[Otis857]

Its big trash pickup time in Glendale next week and Im going to trim my trees. Im taking down a small peach tree and trimming a plum and pear tree. I read the thread about using fruitwood for smoking wood. My question is that I heard somewhere that you need to make sure the bark is gone before you use it. Is this true? It peels off fairly easy after it has cured (most of the time), but is it necessary?

[Mark]

I leave it on any fruitwood I've pruned from apple, cherry, pear, maple, grapevine, etc. It's all good as far as I can tell!

 

[Otis857]

THanks Mark, I had heard it creates more soot than the wood alone. Thats one less step to do. But I think I will trim the ends to get rid of the chainsaw oil. 

[Crash]

We leave the bark on ours if there is any.  I havent noticed a difference between bark on or off.

[Spicy Mike]

I live in an area (Okanagan valley, BC) where we have a ton of fruit orchards and vinyards to pick from. I asked the bark question a long time ago as I remember reading something along the lines of bark creating more soot etc but couldn't find anything to support it. Perhaps I was thinking about using green wood and how it wasn't recommended due to 20-40% water content and other "volitiles" required to be burned off before the temperature can rise.
Either way, I don't remove the bark unless I'm using some old knarly stump stock with a real thick layer of bark.