Lemonade out of lemons. Chicken salad out of chicken shhhut yo mouth!

I often use my charcoal chimney starter, filling it with a couple small logs, and absolutely pack the bottom with newspaper and light it. Make sure there's very little wind or it's protected because the flame on the wood will go out much easier then charcoal. If you just light the wood and put it in the smoker, you'll get a scorching 600 F flame with tons of smoke. Let the log burn down some, and then throw it in there. Those logs will last forever at low heat from my experience. good luck, I always take cheap wood like mulberry and burn it down into my own charcoal.

Always worked for stickburning offsets...just make sure the wood is down to coals (for a kettle).

The aspect burning wood... the fire needs to be HOT and FAST BURNING (not smoldering) for cleaner burns (thin blue smoke).

There's two ways... pre-burn down to black coals (resembling lump) or stoke up a hotter fire with plenty of air circulation on a small pile of small pieces of wood.

You will be tending the fire more often - every 30-45 minutes to keep it going well.

I say just bite the bullet and go buy some charcoal. In the time since you started this thread you could have been to the store and back. It isn't like it is Black Friday with crazy shoppers everywhere.

Brizz, cut the wood into fist size chunks, pile the wood the same you would charcoal, lite the wood and let it ash over just like charcoal start cooking, add wood as needed to finish cook. I use wood like charcoal briquettes all the time works great.

A butt would be a good piece of meat to experiment with, since you can always pop it into the oven if things don't go well.

The key to burning wood, whether alone or with charcoal, is that wood will put out a dense smoke as it gets started, and it is not a particularly tasty smoke. As it get's hotter, it will burn cleaner, to where you barely see it, but you can still smell it, and it smells good.

If you want to use just wood, you need to light the wood long before you put the meat on, so the wood can burn enough to create a nice bed of coals. Then, you can add small amounts of wood as needed to keep your fire going.

Just like with a campfire, only using less wood. Once you have a bed of coals, all you do is add wood a little at a time.

If you can cut your logs into chunks, it will be easier to manage, IMO.

CD