Those nasty,gnarly,hard to split rounds!

I haven't found a piece I couldn't get through with a maul. Sure, I have had bucks that took 20-30 swings to get through. Its usually a matter of finding the chink in the armor and exposing it. Flipping the buck over to the other side usually helps also. I approach splitting wood the same way as wrestling a grizzly bear. You don't quit when you get tired. You quit when the bear gets tired.

I'm glad you saw the humor in it. Back in my coaching days, I would tell my wrestlers to adopt this mentality and it will get them far.

Yesterday I burned a gnarly chunk that just barely fit in my Regency warmhearth. It was on the bottom and touching the top. I was sure it wasn't going to burn well, but it did. No hissing, no dirty glass. So, from now on, if it's gnarly but it fits, I'm done.

I keep a seperate pile of the pieces that were especially hard to split. I remember every one of them and take particular joy in placing them in the fire for their final defeat......I think this stuff is getting to me....
Mike

It all burns!! Some fast, some slow but in the end all that comes out is heat and ash. I like to burn uglies, the increased density of the crotches, knots and burls seems to help the wood last longer. Plus, maybe I get more heat out of them.

What really helps in splitting those back breakers is to expose it to -20 below temps for a week or so. Then they tend to split much easier. I was working on a very nasty one, 15 hits with a maul and only thing I got was "boink", after a week of -20, the first hit cracked her, the second hit split it. Note: I had to haul her in to split it, tyring to split in -20 would of probably cracked the maul. :gulp:

I had a bunch of approx.30"- 36"rounds of oak to split. The wedges would bounce off. I made a cut approx.10" in and 6"deep. Stuck a wedge in and wacked it with the sledge a number of times. They are now an acceptable size to lift onto the splitter. Works GREAT!

I have sent some long stubborn hunks back to the chainsaw. Cutting them in half is just fine, have never gone down to 4 inches, maybe 9 or 10 is the shortest. That if is they are particularly long. If they are just odd (branches, lumpy, whatever) and I take a lot of swings to no avail, then usually they go to hubby to split with the wedges and sledge. (He has a bad elbow so can't use the mauls, I do most of the splitting.)

I just get angry and throw them.

I have a nasty, knarly hunk of a SOB wad sitting right next to my insert- about a half an inch too big to get it through the door. It's been sitting there for a month or more- I try again every couple of days turning it this way and that but it still won't fit! I'm afraid to send it back out to the hubman to whack at some more- it is so frayed all over with 100's of maul marks and I know he has tried and tried to split it and it just won't split.

I'm seriously thinking of throwing it into the woods.

cmonSTART said:

I just get angry and throw them.

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LMFAO, now I don't feel so bad when I do that.

I was just this afternoon splitting those bad boys with one of those ice cream cone shaped I think aluminum wedges and a 10 lb sledge.That wedge and sledge worked so well I didn't even work up a sweet.Forget the maul,wedge and sledge is the ticket with those rascals.

Toni, cut it in half with the chain saw them BURN it to death. You will be truly satisfied and sleep well that night knowing you won!

Black Gum does not even need to be gnarly. Any thing that won't split I wait untill I rent a spliter and it will break. Really I find it a lot eazier to just to rent a spliter 1 or 2 times a year.

Back in the day when I spilt wood by hand I'd run into some Elm that jsut wouldn't split with my mallet.

Well sometimes if that's all you have to work with you have to improvise.

So what I would do is once I got a bite into the elm with my mallet I'd take my sledgehammer and beat on the splitting mallet with it until it splitted. It was a real pain in the you know where, but I spit a lot of Elm that way for years.

One time I was dealing with a tree with a huge diameter so I cut it down lengthwise and was surprised how easy it was to cut...so that's what I do now, that is when I'm not using my wood splitter.

I have several wedges and mauls and a long list of four letter words.

Sometimes those knotty oaks are good to work on when you need something to curse.


There's always the chain saw.


I also have a cliff.
Often pine goes there.

Well, maybe a couple that I sawed right down to the thickness of a pie :lol: Just curious as to how many of you have had to resort to this little trick? Sure beats knocking yourself out with the maul.

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Back in my maul/sledge/wedge days...it didn't matter what the means were...HAD to break the wood apart. If I set it aside it would taunt me. Now that I use a splitter those gnarlies aren't so sassy ;-) The uber bad ones in the stack...I throw em on the splitter sideways and shear them apart. They know i'm da man!!.

I had one that my hydraulic splitter wouldn't even split.... so I set it up like I was going to swing at it with a maul then fired up the chainsaw and just cut it like I had split it with a maul.
then I promptly carried in 1/2 of it and tossed it in green (couldn't wait till next year). I saved the other 1/2 for next year. ahh the satisfaction of putting the pesky hard to split ones in is priceless

cmonSTART said:

I just get angry and throw them.

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That is basically my approach except I throw them into a pile for my summer bon fires.

thats why I have a splitter..I have never had one tha I couldnt split with my 31 ton splitter. Had one once that I had to re-ram..You put a another split in between the ram and the wood and then have that push into the wedge..Works like a charm. I guess the less ram that is out there the more power you have?

Ah yes young grasshopper, become one with the wood.

As I was splitting this last weekend it dawned on me how much I had learned about splitting wood. After a many countless swings over the years I do have a feel for how to split. I look at the wood before I just whack away. I know I can't split cross ways through a knot. I know that I can split around the knot, and in some cases just split the knot in two.

So with just a splitting maul and a couple of wedges, it's just me against the wood. And there's the chainsaw for those really unlockable pieces.

Luckily we have Yard Waste recycling around these parts and there's a hundred-horsepower shredder waiting at the waste facility to turn pretty much anything into wood chips. I have schooled myself, gradually over the years mind you, not to get into personal disputes with wood. If it ain't splitting after a couple good shots with the maul and a few more with the wedge-and-sledge, it goes into the bin and out of my life. Life's too short to, um, drink bad wine, or something like that...

Eddy