I'm keen on learning more about different woods and how they burn in particular in the context of bushcraft. There is a lot of existing literature on all the different woods out there. I started to read up on the subject and quickly found that it's rather daunting. What I was able to gather was: There are so many wood types and there is a lot of variability in how they burn.
(for example: Hazel burns well, but Alder tends not to burn so well, and it just goes on and on)
In good time, perhaps I will make sense of it all. In the mean time, I hope that I can find some other general rules to follow until I have the proper experience to know for myself. I'm familiar with the hardwood/softwood dichotomy, but I'm hoping there is more to it.
Question
Are there any tells or heuristics I can use when evaluating a wood I am unsure of to gauge how well it will burn? By how well it burns, I mean things like burn-rate, smoke, ect. This way, even if I'm unsure of the exact wood, I can at least have a vague idea of what to expect from it. Or are woods just too heterogenous to generalize their burns?
Further Clarfications
- Let's try to hold environmental factors constant, clearly wood that is wet from a recent rain is different than if the wood is just naturally more moist
- other physical properties of the wood are fair-game, like: water content, hardness, structure, ect