Very cool. Or you could just get a manly stove that would hold the original log, sans chopping. We had a free-stander that would gobble up a piece twice that size.
I wished I'd have seen that earlier. I just got in from whacking up a cord. Sure could of used that technique.
Nice. Takes a pretty dang straight grain and uniform species for that to work well though. Not all of us are blessed by such easily splitting wood
That looked like fir or spruce, didn't it? I have a shit ton (literally) of rounds to chop tomorrow, I believe I'll try that out. It's all 18-32' rounds and fairly strait grained. I also have some 16" rounds of black oak and I'll see if it works on the tougher stuff. I'd have given it a try today but had to go up to Portland for the day. Ten freakin' hours of driving to attend a three hour function. Not My idea of time well spent but it was for a memorial for my wife's sister that passed away a couple weeks ago in Kirkland,Wa. Too bad to, it was perfect weather to work up a sweat with the maul. One cord down, 3 more to go.
After watching that vid again, and actually trying the technique, I can see that it only works on dry de-barked rounds of cedar or other easily split coniferous wood. I tried it on green hardwoods and it was a waste of time.
I'd use a hydrolic, but this year the rounds are in the woods and lifting them is harder than simply splitting them in place. A person still has to man-handle the rounds. Actually mauling the wood is the easy part. Picking up and stacking the pieces is what takes the time.
2 cords down, 2 to go. I'd like to believe that I'd have kept going today until the rains hit (it's a downpour!), but my bones just can't keep up anymore. I used to be able whack two cord a day, now I'm lucky to get 2/3rds of a cord. As for a pie cutter, it's been tried and again, only works with strait, easily split coniferous woods like cedars or non knotty pines. Deciduous trees are a whole other ball of wax. Some hardwoods like oak and heavily knotted bigleaf maples are too much for even a 25 ton slitter with only one maul head let alone six of them. For that to work would take a 50-60 ton ram at least. A four-way takes a 32 ton pump and ram: http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_28657_28657 I did a job up in the stix and on the way up there was a log deck of Madrone (http://owic.oregonstate.edu/species/madrone.php) and commercial operation that had one of these: [video=youtube;YhfE-WufzWU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhfE-WufzWU[/video]
[video=youtube;hhmKBDIAXd0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmKBDIAXd0&feature=player_detailpage[/video]
I love my Fiskar's axe. If I had a need to split wood I would get their super splitter, it splits better than any maul I have used, with the exceptions fiddy mentioned. We have lots of maple and random hardwoods that I have had to split, that stuff is easy. I think locust was the worst, I cant remember which species it was
they work on the smaller rounds. Remember, you have to slam the round onto the spike. Rounds too big to pick up are the real threat.
