My First... and likely my last...

[Whitespider]

I'm about half done splitting the big Sugar Mable. I've never worked hard maple before, but after reading on AS what great firewood it is I went with it. Well, it better be darn great firewood because it's a huge pain-in-the-azz to split... and even more of a pain to stack. I'd rather split elm, at least most of that has straight grain instead of this curvy, twisty stuff. I've got a small mountain of un-stackable uglies for burnin' in the fire pit, way, way more than I get from workin' oak... or elm. If I was in the business of selling firewood I'd haf'ta add an aggravation fee to this stuff.

Y'all can keep your hard maple... this is my first and probably my last. I can't see puttin' myself through the aggravation again when there are dozens of oak, ash and even standing-dead elm in my woodlot.

 

[Ronaldo]

Can hardly believe its more difficult than some of the Elm I have had the displeasure of working with , will have to trust you on this one because I have never been around the Hard Maple. Have Fun!:msp_wink:

Ron

 

[ShaneLogs]

Any pictures of the splitting ?

 

[Dogsout]

Spider I am in the same boat only with Elm instead of Hard Maple. I have never had the honor of any Hard Maple but a couple of months ago I posted a thread about tackling a fresh cut elm. I suppose everyone has to try each of these and form their own opinion but I can't see any more Elm in my near, or distant future. Might not be the right way to look at it but Elm to me is just to hard on me and my equipment. If your Maple put up as big a fight as the Elm I cut and split my hat is off to you and I will have an extra cold one tonight in your honor.

 

[Whitespider]

Nope… got no pictures of the actual splitting.

Yeah, splitting elm can be aggravating, especially green cut elm. I find that cutting standing-dead (dead long enough for the bark to fall off) it splits a lot easier, although still can be stringy. But most elm (or most of the elm tree) is fairly straight-grained so most of the splits are somewhat uniform. This maple just seems to be one big knot, twisted, curvy grain that runs every-which-way. Splits may be 6-inches across on one end and only 1-inch on the other end. And on a lot of rounds my wedge starts out with the grain but ends up cutting across the grain by the time it reaches the other end. It is a bit stringy, not as stringy as elm, but it’s that damn twisting grain that makes it so irritating… and then ya’ haf’ta try and stack all those odd-shaped pieces. And there’s some sort of slimy mushroom or fungi growing on the bark, so my gloves are always greasy-slippery. I’ll be glad to be done with it.

 

[stihly dan]

Try your maul, or the new fiskers. The hand held will go with the grain. Your splits will probably look like a trapazoid. Ish. Pretty easy to split by hand as well. At least the ones up here are. It is weird that the tree seems to screw up to the sky.

 

[bobt]

Hard Maple is the premium firewood in my part of far north Michigan. We don't have much of the easy splitting oak available, and most of the Hard maple goes to the paper companies. You should see all the logging trucks hauling hard maple to the paper mills!

What hard Maple that is available for firewood is either small diameter or big stuff ridden with knots. The best stuff goes to the mills, and we have to pay the mill rate for Maple firewood. Scrounging wood is not encouraged, and if you go into the paper company lands to cut up tops, you better be quick about it, as if you are caught, it means a pricey fine!

Make no mistake, Hard Maple, (acer saccharum) makes very fine premium firewood. It splits a little harder than say White Birch or Red Oak, but one H e l l of a lot better than Yellow Birch or Elm. There isn't much Elm left around here, as almost all of it was killed off by Dutch elm disease thirty years ago.

It splits just fine when you learn to avoid the knots.

 

[CTYank]

You must be dealing with an open-grown tree, and just the smaller stems. Just guessing.

Sugar maple IMHO is Grade A-1 Primo firewood, after the stem has been processed for lumber, as possible. (Seems a total waste to use such fine wood for pulp.)

Round here, I've never seen any sugar maple approach the difficulty of splitting american elm. Nothing like it. I split it by hand (just did a truckload of it recently) with a good 3 kg maul. It's much tougher stuff than poplar, for instance, but no big deal. Air-dries nicely in one summer.

The couple of forks/knots I did recently were easily "prepped" with a partial noodling.

Northern Yankees also call it "rock maple" like it's really hard to split. They also love it for fuelwood.

 

[Whitespider]

You must be dealing with an open-grown tree, and just the smaller stems. Just guessing.

Not exactly sure what you mean by "open-grown", it was standing in the middle of my woodlot... old and gnarly. I haven' split much of the smaller stems yet, most of what I've split is the "noodled" big stuff... just short of 2 cord so far.
Here's pics from the bucking last winter...

 

[AIM]

"Open grown" pretty much means what what it indicates. "grown out in the open" such as in fence rows and whatnot where the wind can just play havoc with it. The wind can seem to twist the tree around producing a kinda squiggly grain. Many of the fence row trees will also have a lot of branches that were broken and blown off over the years producing almost like internal knots.
Hard maple does seem to be a bit twisty anyways.

Other than that it is great stuff. Once you burn it you'll be willing to do it again.

