This little pile won't help my back any
- Thread starter Rebelduckman
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Typically it's the devil! Luckily this is fairly straight grained. It's still quite stringy though. Burns long and hot though when seasoned.
Woody Stover
Minister of Fire
I saw a down Sweetgum behind SILs' houses; I'm gonna throw it on their "to-split pile." 
I don't guess they will notice too much with hydraulics....
Woody Stover
Minister of Fire
Straight grain sure helps. I only hand-split the easier stuff, old man that I am.
One bad thing about Hickory is that it doesn't hold up too well. There's a down Shagbark at one of my scrounge properties, but I'm not getting my hopes up that it's gonna be useable. It is off the ground, at least....
jatoxico
Minister of Fire
Have pig nut hickory on my property. Grows kind of gnarly, very few long straight sections and being hickory it's not the easiest to split by hand. I noticed the branch wood I've found does seem to go quick. I have 1/2 cord or so from a tree that came down that's split and stacked. Do you find it gets punky in the stacks as well?
smokedragon
Minister of Fire
If you get one that was sheltered from the wind without an abundance of limbs, it can (note CAN) be easy to split. Although, most of the time, hickory tends to be very STRINGY. It will start to split, but you basically have to pry the two pieces apart with a crow bar. I don't run across hickory very often, but the last I had (2 - 3 years ago) was easy to split with a maul........only about 1 out of every 6 or 7 splits was stringy and needed to be hatcheted through.
Straight grain sure helps. I only hand-split the easier stuff, old man that I am.
I had a big mockernut hickory go down in the woods by my house back in Sept 2012. It laid there until December 2013 when I started bucking it into rounds. It was as if the tree was still alive. No signs of insect damage or rot - and it was laying flat out on the ground in the woods. I was pretty surprised it was in that good shape.
Split very easily when it was fresh cut - but I didn't get some of the rounds split until March because of snow - they were a bit tougher - but still not that bad. I split the entire tree, a full cord, with a Fiskars X27.
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