You could spend hours reading forum threads where firewood bark, and what to do with it, is fiercely debated.
But, at the end of the day, it’s really not that complicated. My family has burned firewood as a primary heat source for decades, and in the below guide I’m going to cover all of your firewood bark questions.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Firewood Bark On or Off (For Burning)?
- Burning Firewood Bark Up or Down?
- Should You Stack Firewood Bark Up or Down?
- How to Remove Bark from Firewood?
- What To Do with Firewood Bark?
- Firewood Bark Identification
Firewood Bark On or Off (For Burning)?
The first question to address is whether you should burn firewood with the bark on or off. When people ask this question, they are generally wondering if there is some problem with burning bark, or if the fire will burn better without it. Let’s start there.
Is It OK to Burn Bark?
It is fine to burn bark with firewood in a fireplace, wood stove, or outdoor campfire. Bark does burn differently than wood, and can produce more smoke and even more heat for some species, but as long as the firewood and bark are fully seasoned to below 20% moisture content, there is no problem with burning it.
One of the major concerns that people have about burning bark, is whether bark will produce significant creosote build-up in their chimney. This is a reasonable concern, because bark tends to produce more smoke than wood. And when there’s more smoke, this can lead to faster or more severe creosote build-up.
However, your primary concern with creosote should not be about burning bark. It should instead be about properly seasoning your firewood (bark included) and following the recommended guidelines for chimney cleaning and inspection.
To further illustrate this point, and to hopefully reduce your bark-burning concerns, my family burns bark every winter and we’ve had no major creosote problems over a span of 20+ years. As additional support for this point, feel free to review these articles on firewood burning and processing from the EPA, Michigan State University, and Cornell University. None of these resources suggest debarking firewood.
With that said, if you’re really interested in debarking your firewood, there are some benefits to doing so. Let’s spend a few moments looking at the pros and cons in more detail:
Pros / Cons of Burning Bark
Now that we’ve established that you CAN burn bark if you choose to. Let’s cover some of the reasons you may (or may not) want to burn bark.
Pros of Burning Bark
- Saves time and effort: to me, this is probably the biggest reason to burn bark. It can take a lot of time to debark firewood and it’s probably not worth the effort for most people.
- Can burn hotter than wood: for certain species’ of firewood, for example Douglas Fir, the bark can actually burn at a higher BTU heat output than the wood itself. If you’re using firewood as a primary heat source, this can be a great boost to your overall heat output.
- Nothing goes to waste: unless you have other uses for the bark (more on this below), burning the bark also prevents waste.
Cons of Burning Bark
- Can make a mess: bark tends to be messy, dirty, and flaky. As a result, bark can disproportionately contribute to the mess caused by firewood in your home or storage area.
- Carries bugs: similar to above, bark and the space between the wood and the bark, tends to provide shelter for a disproportionate number of the pests and insects that could be living in your wood.
- Can produce more smoke / ash: bark also tends to produce more smoke and ash than the wood does, which may be annoying to you, especially if you are going for a low-smoke outdoor campfire.
Should You Burn Bark?
Now that we’ve covered the pros and cons in more detail, let’s bring all the pieces of this “burning bark” conversation together with a brief summary:
As a general rule, it’s better to burn bark than to remove it from firewood for 3 main reasons. First, the time and effort required for debarking is not worth the potential benefits of reduced mess, smoke, and ash. Second, bark can produce more heat than the wood for certain species. Third, burning bark reduces waste.
If you only prepare small quantities of firewood, or if you are primarily interested in low-smoke outdoor fires, then you might still like to debark a small batch of firewood. Personally, I wouldn’t bother, but I do think there’s still room here for personal preferences.
Now if we assume that you are burning firewood that does have bark on it. Then, let’s jump into another common point of discussion.
Burning Firewood Bark Up or Down?
Imagine you’re loading split firewood into a wood stove or fireplace. Do you load the firewood randomly? Or, is it better to burn firewood with the bark side up or down?
It is typically better to burn firewood with the bark side up when you are starting a fire, because the inside of the wood usually lights easier than the bark side. Otherwise, burning firewood with the bark side up or down has no impact on the quality or heat output of your fire.
There you have it. Common question = demystified.
