[AT] Off Topic -- burning wood

[Dean Vinson]

Vaughn, same here with the "osage orange" name, also known as hedge apple.

And yessireebob on being miserable to cut up.   The attached photo shows a little bit of one of my big old hedge rows.   In addition to being thorny the trunks and branches are so curvy and twisty and intertwined with those in adjacent trees that they don't fall when cut...I sometimes have to hook a long chain to them and drag them down with a tractor.   Takes forever compared to cutting up just about any other kind of tree.    Have to use carbide chainsaw chains, too...with regular chains I got disgusted having to stop and change them so often.

Also ditto to Cecil on the incredible durability of fenceposts made of the stuff.   I have a few still standing that must be many decades old.   Even laying on the ground that wood won't hardly rot for decades...which cost me a bunch of shear pins on the brushhog first summer or two that I lived here.

Beautiful wood for arts and crafts projects, and I believe it's the wood of choice for archery bows, but it's so hard to get long straight pieces of any size that none of my trees (even the biggest, 70-80 years old) have any commercial value.   I keep my eyes open for branches or trunks that would make decent fence posts, but even those are hard to come by; I cut a little for the woodstoves in the house but most just goes to increase my carbon footprint, so to speak.  

Dean Vinson
Saint Paris, Ohio


-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com [mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Vaughn Miller
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2016 8:11 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Subject: Re: [AT] Off Topic -- burning wood

Bois D'Arc is know as Osage Orange here, and is great wood if you are burning for heat.  Common in fence rows and field edges it can be miserable to saw up.  The tops are very dense and thorny.

On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 7:27 AM, Cecil Bearden <crbearden at copper.net> wrote:

> I remember when we bought our first farm about 57 years ago, the fence 
> posts were Bois DÁrc posts about 2-3 inches in diameter. You had to 
> get one leg of the fence staple in a crack and hold on to the back of the
> post to drive it in..    Usually the staple would just bend over.  After
> the first winter, Dad figured out that Baling wire held better.  If 
> you doubles the wire around the back of the post you could  tighten 
> the fence up as you tied it up.  Over the next 10 years we replaced all of
> the fences with steel posts.   There is a pile of those old wooden posts
> still on that place.  They are just as hard now as they were back then!!
>
> Cecil in oKla
>
>
>
> On 12/21/2016 6:10 AM, Dean Vinson wrote:
> > Don't know whether the pellets would still pop and spark, interesting
> > question.   I bet that stuff would beat the heck out of the pellet mill,
> > though... hard as a rock!
> >
> > Dean Vinson
> > Saint Paris, OH
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
> > [mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Steve W.
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2016 2:59 AM
> > To: Antique tractor email discussion group 
> > <at at lists.antique-tractor.com
> >
> > Subject: Re: [AT] Off Topic -- burning wood
> >
> > Mike M wrote:
> >> I agree Dean, perfectly safe in a air tight wood stove, only issue 
> >> I can think of is when you go to reload, it could throw some poppers.
> > Wonder how it would do if you ran it through a pelletizer and fed it 
> > to a pellet stove ?
> >
> > --
> > Steve W.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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