 Re: Smoke
Talking about using dry seasoned wood is a bit of a myth!
Quite some years ago, (around 40 in fact), a relative of mine rolled out a truck tyre, a hand full of pine kindling wood and a half of a newspaper. I grabbed his chainsaw and we went out into his orchard to cut and burn 20 to 30 wild walnut trees that were self sewn. I didn't believe that it would work.
He laid the tire down and started a fire in the casing. Yep, plenty of smoke. Started up the saw and cut down some of the trees. I was busy feeding the fire with the sticky white sap dripping walnut and throwing it on the fire. Within 10 minutes, we had one hell of a fire. You could not get within 20 feet of it due to the fierce heat from the raging fire. We burnt all of the trees in a half hour and next morning all that remained was the steel beeding from the tyre and a wheelbarrow or two of ash.
I tried the same technique 10 years later when the neighbour removed 10 large eucalypt (gum trees) for his pool. We started a fire (but not with a tyre) on the vacant block next door and after 10 minutes we were starting to panick as we were setting the trees alight in their canopy. Again, no smoke once the fire is well alite.
Green eucalypt burns well but needs a good supply of heat to get it going.
Just don't burn wet or saturated wood, guaranteed to produce much smoke with little heat.
I prefer to use well seasoned dense gum (eucalypt) for my fires, plenty of heat and very little smoke, none after the fire is going for 10 minutes or so. Here in Australia, we also use malley roots which are the stumps from a short eucalypt that is cleared in marginal agricultural areas. They burn beautifully and produce huge amounts of heat.
Neill  |