Does any one else here hate to split pine?

Hey whphel,

I love burning and splitting pine. I have southern yellow pine here in Tennessee so it may be different than your Washington State pine. I also love burning cedar. Smells good and burns great. I mix pine and cedar with hardwood like walnut, red and white oak and others. I have a very large pine to split now. They city cut it down on an access road to a water tower. I am looking forward to splitting it. Maybe some of the other guys in your neck of the woods can weigh in on the North Western pine you are dealing with. Otherwise just GRUNT a little louder when you swing the maul. Happy Splitting

I burn 100% pine - jack, red and white -- in a gassifier, and aspen in the wood stove in the living room. The jack can be the gnarliest. Red and white usually are pretty much straight grain. I think the issue largely arises from city-type trees that have lots of space and light around them, which causes them to branch heavily rather than grow straight and tall with few branches. My trees come from mostly dense growths, so very few branches.

Partial solution, if your area gets cold enough, is to split in winter when the rounds are frozen solid. They usually split easier. Also, in my experience green wood splits easier than "dry," dead wood, which often isn't very dry.

Best solution is to get a hydraulic log splitter. I split all of my wood with a maul until 11 years ago, when I started to notice more shoulder and arm aches and pains. That maul really works the rotator cuffs, wrists, nerves, tendons, etc. And splitting 10-15 cords per year to feed a wood stove plus a gassifier, that's a lot of wear and tear. With the hyd wood splitter, the body wear and tear has been greatly reduced. I admire all of those who could split lots of wood by hand into their 70's and beyond; being a young 60, I just want to make it into that age group without a worn out body.

Dry pine burns hot, in part caused by the lower density and in part by the amount of pitch in the wood. So, depending on flue temperature, watch over-heating on the top side and creosote formation on the low side.

I agree with jebatty/

Frozen logs split much easier then logs that are partially dried.
I can go through a log with 1 or 2 wacks when they are frozen.
A log that is from -26 below will split in 1 hit.

Let them thaw and it takes about 20-30, and after each wack they seem to self heal.

Add a week of -0 temps and it will make all the difference.

Hi Guys,

I hate pine. I got some from a neighbor that had it sitting in a stack for 4 years. Very dry and light. But a pain to split.

I gave up at half rounds and shoved them in the stove like that. Burns long and hot because of the size.

CarpNiels

I've always found our White pine easiest to split dry and in the Winter when it is cold.
I'm a bit paranoid about sap and creosote so after it's split it will sit stacked for a year.

Split up some spruce that came down in the yard and it was terrible - even after sitting a full year. But scots pine from my neighbor split easily. There seems to be a big difference between species, but it all burns great.

Pine is pretty tough wood to split, that combined with all the sap
But its free and I have plenty of it. Its my October and April wood

I burn radiata (Monterey) pine and it splits easily wet or dry AS LONG AS you aren't trying to split a knot. Better to just cut those off the log and toss them out.

Eddy

i've been splitting, and burning, pine for about 30 years in our family's sugar house. white pine. the trick for us is to split it wet, right after it gets felled and bucked. waiting a few years makes it nasty to split. i don't burn it in my house, though.

whphel said:

Does pine split better when wet, mid wet or dry for you guys. I must say the 2 pieces I did split sure have burned hot and for a long time.

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What are you using to split your wood and what is your method? Eric J has some great posts which I read thru and it greatly helped. My axe and 6lb maul are now just collecting dust.

I don't generally burn pine. Too sappy, pitches up the saw bad.

Happily, we have a lot of oak. I've got a few old locust posts I want to section up and burn soon too.

Ah, winter and a wood stove. Regardless of what I put in my old Resolute, warmth.

If I had pine, I'd pitch it in

I got a bunch of large (3' diameter) white pine a few years ago that was a yard tree. It split easy after I used the chainsaw to cut through all the huge knots. You can forget about splitting a lot of those because the knot grain is a full 90 degrees off from the main wood. I'm not sure a hydraulic splitter would even have been much help.

The red/virginia/?? pine I got this year was a bit of a pain to split even though it was much smaller than that white pine, but it was a fair bit denser after drying. I'm going to have to find some more for next year.

I don't have any trouble at all splitting pine. I just pull the lever and it splits real easy