Maple

[bigjcw1023]

Does maple make for good firewood? I can get a load for 50 bucks

[Edwin Pawlowski]

[Dr. Deb]

Yes, but hard maple makes better firewood than soft maple.

Deb

[Doug Miller]

Anywhere between fair and excellent, depending on the species.

Typical soft maples are silver maple and red maple. Silver maple is fair, at best, for firewood; red maple is mediocre to good. The hard maples (sugar maple and black maple) make excellent firewood.

[Jay Pique]

I just got a nice load of 3" thick hickory cut-offs from some stairs we're making. It's all checked to hell because the purchaser of the stairs sawed it himself from his land, but it'll make for some nice cooking fires.

JP

[Mike Marlow]

But that's like saying great sex is better than good sex.

[Mike Marlow]

Dear Doug:

Send me all of your soft maple.

Thank you.

[Doug Miller]

LOL -- haven't burned a lot of silver maple, have you? Red maple's OK, but silver isn't much better than tulip poplar as firewood.

[Mike Marlow]

Actually - I really don't know. When it comes to sub-dividing soft maple into various types, it's all lost on me. For what grows in my woods - it's close enough to differentiate between hard maple and soft maple. Both make nice heat. Have no idea what type of soft maple grows here though.

[Doug Miller]

Your soft maple's probably red maple, then. Decent firewood. Decent furniture wood, too, for that matter, though not as good as sugar maple for either purpose -- but way, way better than silver maple, which is too soft and light to be much use.

[George]

Pound of wood is a pound of wood when you're burning. So at the same moisture content you go with the heaviest. Sugar maple @ SG 0.66, red at

0.56 and silver at 0.50 should give you an idea. Tulip-poplar is 0.46 . You're a bit lazy if you can't take the time it takes to look up your local stuff or ask your county agent.

[EXT]

I have burned a lot of silver maple as well as Manitoba maple which would be rated as very soft maple. If you want to maximize heat output per load of wood, go for sugar maple, but the others still produce heat, and if it is this time of the year you don't want a lot all at once, or the fire to last all night, they are still good.