Now let’s shift gears a little bit, and talk about STACKING.
Should You Stack Firewood Bark Up or Down?
According to the US Forest Service, it is better to stack firewood with the bark on top when it is stored outdoors. This helps to prevent water from pooling inside the bark. However, if the wood is stored under shelter, it doesn’t make a significant difference which way the bark is stacked.
Another way to visualize this, is to simply think about the SHAPE of the bark on split firewood. It forms a rough U-shape, and if that bark is put on the bottom, it can act as a bowl that collects rain or snow.
On the other hand, if you put the bark side up, then the U-shape of the bark will be facing downwards, which reduces the amount of water that it can collect. As I mentioned, this only really matters if you’re storing your firewood outside. If your firewood stack is covered or indoors, it doesn’t really matter which way you stack it, feel free to use your personal preference or to just stack it randomly.
How to Remove Bark from Firewood
There is one benefit to removing bark that we haven’t mentioned yet, and that’s the fact that it can help your firewood to dry faster, due to greater exposure to sunlight and airflow.
So, if for this reason or another, you decide that you do want to debark your firewood. Here’s how you can do it:
1. Season First
You’ve probably seen bark fall off of firewood by itself. Generally speaking, that’s only going to happen with wood that is dead or seasoned.
As a result, it’s going to be a lot easier to remove the bark from your firewood AFTER it has already been seasoned.
If you were to try to peel the bark off of fresh green wood, it would require significantly more effort. The only reason for doing this that I can think of, is if you’re severely behind on your firewood stockpile, and need to accelerate the drying process for a batch of green wood.
Of course, the downside of seasoning the firewood first, is that you’ll have to stack it twice. Fist, you’ll stack it for seasoning. Then, you’ll debark the wood, and restack it. Obviously that’s a lot of work, but hey, I already warned you about debarking being labor intensive 🙂
2. Grab Gloves and a Hatchet or Spud
You’ll want a hearty pair of work gloves and a hatchet for this job.
If you’re the crafty type you could also make your own debarking spud, like what they’ve done in the below video:
3. First, Try Gloves Only
To begin, I’d suggest trying to simply peel the bark off with your hands.
If it’s easy to do it this way, then it’s probably going to be easier and faster than using a tool.
If the bark is clinging on, and you’re having a hard time pulling it free with your hands, then you can move on and try a tool.
4. Use a Hatchet or Bark Spud
If you just need a little more leverage, you might be able to use your bark spud as a makeshift crowbar. In other words, slide your tool in between the bark and the wood, and push outwards to try to pry the bark off.
Alternatively, you can chop the bark off with your hatchet, similar to how you would split kindling off of the edges of a log.
You may find it helpful to put down a large round log (face side up), so that you can use it as a chopping block. This way you can elevate each piece of wood you’re working on, making the chopping process easier on your back, and preventing your hatchet from getting driven into the dirt.
Debarking Before or After Splitting?
If debarking is important to you, and if you have plenty of time to let your firewood season, then it will probably be easier for you to season your wood before splitting it. In other words, your steps would go like this:
- Cut firewood into round chunks
- Stack and season the firewood
- Debark the firewood
- Split the firewood
- Re-stack the firewood
This way you can debark full round chunks, instead of debarking 4-8+ split pieces of firewood. Whether or not this is practical will obviously depend on the size and weigh of your rounds, but I think you get the idea.
What To Do with Firewood Bark?
If you’ve debarked your firewood, that leaves one question remaining: what do you do with the leftover bark?
Here are a few ideas to make sure nothing goes to waste:
- Turn it into mulch: if you grind it up into chunks, you can turn bark into mulch for your garden or landscaping.
- Use it as animal bedding: you could also use ground up bark as bedding for livestock, such as chickens, turkeys, etc.
- Use it as kindling: Yep, you can still burn it! Some people like to specifically use bark as kindling to help get their fires going.
Firewood Bark Identification
One of the biggest challenges with firewood identification in general, is how to identify the wood without any leaves available. And one way you can do this, is by looking for distinctive features in the bark.
If you’ve got a pile of bark, you may also be curious to know what kind of wood that bark came from.
This is easier for some species of tree than others, but here is a video summary that I made which covers 11 common species that you can identify just by looking at the bark:
