Black Locust Firewood - How Does it Compare? (Episode 5: Firewood Series) 

Thank you. I love black locust!

That Osage is some pretty gnarly stuff. Cut down an old hedge row of that for a farmer. I burned some in the stove(once) and it made the stove glow red😮. Gave the straight logs to a guy who makes longbows and a blacksmith took as much as he could. The rest was pushed into a pile for literally the world's hottest bonfire. 20' away a beer bottle would melt.

I've been doing tree work for 7 years. I hate cutting locust and osage oarange. Dulls a chain quick

Odd you said it is quite difficult to split. I find it to be one of the easiest splitting in my area (northern Italy). My hardest to split are hands down red sycamore and elm. Anyway, guys that know firewood know locust is one of the best. I like your videos!

Very helpful. Thank you and God bless you.

Very cool! I am wanting to plant some black locust to harvest for firewood. Thanks for the vid!

Great video thank you for sharing this important information listening from Bangs Texas new subscriber

Wow great info 👍

Just subscribed to your channel! Great info!

Thanks ❤

Good helpful info!! I am saving my black locust for the worst cold and mix it with other woods for burning. I have my eyes on a good tall thin tree for fencing corner posts... you are right, great at resisting rot too. Cheers!!

Awesome

Out in SW Idaho it's not that hard to find Mountain Mahogany. We have lots of dead Black Locust that were Beetle-killed along the Payette River Valley, but a trip to the Owyhee Mountains will yield a wood 1.7 times denser, so much that it sinks if thrown in water. I know of a guy who got a 48-hour burn with one loading in a Blaze King. And its great BBQ wood too. Overall, though, BL is the densest firewood regularly available in the states. To hell with OAK and Hickory.

I live in RI and have a place in MA where I cut my own firewood. I remember once many years ago getting some black locust. It is not common here. Good heat I recall. Am I right to remember it smelled pretty bad? I save hickory, my favorite firewood but not plentiful for the coldest nights. It is a great heat but it leaves a lot of ash. I have to clean out the stove more often. Why? Is locust like that also.

Osage orange is everywhere in northern Indiana. Those the trees between most farm fields. One cord of black locust Is 26 million btu. One cord of shag bark hickory is 27 million btu. One cord of Osage orange is 33 million btu. (Maybe not exact numbers but close). But don’t burn Osage orange in your fireplace or in your wood stove unless it is rated to burn coal. It will melt most fireplace grates. Nice video!

relatively difficult to split: that is like saying water is relatively wet

Hey burly just subscribe to your channel I really like it and I just started my own fire wood business and I started in December and I been doing it for months now and I learned a lot from your channel and I also live in Indiana northwest by Valparaiso if u hear of the town or city and just wondering what part Indiana do u live in yeah lol but im 19 and enjoy watching your videos and excited to see more

I think Osage Orange burns hotter but it's a lot harder to work with and needs more drying time. If you take the thick bark from a old Black Locust and saw it for dust or drill it with the tip of a knife the resulting dust will take a ferro rod spark. The dried Cambium layer burns like paper also.

Do you have Osage Orange trees up there? Here in Maryland Osage Orange tress burn hotter than locust.

Do you have any metric on how fast it grows over there? I’m planning on planting lots of it and I’m looking for evidence to it’s fast growth. Radial growth per year would be nice to know since it supposedly grows so slender.

It burns like hell even when it's fresh. You definitely need some other firestarter, but once you have a steady fire it kisks ass.

Northern Indiana is awesome

It does get a strange jellyfish type fungus. Looks like a pink blob, but eats it very slowly

These are considered invasive where I live, wish they weren't. Red oak, beech, maple and ash are as close as I can get around here

You guys don't have any hedge apple there?

I got 5 cords of black locust for 300 bucks

Ohhhhe. And so many bows could have been made....

please look and see i you have any black locust fatwood. And I am not wrong, it exists. I have pictures to prove it. Some serious, real deal, cross center gorgeous borderline black/super dark brown hEEaavy wood.

The rot resistance is not true...bugs will eat in if you bury it

Doesn’t smell to good 😂

i was told osha orange burns hotter than locus firewood

(1) Robinia pseudoacacia var. rectissima The yellow locust is a tree, called "yellow" because the wood is a lighter. the tall, straight tree pressumed nonexistent in the Appalachian forest had, for generations, been alive and well in Long Island, New York, where it was called the "shipmast" locust, and had been planted, under the encouragement of the Soil Conservation Services, to reduce erosion and enrich the soil. This tree is called as THE TREE THAT LAST LIKE A STONE for it's wood won't rot, immune from insects. The reason why it is called shipmast locust is because it is aa straight as a shipmast used in ships before. The yellow locust is long-lived---borers do not trouble it---and the wood, used by mountain people as structural timber bridges and buildings as well as fenceposts, is virtually indestructible. It can only be reproduced by rooted cuttings and rarely by seeds. You can either go to Long Island, New York to ask for rooted cuttings or ask a forest ranger for information in your area on where you can acquire rooted cuttings of the yellow locust. The yellow locust wood is colored "YELLOW". (2) The ordinary black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is a tree that grows typically to forty or fifty feet in this region (and occasionally to seventy or eighty) - a smallish, gganrly-looking tree with wide, complex branching, beginning low on the trunk. It's forked branches make the tree subject to borers, and therefore the tree has a short life span of fifty to seventy-five years, and rots away rather quickly after being cut. It's wood is not commercially valuable. This tree is only useful as firewood and to reclaim mined out areas. The color of the ordinary black locust is "BROWN". The ordinary black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is a tree that grows typically to forty or fifty feet in this region (and occasionally to seventy or eighty) - a smallish, gganrly-looking tree with wide, complex branching, beginning low on the trunk. It's forked branches make the tree subject to borers, and therefore the tree has a short life span of didty to seventy-five years, and rots away rather quickly after being cut. It's wood is not commercially valuable. The yellow locust is an another matter entirely. This tree, called "yellow" because the wood is a lighter color than that of the black locust (which is brown), has the same sprays of compound leaves as the black, and the same leguminous seed pods, like the pods of field peas or fava beans. But there the similarities end. The yellow locust rises as tall and straight as the mast of a saling ship in the forest, it's branches not beginning on the stout trunk until fifty or sixty feet from the ground. It's crown is narrow, not broad like the black locust's, and at the top of the tree is at or above the canopy ---often at 150 feet ir higher, Also unlike the black locust, the yellow locust is long-lived---borers do not trouble it---and the wood, used by mountain people as structural timber bridges and buildings as well as fenceposts, is virtually indestructible. The mystery of the yellow locust as a tree distinct from the black aises not because the mountain people are confused, but because the yellow was more or less "lost" n the literature of academic botany for over forty years. It is perhaps no wonder that young botanists and foresters deny it's exstence. Recently, a smapling of this lost literature was collected by John Flynn, who, following up a vaque reference in Donald Culross Peattie's 1950 book A natural History of Treets, scoured the U.S. Department of Agriculture Library at Beltsville, Mryland (with the enthuasistic help of te librarian on duty), for early articles on the yellow locust. Reading through a packet of a half a dozen papers from the 1930s and 1940s, he found that the tall, straight tree pressumed nonexistent in the Appalachian forest had, for generations, been alive and well in Long Island, New York, where it was called the "shipmast" locust, and had been planted, under the encouragement of the Soil Conservation Services, to reduce erosion and enrich the soil. The tree was identified in 1936 as a separate botanical variety by Oran Raber (Robinia pseudoacacia var. rectissima).