[TheForge] I need a piece of tree...

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

Andy; the eucs i've used for firewood were almost as good as oak for 
heat value, and definitely very hard to split once dry. A wedge driven 
by a 10# sledge just pops back out and flies across the yard repeatedly 
until the split is pretty deep. Sometimes have to use multiple wedges to 
get the first one back...and if there art knots...slap forehead. It's 
tough, stringy stuff. There are a number of different species, of course.
And yes, in the fall those oily leaves are happy to burn when green. The 
real problem is when a hard frost kills them...the next summer....pf

Andrew Vida wrote:
> Eucalyptus as in the species commonly found in CA isn't good for 
> anything... not even burning, IMO.  Tough?  Not in my experience, but 
> perhaps I've not seen it all.  One interesting characteristic of it is 
> that greenwood explodes... i.e., in fires, the trees literally blow up. 
>  I recall a fire in SF back when I lived there... a grove of eucalyptus 
> was burning and the trees blew apart when the water and oils got to 
> boiling.  I remember driving by after the fact and seeing all these 
> trees looking like they'd had a toss with dynamite and lost.
> 
> Michael Horgan wrote:
>> At 11:12 PM 9/18/2008, you wrote:
>>> Thanks Grant; Answers my Q .
>>> I agree about taper being important. The local oaks have nice hard 
>>> wood but it doesn't stand up well as handles. The wood rats just 
>>> loved the black locust i planted with handles in mind....sapling was 
>>> completely gone in 2 days.
>>> Been wondering about some of the eucalyptus species..seems like 
>>> tough, stringy stuff, and very available.   pf
>>
>> My experience with eucalyptus is that it tends to be brittle, Peter 
>> works ok when worked green but cracks easily when drying,  I tried 
>> splitting some out for tool handles (lathe turned chisel handles) 
>> after drying for a year, here, but the handles still tended to shatter 
>> on impact
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