How raging are your fires?

[SapSipper]

Instead of using seasoned hardwood for my fires, last night I used old dead Spruce & Larch of very small diameter, like nothing over 2".

The fire absolutely raged and my boil/evap increased dramatically - allthough I have no way to measure how much...

Downside: frequent re-fueling, but it seems worth the effort to me...

[maplehound]

The smaller and the drier your pieces the hotter your fire will be. If you want to fill your whole wood shed (pile) full of nothing but twigs you will have a real hot fire but you will have to feed the fire alot more often. Also the type of wood here will make a big difrence. Try to keep some spilt hardwood on hand to keep your fire going and some smaller or soft wood to keep it hotter at start up and shut down.

[PFHII]

One thing that we have used in the past is wood palletts.Use a chain saw and cut them inbetween the braces (they are always free around here ) We rotate between palletts and hardwood. The only downfall is the clean up nails in the bottom of the arch but the fire stays hot longer if you rotate.

[MaplePancakeMan]

i use split wood and branch wood, i use primarily shag bark hickory branches and split maple. I haven't used pallets, i should because my dad owns a beer distributor and has 1000's of pallets maybe i'll give that a try.

[royalmaple]

I always say you can't buy a hotter fire than using pallets.

There are some drawbacks like nails, and cutting them up. But all the free hardwood and softwood (some pallets are soft now too), dry as you can get it. No drying time, just bale it in the evaporator, granted you will burn them like paper. But if you have a local sheet metal shop go see them. I'll tell you what the sheet metal pallets are the best on the market. They are usually 10-14 feet long. They have like 4x4's as the stringers, and few 1inch hardwood boards going side to side. They cut up easy and it is rocket fuel.

Much better than your regular ratty pallets. But they all work great.

I got a guy that rebuilds pallets and he takes all the boards off the stringers and the broken ones go into racks and are disposed of. I can get pulp trucks full of nothing but boards and broken bits for free. I've even had him deliver a load on his way home since he pretty much goes right by me on his way home, for free. He is just happy to get rid of the stuff.

I go down with my brothers dump truck and fill it up and poof instant dry hardwood.

[Russ]

We use a combination of pallets and round wood. The bigger wood gets split. Another good source of wood is from anyone that operates a sawmill, especially the portable type. The bark slabs create some smoke, but usually have a good amount of wood on them. We can usually get good, dry red pine or aspen slabs free for the hauling.

The all-time best fuel came from a cheese packaging plant that one of my brothers worked for. Cheese factories used paraffin wax coated sheets of corrugated cardboard to separate and protect large blocks of cheese. A couple of these "liners" in the firebox would send a rocket flame out the top of the chimneys... spectacular at night. I believe that they started recycling the liners, so we haven't seen any for many years.

Scrap wood may be getting harder to find around here as wood pellet manufacturers are in the market for sawdust and wood pieces to use for their products.

[tapper]

I am able to get what is the beginning stages of ball bats that have been culled out. Most are ash but some are hard maple and the reason many of the hard maple ones are culled out is beacuse of tap holes in them.

[maplehound]

Maybe they will soon relize that they shouldn't cut those sugar maples down for ball bats. LOL