Wood begets wood. One of my friend’s wife’s exes heard that I was into wooding, and they said they had a lot of wood they were trying to get rid of, and would I like to haul it up a very steep hill and have it?
Yes, obviously.
Four truck loads later, I have hauled half of their wood up their very steep hill.
It’s seasoned (been outside for a couple of years), but they’re rounds, which means they’re both too wide for the mouth of my wood stove and aren’t as dry as they could be. So they must be split.
I do not split with an axe, because I am not into pain. But mostly I am not very good at it (if you’d like prime axe splitting content, I highly recommend Nicole Maple Coenen, on whatever social media platform you dine upon. She even splits wood with a sword sometimes).
Instead, I use a log splitter:
Wood splitters, or at least my wood splitter, uses hydraulics to press the plate into the wood, which presses into the splitting wedge. You can swap out the plate with a second wedge, but that is how you get a log jammed two ways with no way to get it out.
See that mallet (wacker hammer) on the side? That’s for when wood gets jammed on the wedge and I have to wack it off. Ahem.
I only split seasoned wood, which means wood that is partially (or wholly) dry. Why not split wood that is green so it can dry faster? I got some small green pieces from my green pile to show you.
These logs are green, and snarl up inside, literally leak wood juice, jam on the wedge, snarl on the wedge and otherwise are a headache to deal with.
When you split a dry piece, you hear a nice pop, the wood splits cleanly, and you can use your hands to pry the bottom apart without using the pressure of the splitter. Most of this wood is about half way there.
Last night, my neighbour and friend, Gerald, came over to move some dirt. We went through the wood shed to get to my workshop, and he noticed that I cut my logs from the pith (centre round bit of the log), then cut those again from the center, and sometimes a third time if it’s a big log. It gives me wood that are shaped like slices of pie. He said he cuts bits off the edge when he has a big log, slowly working his way towards the centre. It means he has a bunch of wood shaped like half moons. I’m going to try that next time.
Splitting is when I spend the most time up close to the wood grain, I think. It smells good. It’s pretty. And you notice things you might not notice while hauling logs around. Like this:
It’s also pretty zen. It’s especially nice to do when it’s raining, so you can hear the rain on the shed roof.
Good night!
