We've a fire pit in the garden, on a pleasant evening the other week I thought it would be nice to sit out with a drink and a fire. Got some logs from the petrol station, ended up in a mood, the bastard just wouldn't burn.
I had another go last night, same again. Half a packet of firelighters, small bits of wood, then logs, there was much flame and crackling and redness but ultimately over the course of about half a hour it went out.
I don't have this bother when i'm burning remnants of DIY jobs so i'm blaming the logs.
As well you might as they are probably freshly felled spruce logs, things should change next year. You do need to split a few into kindling to expose more surface area.
To maintain basic external combustion, don't you need 3 things, heat, fuel and oxygen?
eg, If you hold a match under a log you don't get enough heat in the log to allow it to self-maintain so it goes out?
So when you put some newspaper / kindling under a log to get it hot enough to continue to burn, once that heat source has gone.
Some things can self combust once they get hot enough (assuming they are combustible in the first place and there is oxygen etc).
So, maybe try some more kindling (split one of the PS logs down?) to reduce the mass to allow it to heat up to allow it to catch fire and self maintain? It sounds like those PS logs are a bit wetter than you thought and they are going to have to dry out (or get very hot) before they will burn easily?
eg, If you stood one on end and then held a blowtorch to an edge near the bottom till it caught fire, the heat from the flames running up the log should then heat / dry it sufficiently to carry on burning. Another piece placed across the top would then heat / burn etc. The steam given off by the heating can also help suppress the combustion.
Just as an aside, given that there are many areas that are smokeless zones and the even tightening laws on log burners because of the emissions, if you want to be warm outside, couldn't you put a coat on? (I get that's not the same thing and after much of Auz has just gone up in smoke etc ...). ;-)
These days there seems to be more leaving of cleared logs (fallen trees, tidying up pathways etc) for habitat and not clearing such by the use of bonfires. Similar with the green recycling bin and not burring leaves and other garden waste. In fact I can't remember the last time I smelled a bonfire round here (BBQ's yes, bonfires no).
Spruce burns ok, it generally has resin which helps.
The trick is to make some feather sticks- take a sharp knife or even an axe, a thinnish stick and cut a series of slithers, leaving them attached. When you?ve finished, it should look like a small bush or perhaps brush. Make a few. Place on dry ground, with some other wood on top. Light the feather sticks.
Traditionally, wood full of resin is known as fat wood and is used a bit like tinder - it is collected, cut as above to make feather sticks, and can be ignited by a spark or one of the friction methods.
In message snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, T i m snipped-for-privacy@spaced.me.uk> writes
Cautionary tale about burning re-cycled timber. No bark? Apart from illegality:-) The roadside fencing here dated 1977 is treated with a preservative (smells of Mothballs) and won't burn.
Also I competed with another employee for some lengths of 8x3" pine salvaged from a redundant overhead gantry. They came to me. He wanted to split them for kindling and discovered they would not burn. No apparent smell but they were rot proof as I used them for numerous farm tasks.
Oak, ash, maple, sycamore, beech and all fruit trees including blackthorn, hawthorn and wild plum burn well, as did Elm when it was around.
Fast growing swamp woods like poplar willow alder and to an extent birch, are less popular. They take ages to dry out and don't have a lot of energy for their wet mass. Or volume.
Evergreens burn well but the resins that stop them freezing do not typically evaporate as fast as their water content so they tend to burn fast and hot and sometimes leave very sticky residues.
So the evergreens make good starters. But for something longer lasting woods from the first group ate preferable. Traditionally the woods that are not much prized for fine joinery are preferred. Oak Ash and Beech, and field Maples (Acer campestris).
When we burned tree trimmings out in the fields the trick was to get a big enough heap of hot glowing embers and ash to generate combustion support. Once that was achieved we could pile anything on, tree trunks, thinner branches, twigs and wet leaves it all burnt
As has been said here a number of times all wood burns okay if properly dry.
Power stations burn quite wet wood cleanly mainly because they can maintain a high combustion temperature and extract the heat after combustion is finished.
No idea about the smell but much non creosoted timber was, until relatively recently, treated with chromated copper arsenate, fumes from which you don't want to ingest.
Up until 1986 Forestry Act we converted woodland to agriculture occasionally, pushed the trees over with a CAT 951, severed the roots and cut the branches off, extracted the timber for sale, crushed and heaped the branches onto the fire and put the roots on the top.
There would be several fires which the driver just tracked between pushing them up for a couple of days by which time there would be a pile of hot char and baked clay.
The treehuggers turned the traditional rules for selecting wood to burn pretty well upside down. At least until someone pointed out their theory was flawed but, of course, like so many of the treehugger nonsense, some of them still follow it.
(Willow was one of their favoured woods and, as you say, it has a low energy/mass ratio. )
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