That is some nice looking Oak. My favorite is also the standing dead Red Oak. Here on my property way too many of the big Reds are dying, I assume from an Oak Wilt. The White Oak almost never die, and the few Chestnut Oak are thankfully not being affected.
Anyway, I just finished up a nice big Dead Red as the first tree of my 2015-16 season and started replenishing my stacks.
This one also about 30" at the base, with a bit of a burl on the one side there.
I cut it down and bucked the bottom with a Dolmar 6100 with a 24" bar,
Bucked the top ¾ with a Dolmar 510 with an 18" bar,
I "field dress"; splitting where they fall, and hauling them to my stacks with 4 wheeler and a relatively small cart to minimize the trail damage in my woods.
I find this straight grained Red Oak splits so nicely, I was able to split this 22" round into 16 relatively equal pieces without a wasted strike, or even having to reset the round. I took this picture of the nice round spread of splits:
But once the diameter of the rounds gets much above 24", I end up having to halve them with an old hardware store maul first so I can even lift them on top of another round for splitting with my fiskars.
Always working under the supervision of my partner, and Director of Security.
I've had no problem splitting by hand with my Fiskars x27. Here is my first stack from this one. The Moisture Meter reads about 38% now, and I usually find it drops about 2%/month once split and loosely stacked.
Good start on next year's firewood.