Today I finally started cutting up this big pile of logs. Some of these logs have been lying here for over 2 years from when we cleared the road and and when we cleared spaces for the house and garden. The logs in the back of the pile are the oldest so I decided to cut a log from the back of the pile.
I picked a red oak log to cut up because we are still evaluating whether or not our fireplace has burning problems. I wanted some oak to see how well it would burn in our FP. The log I picked was fairly dry in some spots but wet in some others. I pulled the log out of the pile with a chain until one end of the log was sticking out in the air. This position allowed me to saw pieces completely off without needing to roll over the log. The log was about 25 feet long and approximately 15 inches in diameter.
I cut up the log into 18" long pieces. Our fireplace will handle pieces up to 24" but pieces that long are a little clumsey to use in our FP. When the log was down to the last 10 feet, I pulled it completely off the pile so that it was lying on the ground. I made the cuts on the top side of the log, then rolled it over with
one of these that I bought from Northern tool two days ago. The
one I purchased can be seen in my FEL. It has a wooden unlike the fiberclass handle shown in the picture. Rolling a big log over was a breaze with this tool. I'm very glad I bought it.
After cutting up the log, I started splitting with my maul and axe. The red oak split fairly well with an occasional log that gave me some trouble. I split the logs into 6 to 8 pieces. As the day progressed, my splitting proceedure improved. What worked fairly well was to split the log into 2 halves with my maul. Then I
used my axe to split the halves into smaller pieces. Using the heavy maul was a lot of work so I took advantage of the lighter axe for the smaller pieces. I was also much more acurate swinging the lighter axe than the heavy maul. After splitting each 18" log, I stacked the pieces onto the pallet. I didn't have my wife's help on this log. This
knotty piece gave me particular troubles. I spent a good 15 minutes or so splitting it with my maul, axe, and wedges. If I had any sense I would have put this piece aside and waited to split it when I get a log splitter.
When I finished cutting up the log, my pallet was looking rather tall. Unfortunately, my tractor couldn't lift that big of a stack. Thus I had to unload some of the wood and stack it onto another pallet. I then delivered the nicely stacked pallet of wood into our garage where it is easily accessible.