A visual guide follows.
Sources:
A man after my own heart, on the beach at Newcastle, Co. Down. We bonded and talked of driftwood we had known and loved. The HUGE advantage of driftwood is that it is in the public domain. Councils do have a tendency to tidy this up, so carpe diem.
Salvage from house renovations can yield a lot of easily gathered, but usually dirty and spitty wood. There may well be ownership issues too; approach with caution after dark. With gloves.
A good haul of hedgerow blackthorn. Council hedge operations are a great source for this, also elderwood, which doesn't burn well, but if dry enough will smoulder away to nothing.
A mixed bag of drift and other wood, saw for scale.
Firewood pornography, but too big, too public, and too owned!
Almost perfect. Four foot plus lengths of driftwood washed onto the large boulders of a reclaimed shoreline. Easy access from motorway-side cycle track, and the wood is off damp ground.
The Twelve (ash) Logs of Christmas. I cannot reveal my source for this. Gives out a lovely warm, green scent with the stove is hot.
You can get a lot on a transport bike! This sort of find cannot really be passed by, although it needs a lot of lifting, cutting and drying.
Drying:
Of course it needs to be dry. I don't have a woodshed but for small batches you can improvise.
A batch of driftwood maturing nicely.
Blackthorn, ash and pine, under the polycarbonate roof of the outside toilet. It gets REALLY hot in here in Summer.
A sunny spot.
Yule logs, 2011, carefully sorted and labelled. One problem is getting emotionally attached to your firewood, particularly prize items, or pieces which you have carefully matured over a long period.
Postscript:
Before...
...and After.
It's a man's world.
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