Read of it, dreaded it, met it.

FLINT said:

What state do you live in??

That looks like Sweet Gum to me.

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I think you're right. I only ran into Sweetgum once (last year) and it looked and acted just like that; especially the jagged way that it split.

ChrisNJ said:

FLINT said:

What state do you live in??

That looks like Sweet Gum to me.

seems like the hard wood to split up north is ELM, down south is Sweet Gum.

I've sure split my share of sweet gum - and it always looks just like that - my dad has a big pile of it right now, that has dried enough this summer, that the splitter doesn't even like splitting it - but does, reluctantly.

luckily for me, where i live now, I have neither elm nor sweet gum around - and the hardest wood to split around here is hickory - oh and knotty hemlock.

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I think you are right FLINT, the place I got it from also gave me a bunch of what I think was black gum which split very easy, actually sweet gum was my first thought of that round.

My little helper there does love him some ice cream sammiches :-O Hard to keep his hands out of the freezer in the garage when it is properly stocked

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I was going to go with Black Gum. Although Black and Sweet gum have very similar bark structure. Neither one of them can be split by hand at least not in anyway it would be remotely worth it. I've had rounds of black gum sitting for around 4 years and tried to split them this year with my fiskars SS. I didn't even come close to splitting it. Did get it split with a splitter though...finally. They were pretty punky all the way through though. I remember when I first cut that tree down trying to split it with the splitter and it couldn't hardly get through it when the wood was green. Nasty stuff.

Looking at the bark and darker heart wood, I thought it might be slippery elm. I've got many cords of it for free on craigs list a few weeks ago, huge rounds that were still juicy even though they'd been cut for over a year. We had to cut down the rounds and split everything at least once just to load it and noticed the wood had little to no odor. After waiting about two weeks, we started splitting the splits and found the wood had already let go of much of the moisture. The splitting was also much easier. We've still got plenty to split but so far we've only found a few rounds that were as stubborn as the round that's besting you. The worst I've found are rounds from the trunk with "hidden" limbs"... what look to be branches that grew out of the heart of the trunk but the trunk appears to have grown around it, absorbing it into part of the trunk so you don't know it is there until you crack it open. (If that makes sense) Those simply wouldn't split clean or refuse to split at all. I wonder if that is what is keeping your round together? It also might help to cut the rounds into shorter lengths before splitting. I found branch rounds split easier than trunk rounds as the center core tended to be ... chewy/stringy so I found a hatchet handy to finish off the split.

I may change my mind later but I'm not going to complain too very much about elm. Reading up on it, it is supposed to be a moderately hard wood with an open grain. It does seem to dry pretty quickly once split and is listed as a pretty decent wood as far as firewood goes. I'm not splitting this stuff by hand though, and if I had to split anything by hand I'd heat with propane ;-)

By the way, the youngster should be holding a Klondike bar... a split like that reminds me of their jingle ;-)

Black Gum I sawed a tractor trailer load at the sawmill a while back.

I had some elm that was given to me last year. I was able to hand split some of it but the rounds over a foot gave me a problem. So I just noodeled most of it with the saw. We have a Fisher and it takes wood that is 26 in long and 15 in around. If it would fit into the stove, it was good to go. I usually loaded the stove with one of these monster chunks so that it was against the side of the stove. This let me use the remaining firebox to build my regular fire. There would be over a foot of width left so there was no problem with space. This really worked good and gave me a long overnight fire on the coldest winter nights. I found that if you can get the stove door shut, you're good to go. David

I'll put my $$$$ on cottonwood. Unfortunately I got suckered into cutting and hauling some for a friend this past spring. I ended up with about a 1/2 cord of it. Looks exactly like what I have. Split it again, I bet it smells like cow $h!t.

Well it sure looks like the Elm I've been splitting.Elm also gives off a musty pissy smell.Three wedges do it for me with the toughest pieces if not for you get another wedge.One thing for sure splitting Elm will make you strong as all get out.