Wood Splitting Purists.....

[Shmudda]

Wanted to send this out there with the fall and winter coming upon us and ask the question of you wood chucks.....

In todays fuel hungry, automated world how many people actually still use the old splitting maul to split their wood? When you answer the question, note how much you burn and split/stack per year too.

Me....I burn about 3+ cords every heating season, which heats my house quite well and keeps my gas bill nice and low. I also split all my wood with a 10 lb maul. About the only thing automated with my whole operation is my Stihl 036 Pro, and MS 460 that just hawg thru the logs. Of course, I use a good old trusty 1993 Honda TRX300FWD ATV to skid the logs to their final processing area before they are bucked into smaller pieces for splitting.

Needless to say this activity is quite a passtime with me as I have at least 12-14 cords stacked, dried, and ready at all times.

Lets hear what others do...........

Craig

 

[schmism]

if i had to pick a favorite from of excersize it would be splitting oak.

I Only own a splitting mall, sledge, couple of wedges.

I only burn between a .5 and 1 chord a year in my garage stove. I supplement the tree wood with a lot of old busted up pallets i pick up. I burn pallets and wood shop scraps about 1:1 for my tree wood i use.

 

[Mighty Dodge]

I burn around 3 cords a year. Used to split it all the old fashioned way until 3 years ago when I finally bought a splitter. I still like doing it manually, but the older I get less so.

M.D.

 

[randy41]

not sure how much wood i burn per year but whatever i burn i split by hand. maybe a couple of cords.

 

[IXLR8]

I go through about 1.5 cord a year to help heat my home. I have a 15lb rock splitting maul that I put an edge on to split the wood that I have been using for the last 35 years. If I can swing it... I can split it! Last month my neighbor brought over his log splitter to help me out. It is a home made job, 8" I beam, 12ft long, 5"dia cylinder, 36" stroke, adjustable stop can split logs up to 48" long, has old Mack truck wheels on it... a monster... nothing stops it. It sure is making me think about getting my own splitter as I get older and that 15lb maul gets heavier and heavier.

 

[Deerlope]

I think it should be required that everyone replying state their age(66). I use to split 40 cords with a double bit axe(with I still have) per year. When I got to 47 years old and the family was needing more of my time I built my first splitter. When I built my new house and super insulated it I gave the spiltter away. Six years ago I felt guilty about not burning wood because I had so much of it just going to waste. I put in an outdoor boiler and and built another splitter.

 

[billbill1]

I am 56, I split everything I burned by hand for about 20 years. I bought a splitter and have never looked back. I'm not in nearly as good of shape now either, splitting with a maul is very good exercise.

 

[Reg]

I have a hydraulic splitter, I quit burning wood soon after I got it, SIL has it right now.

The best routine for me was to fill up the saw and cut until it ran out of gas.
Walk around with the maul, kick 'em upright and split right there.
Load up the garden way cart and haul them off for stacking.
By the time I had stacked the saw was cool enough that I didn't have to worry about gas on a hot exhaust muffler, so I would re-fill the saw and start over. This got me through stacking everything that was split and splitting everything that was cut, typically quitting after 3, maybe 4 cycles of this.
I found it gave me a good work-out without getting saw buzz hands, lower back pain, or any other concentrated stress type problems. Splitting with a maul got me to straighten up, stretch my back from the stooping of sawing, probably all GOOD for me.

OTOH, that hydraulic splitter was serious WORK !!!
Everything had to be hauled TO it and again FROM it.
It was "stooping work" and my lower back suffered.
To have enough wood to feed it for a while took a LOT of continuous cutting (saw buzz hands) and I would often quit for the day with some split, some cut, some stacked, etc.

 

[SPYDERLK]

I am 59. I did hand splitting 3-4cord/yr for a while before I built my splitter/combination DC generator welder. Hand splitting can be very satisfying, but it forces you to be pretty picky about the wood, or else tolerate a lot of frustration. With the splitter, the whole tree, of any variety you choose, just gets split onto the pallet and transported to the woodpile. I typically just carry the tree to the splitter in one piece if space allows, and then cut it to feed the splitter. Crotches and knots sometimes get masticated so I save them for the top of the stacked pile.
larry

 

[Reg]

Spyderlk,
I found that too.
I learned to be selective about what I would hit with the maul.
Crotch pieces got "trimmed" to get small slabs off, sometimes I would arrange my cuts around where the crotch piece was, sometimes I would set them aside for outdoor evening chat fires if they were too big for the stove. Other times I would just cut them to thin enough slices.
They give you something to think about and problem solve while also doing the mere physical stuff (-:
Oh yeah, I forgot the age thing; I have a few on Ya (-: