How long do you let your green rounds sit before splitting?

[Wood Doctor]

Interesting thread. I guess few members here deal with elm, cottonwood, and birch. These have to sit in the round for several months. Then, when the bark starts to fall off and the ends are checked, only then will they split rather well. If you try to split them fresh green, forget it. You will then spend most of your time using a hatchet to break strings. Birch is less revealing than cottonwood or elm because the bark clings tightly.

 

[Guido Salvage]

Meet my splitter.....

We have been together for about 25 years. I have never done the math, but with me weighing around 170 pounds there is not much tonnage produced when it hits the wood.

I cut them into rounds and then split them and load them in the truck to be taken to the pile. Virtually all the wood I cut is a variety of oak (with an occasional hickory, maple or dead dogwood) and I find it easier to split immediately after cutting. For me, if the end gets weathered it seems to be harder to split.

I no longer fight ornery pieces of wood. If an occasional piece won't split (i.e. knot or fork) I cut it into "chunks" and feed that to the stove.

 

[trailmaker]

I've started to cure my wood in the round, partly because I've got so much wood coming at me right now that it's all I can do to get it bucked and moved out of the forest. I cut short 14 inch rounds for North-South loading so they have a high enough ratio of end grain to cure in a reasonable time. The short rounds for N/S loading are also much easier to hand split than the 20+ in. rounds I would need for E/W loading. One nice thing about round curing is that the splits I bring down to the house are very clean, they haven't been collecting dust and debris during the drying process.