Got Wood? Hardwood vs Softwood

If you've watched my videos or read the articles I've written about making fires, you may have noticed me refer to hardwood and softwood. While the argument could be made that any wood is hard when it's falling on your head, there are important distinctions between hard and soft varieties of wood.

Hardwoods are used in flooring, furniture, cabinet-making, and for smoking food. They are tough, durable woods, usually with a very tight grain structure. They are also more energy-dense than softwoods when being burned.

Hardwoods come from deciduous (leaf-shedding) trees that shed their leaves every year. Normally these trees reproduce with fruits or nuts, but not always, such as in the maple tree.

Softwoods are used mainly in structural building frameworks, but are also used in large decorative and structural wood beams. They are also popular for some trim and veneer applications.

Softwoods come from evergreen conifers such as pine, spruce, and fir trees. They tend toward a more open grain pattern, and are easier to shape and work with than hardwoods. They also have a very pleasant aroma.

Why does all of this matter, and how will it benefit you? There are numerous reasons why being able to identify the wood type you're selecting is important. In the bushcraft and firemaking realm, selecting the right woods can be vital in keeping you warm with minimal effort. Softwoods are great for starting a fire, as they're easier to process into kindling and small logs, and take a flame more readily. Conversely, hardwoods burn hotter and longer, and produce wonderful coals for cooking.

If you're buying wood for building projects, softwoods will be less expensive, but hardwoods tend to look better when finished. As a rule, hardwoods get stain or varnish, softwoods get painted. The aromatic nature of some softwoods, such as cedar, also serves as a wonderful rodent and insect repellent. The cedar chest grandma kept her bedsheets in did far more than just smell pretty.

Be familiar with your wood, so that you can get the most mileage out of it.

Lokidude

Ashes

One of the side-effects of burning wood for heat is the production of lots of ashes -- about 20 pounds of ash per cord of wood burned. Wood ash is treated as a waste product by a lot of people, but it has a few uses around a homestead.

Warning:

• Please use common sense and only work with cold ashes. 
• When cleaning out the wood stove, place the hot ashes in a metal container. The metal container should then be taken outside and placed on a surface that will not burn. 
• Keep children and pets away from the ash bucket, since there is likely a hot ember or two in it that will stay hot for many hours.

Food Storage
If you don't have a local source of salt to preserve meat (such as salt pork and corned beef), you can use clean ashes instead.

1. Lay down a thick bed of ashes in a container, then place a single layer of meat on top.
2. Cover the meat with more ash at least an inch deep, then place another layer of meat. 
3. Repeat until you run out of container, meat, or ashes. 
4. You'll need to rinse the meat before preparing a meal with it, just as you would if you were using salt. 

The ashes or salt preserve the meat by absorbing moisture, dropping the water content of the meat below what is needed for bacteria and fungi to grow. Common recipes from a century or two ago included boiled salt pork and "Bully beef".

Melting Ice

While not as good as salt, ashes tend to be dark in color and will absorb sunlight (and thus get warm) better than salt will. Ashes also tend to have insoluble parts that provide a bit of traction on ice. Being basic on the pH scale, ashes and the lye they create are also easier on concrete (which is basic as well) than salt is.

Soap-Making
One of the main ingredients needed to make soap is lye (potassium hydroxide), which is easily made by running water through wood ashes. I'll leave the art of soap-making to one of the experts, but knowing that you don't have to buy lye is a good thing.

Cleaning Agent
Lye is a strong base and will react with anything acidic, so it makes a good cleaning aid for oils (slightly acidic by nature). Diluted mixtures of lye were once used for washing floors, linens, and clothes. Dry ashes applied to oil spills on concrete will break down the oil and absorb it, making it easy to sweep up.

Wood ashes mixed with a bit of water to form a paste combine the action of the lye with the mild abrasive nature of the ashes, and make a good metal and glass polish.

Gardening
Since ashes are what is left over after all of the carbon has been burned out of the fuel, wood ashes are rich in minerals and trace elements that plants need. Be careful that you don't add so much that the ash raises the pH of the soil, though.

Ashes also repel slugs and snails by irritating their skin. A light dusting of fine ash on and around your plants will last until it gets washed off by rain or watering.

Recycling is not a new concept; our ancestors used everything they had until it wasn't useful any more. Re-purposing the cleanings from a wood stove just makes sense.