 

[greendohn]

I hate Hard Maple ! I've said it before and I aint kiddin'. It's way heavier than the BTU out put. Nasty, twisted, knotty and won't split clean/stack. Every knot hole seems to have a "vien" of dirt running deep into the wood which is hard on chains.
I had two huge maples taken down in the yard last year and burnt everything bigger than about 28" where it was felled. The yard was easier to repair than what that CRAP was to process into fire wood.
I did discover that it burned in the fire pit pretty well while still green. Nice bright flames and the smoke was mild, almost pleasant...
Maybe, just maybe, if I'm ever pressed for fire wood I'll cut it again, but i think burnin' the good wifes' end tables would be less of a hassle.

 

[Iska3]

Open Grown or one of them Pasture Trees that the cows and or deer kept eating off the tips for many years so the tree starts to branch out. Even the large limbs get to be nasty because they've been muched on for years and full of little knots. We'll take out a few trees like that each fall just to open up the woods for food plots. That's when it pays to have a big splitter and an OWB so you can leave them oieces in bigger rounds. Once you burn a few pieces, you'll like it and do more...

 

[Whitespider]

Anyway, I won’t be doing any more splitting for a few days. Friday night we got drenched with a real honest-to-goodness gully-washer. Saturday afternoon I sunk the loaded trailer up to the axle in soft ground… tried winching the little tractor and trailer out’a the mud and ended up with the trailer jammed tight into a Box Elder. Managed to get the tree cut away without slicing open the tire, but it required sticking the bar right down into the mud. Finished winching the rig out, but going that direction required driving into a lower (wetter) area of the woodlot. I needed to use the winch 3 more times to get the load up and out’a the low place. It took over 5 hours to split and haul that load into the yard. I got all the equipment back up to the shop just as a second round of storms hit, and the down-pour it gave us made the Friday night storm look like a sprinkle. Now I have small rivers and ponds all about the woodlot and the yard sloshes underfoot. Provided we don’t get anymore rain it should dry out enough by next weekend… but I won’t be in there this week fur-sure!
I don’t have a picture of the muddy-mess load (I was too angry and worn-out to think about the camera), but to give you an idea it was one like this…

And here’s the progress so far… probably one good load away from finishing the first stack.

And this is less than half the ugly pieces (there’s a few on top from an elm), pretty much filled my fire pit rack in one splitting session. There’s an even bigger pile of uglys laying in the woodlot waiting to get hauled out.

 

[mountainmandan]

I had a farmer call me this winter and ask me if I wanted a tree that had died in his yard. I had put a new roof on his house and he knew I sell firewood small time for extra cash in the winters. I said sure i will be over to take it. It was just a little close to the house, so instead of taking any chances, I climbed it and took off the limbs facing the house, and roped it up. I pulled it over just as slick as can be. I bucked it up and get ready to start splitting the trunk. Well as soon as I had beat on the first round with my fiskars, then my maul, I realized I had just made a big mistake. I would beat on a round a few times, then noodle it. I ended up noodling almost all of the tree. It was much more work than the oak I usually cut. I know my wage rate was pretty low on that tree. It is in the stacks with all of the rest of the wood, but every time I see a piece of it I am reminded of my mistake. We just don't have much maple in the woods around here, it is almost all oak/hickory/walnut, and I did not know what to expect from the maple.
It turned out ok since he lets me take all of the hedge I want from his fenclines. I keep the hedge for myself since I am not sure if I can get a premium price for it around here. For the effort my favorite wood is looging tops. You don't have to split much and it dries fast.
He saw how much work i was doing and felt bad, so when I had cleaned up he slipped a hundred in my hand and thanked me.

Dan

 

[CrappieKeith]

Not that I've split hundreds of cord but when I have split I waited till it was freezing outside...it also made the job of diving back into retrieve the wood an easier chore with solid ground.
Just sayin....

splitting for me is a bit easier...it just needs to be under 14" in diameter to fit in my door.

 

[J1m]

I know you're annoyed with the way that tree split and that it won't fit on your must-be-perfectly-straight-so-I-can-post-pretty-pics-on-the-internet stacks D), but will your new-to-you furnace care what the wood looks like? There's some good BTU's in that rack!

 

[Whitespider]

Naw, my new-to-me furnace couldn't care less... but I need wood for the fire pit also, don't ya' know. :msp_wink:

 

[Steve NW WI]

Spidey, I'd blame the tree rather than the species. I've had twisted sob trees in most species over the years, it looks like that one was quite a bit bigger (and older) than the rest of the stuff growing in your woods, therefore at one time making it a "field tree".

BTW, you make me feel like a MUCH better stacker today. 90% of what I see in your basket would have made it into my stacks.

Also, noodling tends to make more "uglies". The saw doesn't follow the grain, and when you start splitting, you get wedges.

 

[brewmonster]

I feel your pain. Last summer I scrounged a big sugar maple that a crew was taking down in the lot next to where I work. I was thrilled to be getting so much high BTU wood for free! When I started in on splitting it, I was no longer thrilled. Like yours, my tree was old and open-grown, twisty, gnarly, and hard as the ####ens. I managed to get the job done with maul and wedges, but I took a beating in the process. I've never split elm, but this was by far the orneriest stuff I ever tangled with. No more open-grown sugar maple for me, thanks!

 

[brewmonster]

Comical Censorship

Wow, I've never been censored before! I guess I should have written that the wood was "hard as the Richardens."