up pallets and other scrap lumber. If those didn't work, I might consider getting a garbage can full of wood chips from someone using a chipper. (Make sure they aren't chipping up any poison ivy!)

Gooserider

 

[DavidV]

I have a stack of brown paper lunch bags. I fill them with shavings and small scraps from my wood shop I then throw that in the stove along with a few smaller sticks and light it up. If that fails me for any reason, I grab my Bernzomatic weed torch and just fire it up. I've gotten rather pragmatic about getting the fire started. I don't want to mess around. I want a fire.

 

[gman1001]

Pine cones (sappier the better) and shards from my splitting area... The pine cones are free and with the door ajar a bit get the fire restarted in the morning VERY quickly.

 

[mayhem]

I was using some of the maple splits I had lying around to make the small mornign fires this fall (wife gets very cold very easily...64-66 in the house in the morning is too cold), but this morning I tried some birch kindling I made last night from a split and boy what a difference! The birch goes up like a 1 year old christmas tree...I had a very quick startup and when it was roaring I tossed in some maple to keep it going. This is good for me becuase it helps to sae the nice maple for the real cold weather when I'll need the long burntimes and will reduce my usage of birch which burns damn hot, but also very fast...I have to belive it also is sootier, but thats just a suspicion on my part...sadly my ratio of downed birch to maple is like 4:1.

 

[Eric Johnson]

I think bark works pretty well. Usually when I'm splitting dry maple, the bark comes right off. I stack it separately. Most of my wood is beech, which has very thin bark. By the time it's dry, it pretty much crumbles into mulch. If you have any yellow birch, the bark is second to none for starting fires. Generally speaking, the drier your wood, the less kindling you will need.

 

[jqgs214]

When ever I do dead wooding of trees or pruning of shrubs I put the stuff in a brush pile and just break off pieces as it dries. A handfull starts a fire.

 

[abj1969]

Pine cones (sappier the better) and shards from my splitting area… The pine cones are free and with the door ajar a bit get the fire restarted in the morning VERY quickly.

are they cool to burn in a stove? or will they hurt the stack? i have a yard full of them and they would make things alot easier for me.

 

[gman1001]

They are fine - just put 6 of them or so on top of the hot coals in the AM, then small smaller sized splits... leave door cracked, have a bowl of cereal and thats it!

 

[abj1969]

cool.. thanks.

 

[slofr8]

When I worked in the woods ( '80's ) I would bring home cedar for kindling. Then a friend started a cedar mill and I would just pick up slabs and saw them up on my chop saw, than split. Now I cut up any spruce or fir tree that happens to blow down in my wood lot. What's easy to split becomes kindling and what is harder to split I leave bigger and use to burn down my coals after a night of burning hard wood.
Dan.

 

[swestall]

As the winter gets colder and we burns continuously, we always have coals and can keep it going. We usually cut up the limbs from the trees into 18 inch pieces and stack up 3/4 of a cord of it. (whatever wood). When in a pinch or as a starter that Fatwood is a good supplement to get the larger splits burning.

 

[bjorn773]

I like to use pallet wood. I work for an outdoor power equipment dealer, so when the zero turns come in on big pallets I usually jump on them. Only drawback is lots of nails and staples. I usually stack the uniform stuff for kindling and use the odds and ends for camp wood/firepit burning. I just scored 2 cords of lumber from my brother who works at a steel company. They use 2x3 poplar to separate huge plates of steel as they are shipped via rail car. I guess that's the only way a forklift can get between the plates. Anyway, it makes excellent wood for getting the stove up to temp. So pallets + 2x3 + cordwood = toasty fire.

 

[Jimbob]

I don't use any kindling. :coolsmile:

 

[johnsopi]

The waxed cardboard box the produce come to the store in. Works better then anything else that I have tried.

 

[jpl1nh]

I think bark works pretty well. Usually when I'm splitting dry maple, the bark comes right off. I stack it separately. Most of my wood is beech, which has very thin bark. By the time it's dry, it pretty much crumbles into mulch. If you have any yellow birch, the bark is second to none for starting fires. Generally speaking, the drier your wood, the less kindling you will need.

Have limited amounts of yellow, but lots of white birch bark. I suspect they are comparable, kind of the fat wood of the north. Like the pine cone idea too!

 

[DriftWood]

The best thing I have found for kindling is cedar roof slakes. After stripping the old roof last year I noticed some in the pile of tar shingles. They were used as a drip edge. One or two small broken up will light with a single match. Should its 62 year old seasoned wood.

 

[WILDSOURDOUGH]

Use Pallets, Pine, really like small limbs and twigs- already dry and will make a bed of coals, use cardboard, pine cones,
and construction waste (pine half-log siding, cutoffs of 2x4, 2x6, beam cutoffs, plywood) no OSB or treated wood.

Had to laugh and show my wife the screen of BrotherBarts stash in a cartop carrier- we use one for kindling storage too.

 

[Wolves-Lower]

I use alot of Kindling!!
I have to leave early to work, around 5 am and don't return till 6. Often my fire is out.
About a half mile down the road they make pallets. I pull a trailer up, leave it for a couple days, then they call and it is full of all sorts of wood. Pine, Oak ect...
Then I have a kindling saw and chop er all up.
Geez...last march that is how I heated my house...full on kindling all the time :cheese:
Sometimes I can't believe the good wood that comes in that trailer. Last year my trailer was full of 4x4x1 inch thick oak slabs. Man that was like the fast food of woods, clean, easy to stack, pre-kilned and ready to burn!
Gray

 

[abj1969]

I have to leave early to work, around 5 am and don’t return till 6. Often my fire is out.

thats the problem i think i may run into... i work 12 hour shifts... leave at 4:30am and get home about 7pm. the girlfriend leaves a couple hours after be so i guess i'll be able to get it burning hot between the time i leave and the time she leaves. i just have to teach her to load the stove and where to cut the air back to (after i figure it out..lol). she gets home about 7pm also so i can see having to relight the fire often.... i'm sure we will get a schedule.

 

[ncmallard78]

anyone ever burn the new trim cuts of trunk that come from xmas tree farms. I used to sell trees, and the fresh cut pucks piled up pretty quick. do these things burn well? im sure the are full of sap. come to think of it, you could cut up your old xmas tree after season and burn the pucks. what do yall think?

 

[jqgs214]

Letem dry out fully, then it'll be fine

 

[nhwoodburner]

seeing that i work for a home improvment store,i have access to some nice dry wood.(pallets,etc).just today i brought home a good size load of 2x6s cut to 3' lenghts..just gotta cut them into 12-14" lenghts and then splinter it.

load was big enough to just about fill the back of my Subaru wagon.

And it was all free...(best price of all..)

one thing i notice it that it does burn real hot and fast..temp guage was close to 300 degrees even before i put any of the reg wood in..

 

[jadm]

I use pine that my son splits into small pieces with a 4lb. mini maul. I use about 3 small pieces and top it with twigs and branches from yard work that I collect over the summer. Starts things up very quickly.

Good idea of getting scraps at a lumber yard. Think I'll stop by the local one on the way to the ice rink this week.

 

[Shari]

We use lath at the campsite. At home I saved all the small twigs from a flowering apple tree we had to cut down 2 yrs. ago. If I had to use a hatchet to cut kindling with a hatch I would now be typing one handed. (A lifetime of suffering from eye-had control or something.......)

Shari