Over the last few months we’ve had several threads related to firewood. In this thread we will discuss splitting implements. Gas or electric splitters don’t count; your weapon of choice uses manual labor to split wood. What is your favorite splitting tool? For hard woods with a nasty twist or knots I like the atomic wedge on the far left. For good strait grain hardwood I like the splitting axe on the far right. It combines the depth penetration like a traditional axe but slowly widens like a maul and only has a 4 pound head. For softwoods, give me the 8 pound maul any day.
6# maul. We had an 8#er when I was a kid. It was a killer. It’ll wear you out. One weekend my father and I went to his cousins house to help him with some of his wood as he had a heart attack a few month earlier and wasn’t 100% yet. He had a 6#er. My dad was the one that noticed it. I never needed a break. I just kept on splitting. Wish I was close to that kind of shape now Sent from my iPad using Michigan Sportsman mobile app
Impressive arsenal, although we do have machinery these days. I used to get my exercise on the work bench in my bedroom. No wonder I got fat!
I'm an axe geek and this is what I use. But here is a video that's pretty interesting. He swings the chopper like he's not used to it IMHO.
Why is he starting in the middle on a big round piece, unless he is trying to prove a point. He likes to swing his maul with his feet inline with the head of the maul when it comes down. I seen another person do this and it scares me.
Split over 70 cords in the last three years, mostly seasoned ash, with an eight pound maul. If I have to get the wedges out, I call the boiler wood guy and sell it round at a discount.
Guy at work is selling one of those choppers. What is so great about the design of it? I just dont understand how it works.
For the smaller stuff, I like a hatchet and a four pound short hammer. Basically a wedge on a stick you can hold on too and pound away with the other arm. Works great for the stuff that won’t stand up. For midsize stuff, nothing gives you the satisfaction of swinging and 8-10 pound maul for all you’ve got and watching the log fly apart. But the big stuff and really gnarly stuff, I like a wedge and my 20 pound sledge. You don’t really swing it unless you want to wear yourself out quickly. Rather you lift it and drop it. Swinging it doesn’t add that much more power. It’s less tiring than swinging a maul one you figure out the lift and drop cadence.
My god Eggfly only if I was up at tent camp would I swing one of those things. I have too many pains that I don’t want to aggravate, do you still have a horse that you ride to work? Those things are for the young and ambitious.
I cut up a 36" diameter white oak after work today. I could only get through a couple of the rounds with my 8# maul, the rest I had to cross cut into quarters with a saw just so I could load it into my truck. That's the first tree I have cut that actually ate the entire 36" bar I have for huge trees. No pics of that as I was out of water, almost completely out of gas, and anxious to get home & unload it. I have split A LOT of wood with an axe and this knotty white oak is a manual splitters nemesis. But my 30 ton splitter won't have a problem with it. My 8# maul is a Truper. Not sure where or when I got it or when but it's been around for a while. Here it is a couple weeks ago on a huge red oak. I was able to quarter all that wood with it, and more not in the pic that we already hauled out. For reference the saw is wearing a 25" bar in the pic.
I had step kids that were protected pretty well protected by their mother growing up. I used to tell people they thought manual labor was the Tigers new shortstop.
