Wose than elm ? ! Maybe IS Elm ?

[preventec47]

I have about fifteen 20 ft long tree trunks of what I was told
was PECAN and I own a 20 ton Northern Hydralic Splitter.

The trees were cut six months ago and I just cut some up
into rounds and I tried to split a 16 inch diameter round right
out of the middle of the straight trunk with hydralic splitter
5.5 hp Honda engine and it stalled the splitter. I thought uh oh
what a mess I am in now. I was able to split the round finally
by taking slices off the edges going round and round till
it was about ten inch in diameter and if finally split down the
middle.
Attached are two pics of a piece with a knot where a limb
was coming out. I live in Atlanta and have never seen
ELM but would not know it if I saw it. There are some pecan
trees with pecans on the ground where some of these
were cut and the bark looks very similar. I am thinking
I might have to increase splitter from 20 ton to 30 ton !

With another piece, I stalled the hyd splitter and for the
part of the round sticking out, I sledgehammered a steel
wedge into it in line with the hyd splitter and ME AND
the hyd splitter finally split it it two.

I have ten years experience splitting poplar, pine and some
oak and even cussed at sweet gum but this seems worse.

COULD this be PECAN ? see two attached pics

 

[Wife'nHubby]

Elm is my bet. Let it season in the round a bit and it might be easier to split - emphasis on 'might'.

Shari

 

[4seasons]

pecan is hickory

Remember that pecan is a type of hickory. Hickory is very stringy and hard to split as well. I can't tell from the pictures much about the bark to tell for sure but it is a good bet that is pecan. What does it smell like?

 

[rancher2]

The Bark doesn't look like any elm we have around here.

 

[DSS]

It certainly looks like how elm splits, but I agree that the bark is wrong.

There are different types of elm however. I have never seen pecan.

 

[DSS]

Here's yours...

This is elm that grows here.

It doesn't really split as much as break. These are old pics, the snow is gone now.:msp_smile:

 

[howard270]

Can't really tell due to not much bark in the pics. It does look like pecan, and it does look like the last few pieces of elm I tried to split. The smell will be the easiest way to tell. Pecan has an almost sweet smell to it and, well elm is far from sweet.

Could you get more pics of the bark by chance?

 

[preventec47]

I'll try to get come pics of the bark later but in that last
photo I want to point out what looks like the cross mark
in the flat end of the long.

Those marks are all my 20 ton hydralic splitter could do.
The splitter blade probably penetrated 2 or 3 inches and
then the wood squeezed back after I beat the wood off
the blade with my sledge.

I never realized that the pecan tree is actually a version
of a hickory tree. Do people eat the nuts off hickory trees?
They look just like pecans.

 

[Sport Faller]

Damn, that's a lotta work for a little round, don't get me wrong, free firewood is cooler than a polar bear's toenails but maybe you could just sell it to the government for a "green" replacement for Kevlar :hmm3grin2orange:

 

[zogger]

Just some limbs

I have a big pecan in the yard, but only split a few chunks off of some downed limbs. It sure didn't look that nasty. I mean, your pics..that's just nasty.... Some elm looks like that if you manage to split it, sweetgum as well. It's like every single strand is attached to all the other ones, even when separated by some inches. It just do NOT want to give it up...

Big sweetgum... I think the best bet is to liftoff, nuke it from orbit. the only way to be sure....

Wish I could help better. Closest to pecan I have here is hickory, it is hard enough to split, but she goes with some serious whack-age, especially after the first coupla chunks are off the round and the bark has been busted loose. The few elms I have done here actually split loads easier than the sweetgum, but I can't tell you exactly which subspecies of elm they were.

 

[WetBehindtheEar]

I got some free stuff I thought was Ornamental Pear - based solely on the perpetually underdeveloped seed pods and 'fruits' (little berries smaller than peas).

It was HARD to split... VERY stringy stuff. I let it sit 'in the round' for a couple of months and still it was sledge & wedge time most of the time.

I can't find the link to the thread I started back in May of '10 - this new AS is hard to find older stuff on...

I'll try burning it this winter so we'll see how it goes. Maybe it needs more time to season.

 

[blades]

Chink Elm is what it looks like to me. I split a lot of it, but I rebuilt my splitter to be able to shear right though a knot or shear a eight inch piece in half. 5" cylinder 11gpm pump 8hp Briggs, motor cylinder and pump are 10 years old and i split about 20 cords a year.

