Overclock
High Performance
Hi folks!
One of you kindly sent me the link to this thread. Thanks!
To be totally clear, this was for fun. I respect your expertise, and yes, if I wasn't around my father would have split these with a wedge or simply sawed them in half. But I was home for a few days for Christmas and I was supposed to break up these rounds so my father (bad back) could lift them and split them himself (with the Fiskars— it's a great old man tool). I had originally intended to do a comparison of both quartering and slabbing techniques, but I didn't have enough time or enough clear rounds to do that. I included the Fiskars because it's very popular among the internet community (love or hate) and it has its place as a cheap tool, but I wanted to show that it is not as effective for splitting big rounds, especially knotty ones.
My family has heated our house with firewood all my life, and I've been splitting firewood with an 8 lb traditional maul for over a decade, which is the better part of my life. The Fiskars is useful in some cases (small diameter, straight grained stuff) where its light weight and maneuverability make it quick and the wood will break in one hit. Since I am young and broad shouldered enough to swing it, my 30 lb maul is a great tool too. I fully understand that I am blessed to have the youth and strength that I do, and I try not to abuse my body.
I made the 30 lb maul after spending a few years doing manual rock breaking for landscaping with a 20 lb hammer. It seemed like the 12 lb maul I had was pretty easy to swing, and I'd get more powerful strikes with a heavier tool. Was I right? Yes. Is this a solution for everybody, or even me in a few years? No. Of course not!
And finally, in defense of the 30 lb maul, while I totally agree that wedges would be much less troublesome, I would say from my experience that for the entire process this is faster, at least the way I use wedges. A wedge would be faster to quarter these rounds, but then I'd still spend some time pounding on the quarters with the 8 lb maul. For breaking up the quarters, I would still prefer to use a heavier tool than an 8 lb maul. I suppose this is callow impatience, but I don't like having to strike more than once for a split.
It takes about one to four minutes to break the round with the 30 lb maul, and then five to ten minutes to break up the quarters and pile them up. Using a wedge would be roughly the same amount of time to quarter, though probably a little less. Using an 8 lb maul to break up the quarters would be slower (but certainly less effort!) at least the way I swing it. Someone mentioned that I have terrible form for my swing— this is the way my father taught me to swing the tool, and it works better than any other method I've seen in person or online, but I'm totally receptive to a better way, because at the end of the day I have to split a lot of firewood every year. I know of the axe-twist method, but it tends not to work quartering big rounds. So if I'm doing something wrong with my swing, I'd love to fix it! As for the hydraulic splitter, my family has a 26 ton hydraulic splitter that would have torn these rounds apart. However, it would have required moving the splitter (which is fairly heavy by itself) from one round to another, since these rounds weighed 800 pounds or so, which is too heavy for our little tractor's bucket. And once they were split in half, it would still be necessary to wrestle a 400 pound half around to split it again. I'd say for effort hydraulics about break even with my 30 lb maul. But wedges are definitely the way to go to do this fastest with the least effort.
For general woodsplitting, I think that a 20 lb maul with the same wide-angle as this one would be a somewhat more practical tool. But again, I'm not a professional, and this was mostly for fun.
Thanks for your interest, even if you think I'm an idiot!
It was me, Bud. Welcome to Arboristsite.
