>>1886194For cooking, I really like hickory, especially for smoking meat. For a camp fire, I love mesquite, it burns long, hot, and clean. For tool handles, I like hackberry. For gun stocks, I love a fine-grained, high-polished walnut. For boxes to store things in (cigars, jewelry, clothing, etc.), nothing beats quality cedar (actual cedar, not the various trees they call cedar in an attempt to fool you).
I fucking hate mountain cedar/juniper. The only thing it's good for is making fence posts. It makes me itch like crazy when using lumber or plywood made from it, I hate using it for firewood because it spits and pops constantly and is very smoky, and it's utterly useless for cooking because it gives your food an oily, metallic taste. It's also the tree that gives everyone cedar fever whenever it shoots out metric tons of pollen. Fuck mountain cedar/juniper, every single one should be cut down and burned. They're the cockroaches of the tree world.
