The worst wood I ever (tried to) split

Any idea what type of wood this is? I bought a tri-axle of logs last August and found a few logs that were nearly impossible to split by hand. I threw them into a pile and let them sit. Last week, I borrowed my neighbor's log splitter to clean up all of the pieces that I collected over the past year that were too difficult to split. I found that even with the log splitter, this wood would not split but would twist and tear. I cut up four of the pieces to use as Swedish torches in our fire ring. I burnt two already. They burnt fairly well and looked pretty cool after dark when they individual sections were glowing. Our friends quit making fun of me for getting the idea from a wood burner's forum after they saw how cool it looked. Thank you.

The four sections standing upright in the front are still connected. I ran the splitter through it from both ends but it is still hanging on. The piece to the right of it is a Swedish torch waiting to be burned.

The way it split it looks like gum tree to me but the bark doesn't quite look like the black gum that I am used to seeing. Gum tree wood can be a bear to split!

I would have said elm but, barks off as well.

It may be a type of slippery elm. It is for sure not american or red elm.

I get beech and yellow birch that sometimes get nasty like that.
But I'm no good at guessing what your wood is.
Just sympathizing with your pain.

The wood fiber in pic 1 looks like spaghetti. We've had elm split like that, but the bark is no elm I've seen. Had to noodle a good part of it to get solid splits. What a pain, but yours should at least dry faster.

I've got some White Pine that looks like that after my feeble attempts to get it split.
I'd get all medieval on it and........burn it.

Looks like Flowering Dogwood.

Way too much work to deal with that firewood!

Ray

Wait till it's below zero , it will split then.

that be tupelo (gum)

Looks like dogwood(splits pretty good), splits like elm, kind of a black gum bark though. Its prolly black gum or an elm, it dont matter cause they both suck to split! DID you PAY for this ? I would request some more wood, unless he just said it could be any of these woods or mostly elm etc then he got you.

That's a gum tree. I split one by hand in the spring but it was standing dead for awhile. Have a few splits left that the maul bounces off of

That is Black Gum. It is fairly common in central PA and the bark looks just like the wood in your picture. Black Gum is notoriously hard to split, although I haven't tried it yet.

That's what I was leaning towards too, WD. Definitely not any elm I have ever seen.......

I would "split" that stuff with a chainsaw and noodle cut them lengthwise. Its the easiest way to cut with a chainsaw, though the side shoot can get clogged up with wood noodles (or curly fries). For that reason I use a skip chain cutting that way. Same way I split large rounds. The 290 will run a 20 inch bar cutting that way pretty easy.

Those noodles, when dried out in the sun for a couple of days, make excellent tinder for starting fires! Very easy to start a fire with flint and steel using dried out noodles! I have a couple cardboard boxes packed FULL of beech and white oak noodles.

yea noodle them, its way easier. I noodled almost a whole cord of sweetgum logs to burn for firewood, back when i was in college. I had more time than money and it was cut and bucked in the yard already.

i just rake um up and burn um in yard debris fires. I dont see the need to keep them around, i just use hunks of lighter pine, but i have easy access to the stuff and lots of it.

I have a couple of rounds of something similar here, and have abandoned chopping them, in the hope that they might dry and crack, and then split easier.

Either that, or they'll become my next chopping blocks........