Why does this new? site place posts out of order?

 

[Steve NW WI]

Pecan, elm, or whatever stringy stuff it is, box store splitters are a pisspoor wedge design. They work great for cracking open easy to split stuff, but suck at slicing.

In the pic below, the wedge on the left is a "box store" style. Big triangle meant to spread and snap the wood apart. On the right is a much better wedge design for the hard splitting stuff. My splitter wedge is 3/4" thick, tall and long. I give up a lot of speed with it in easier splitting wood because it doesn't break the wood apart as it splits, but it goes through anything.

Here's my wedge:

More tonnage will shove that fat wedge through the nasty stuff, but it'll put a heck of a strain on the machine while it's doing it as well.

I know this isn't much of a solution for ya, so here goes my best thought for you:

Use the AS approved method of "noodling" the rounds, that is cutting through them with the chainsaw. It works fairly well, and after being noodled once, the splits are much easier to resplit on the splitter.

Since as mentioned, search is not worth a #4(#* right now, here's a couple of primer pics:

Noodling - cutting along the length of the log. Notice I used my smallest saw. It doesn't take a real big monster saw to do it this way, just take it easy and watch for the big long stringy chips or "noodles" building up under the clutch cover. I didn't make many noodles because the chain on the saw had recently met a nail and I haven't sharpened it yet.

Going in from the end of the log seems like it should be easier, right? Not so my friends. Cutting across the grain or milling is not easy, and it takes a lot of power and makes lots of fine sawdust. The guys milling with chainsaws prefer 90+ cc saws to do this work. This is milling:

Hope this works for ya. Even noodling part way through and finishing with the splitter can be pretty effective.

 

[iowa]

That's a species of elm. Hickory and pecan don't split that bad and or stringy. I've split hickory before. It's tuff but it doesn't string out that bad..

 

[Hedgerow]

That's a species of elm. Hickory and pecan don't split that bad and or stringy. I've split hickory before. It's tuff but it doesn't string out that bad..

+1 there... That looks just like the Elm I've been working on. And like Steve, I've gone to noodling anything of size down into slabs. It's alot faster than one would think as long as you can keep from plugging your clutch cover. :msp_biggrin:

 

[Geez]

I never realized that the pecan tree is actually a version
of a hickory tree. Do people eat the nuts off hickory trees?
They look just like pecans.

MmmmMM! You betcha! Especially in Russian Tea Cakes.

 

[preventec47]

Well I finally got a chance to do some work and it was slow going.
First I used a wedge and sledge to help my hydralic splitter and
it was slow going having to grab the sledge and wedge and
pound a few times and then flip the lever on the hydralic splitter
once or twice. ( see picture ) and then I did my usual sequence
of peeling off 3 or 4 slabs from the round with the hydralic splitter
and it seemed faster and easier since I did not have to get up
off my chair. Once I get the round down to a more managable
size the splitter can finally split it across the heartwood.
( photos showing slabbing sequence hopefully in order )

They guy was definitely right about the shape of the wedge.
I'd say there is 3 or 4 inches of thin knife blade wedge that
penetrates nicely until the wide wedge angle hits and then
the splitter stalls. I thought about having a custom wedge
made and changing it out and also thought about getting
a bigger hydralic cylinder and engine ( and I guess pump too )
but I guess I can manage with taking a little longer and slabbing
all the rounds first before splitting across he heartwood.
It takes at least double the split actions in labor but it is
a hell of a lot easier than doing it all with sledge and axe.

I also am showing a good pic of the wood bark as an aid
to species identification. I just dont know if elm grows
in Atlanta, GA but I will also take some pics
of the bark on several of the pecan trees growing
in the neighborhood for comparison.

 

[preventec47]

I just found out that I can only attach 5 pics per message
so here is a good photo of the wood bark that appears
similar to a few standing pecan trees close by.

Also a photo showing the wedge shape that causes the splitter
to stall in very hard woodsView attachment 187558View attachment 187559View attachment 187558View attachment 187559

 

[fac]

Could it be sweetgum or black gum? I have split some of that before and I get the same strings. It seems to tear rather than split...

FWIW - Frank

 

[brisawyer]

It looks like Hickory/Pecan. I cut a hickory aprox 24" dia it had a hard lean prob 30-40 degress from vertical it was very interlocked like an Elm. Noodled most of it was easyer than splitting and chopping all the strings loose. Growing conditions have a lot to do with variations within a species.