Poplar for firewood?

[Lowestoft Firewood]

I find it is the best wood on our stove. Must be well seasoned (as with all wood i spose!)

[openspaceman]

I was told the reason they use it for match sticks is because it burns slowly . The wax on the match keeping it alight . I have used it as fire wood and found it to be good . As said above once seasoned keep it dry as it is like blotting paper if there is any wet around .

 

Yes and its other advantage is that it doesn't produce sharp splinter, so when it snaps it isn't dangerous.

 

No wood will support a flame as a splint on it's own (unless a resin pocket present??) so the wax is necessary.

[Darrin Turnbull]

technically hard yes, but for sales purposes i'd be more comfortable classifying it as a softwood personally

 

 

Totally agree with you Steve , it has less heat than Scots pine.

[se7enthdevil]

Yes and its other advantage is that it doesn't produce sharp splinter, so when it snaps it isn't dangerous.

 

No wood will support a flame as a splint on it's own (unless a resin pocket present??) so the wax is necessary.

 

 

surely if that were the case you would have to have some other fuel to keep all firewood alight. some might be difficult to light as splints but i think any timber could work.

[Rwfbiomass]

What about if I were to chip the poplar for fuel, has anyone chipped larger rounds? Just wondering if the stringy nature affected the way it chipped?

[openspaceman]

surely if that were the case you would have to have some other fuel to keep all firewood alight. some might be difficult to light as splints but i think any timber could work.

 

It's not other fuel you need, just some more sticks to mutually radiate heat.

 

Try it.

 

In free space the wood can radiate its heat away so well that it drops below the auto ignition point of char, once the char surface falls to below about 200C it does not have enough energy to dissociative an oxygen molecule , place it on a bed of ash and you half the angle through which it can radiate, place that in an box where the walls can re radiate heat back and it will burn to ash.

 

This is how andirons were used to control the rate of burning of cordwood so the fire was just at the point where two or three logs met.

[skyhuck]

It's not other fuel you need, just some more sticks to mutually radiate heat.

 

Try it.

 

In free space the wood can radiate its heat away so well that it drops below the auto ignition point of char, once the char surface falls to below about 200C it does not have enough energy to dissociative an oxygen molecule , place it on a bed of ash and you half the angle through which it can radiate, place that in an box where the walls can re radiate heat back and it will burn to ash.

 

This is how andirons were used to control the rate of burning of cordwood so the fire was just at the point where two or three logs met.

 

Yep!!

 

Dismantle a log fire, separating each log and the fire goes out, reassemble them so they touch and it re-ignites

[Peter]

What about if I were to chip the poplar for fuel, has anyone chipped larger rounds? Just wondering if the stringy nature affected the way it chipped?

 

 

Chipping rounds of any timber will produce lots of slivers.

Poplar makes good biomass chip otherwise, although it will lose a lot of weight of water as it dries, so if you chip a tonne of wet timber you'll end up with much less than a tonne of dry chip.

[Busy Daddy]

I wouldn't chip it for biomass , the bark tends to hold the wet and rotts very quickly , some of the bark can be an inch thick

When it is chipped the rotten bark just goes to mush

One of my customers has around 400 tons of 24 inch to mix in with softwood its a nightmare

Maybe smaller diameter fresh may be ok

[timbernut]

Estate I work for chipped couple of hundred t of pop we felled for them said it was fine (they had been concerned about moisture level) also most of the bark just fell off in big sheets because of the baste like under bark.