Chopping Wood

[racfish]

I was driving home yesterday and saw a guy cutting a old birch tree. I asked what he was doing with the rounds.. He said theyre yours ,so I brought home 12 rounds.Damn birch is a tough cutting hard wood. Here it is almost 11:00 am and I'm sore. Im determined to buck it up today. If nothing else its a great workout. I'm using a splitting wedge which helps some. Any suggestion are welcome.

[obryan214]

buy a log splitter or pay a neighbor kid a few bucks to do it. I used to get $10 per truckload from the neighbor back in the early 80's. big bucks back then.

[G-Man]

I just use a proper splitting maul and if need be a wedge or two. The only issues you should have is with the knots. I try and section the round to leave the knots intact, splitting them by hand is more trouble that it's worth.
Note: A plain old axe is just going to get stuck in the round, leave it in the shed when it comes time to split the wood.

[MarkFromSea]

Ran into this with a spruce that fell on my house.... by hand, multiple wedges, splitting mauls and sweat equity. It'll be good wood in the Fall.

[Bodofish]

I lived in a house, ok houses for too many years that were heated only with wood. If the rounds are fresh, let them sit for a bit and start to dry. It only takes a few days for the cellular bonds to start breaking down. They'll be much easy to split. The other thing is don't try and do it all in one day. If you have 12 rounds, you can have them all split and stacked in under 2 weeks. Just do one round a day. You'll feel much better and derive more gain from the exercise a bit at a time. Manage it. Splitting wood is a young mans game, I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't do it just be smart about it.

One place I lived was a two load per winter and the other was a four load house. A load is a log truck full of logs. It's a lot of wood! and a lot of practice with a maul and a chain saw.

[YellowBear]

Just keep swinging,lol. 12 rounds ain't much.

[racfish]

I still got two more rounds to go. I used 2 of my splitting wedges. I asked the 16 yo neighbor kid but he wanted 40 dollars. For that I'd get a gas powered splitter. I used one on Madrona. Works great.

[Idstud]

I was going to say for the cost of 40$ you could rent a gas powered splitter some were in that range. I was going to agree with above and let it dry for a few days. I would try and put it in spot where it was in the sun all day then a few days later you would be surprised how much easier it is to split. All wet/green wood is hard to split. Sounds like a good work out though.

[skagit510]

Use a chainsaw. I heat my place with wood and the crappy stuff gets ripped with the saw. Be careful if you are a stranger to the saw. Make sure the saw body is tight to the round and the round cant get grabbed and thrown. High rpm is key, do not use a skip chain as it will make the bar allot grabbier.