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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>>   Woodstoves are not created to burn super dry
> wood.  It isn't a problem in an open fireplace or even in a wood fired oven
> but in a wood stove it is a problem. 

Airtight wood stoves are not made to burn super dry wood.  In non-airtight 
stoves it doesn't make any difference, anything will burn.

> >I'm sure someone else can 
> better explain the "free moisture" and "bound moisture" and volatile gas 
> thingy and how it is most of your heat value.  Chemists????
> 

Wood is made out of sugar.  Plants make glucose molecules and (I'm being 
inexact here, but in way of illustration) if they are jointed, as it were, 
"corner 
to corner",  they make starch.  But if they are joined edge to edge, they 
make cellulose.  The plant's game plan is to make sugar by photosynthesis and 
store it somewhere as starch, then when the plant wants to grow, it dissolves 
the 
starch and relinks the sugar molecules (like pop-beads, any body remember 
those?) into cellulose.

So wood is make up mainly of great interconnected bits of C6H12O6.  When we 
eat sugar or burn wood, we combine 6(O2) from the atmosphere with the  
C6H12O6 
to yield 6(C02) + 6(H20),  carbon-dioxide and water, and heat.   When through 
enzymatic action, the action of bactria and fungi, and other chemical 
actions, 
the wood slowly gives off carbon-dioxide gas and water, same as if it were 
burning.... very slowly.

If you ever run into an idiot who tells you that you are bad because all your 
wood burning is releasing C02 into the atmospher, baloney!  A piece of wood 
gives off the exact same amount of carbon dioxide if you burn it or leave it 
to 
rot.

There are some chemical actions whereby wood gives off the water in the 
glucose molecule but leaves some of the carbon behind.  Carbon is black, 
that's why 
decaying wood is grey.

James