Worst splitting wood

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The Cottonwood we have here is cake to split. I don't touch that junk unless it fell in my yard though, almost worthless for use as a heat source.

The worst I have split, green American Elm. Cottonwood sounds worse though.
 
The beech I have is awful. Old trees with twisted grain that make the splits impossible to crib. I have to work from the edges inward on the main trunk rounds. If I weren't so OCD about excellent firewood going to waste I wouldn't even bother with them.
 
That's interesting ! I've been splitting some locust lately , and it split well . But then again it wasn't seasoned . That might have been the difference . To me it's elm, sycamore ,and sweet gum.
Those are my choices too Nixon. Sycamore may be one of the wettest woods that I have seen also when just cut down and split.

Cottonwood while not a good BTU maker is also very wet.
 
The Cottonwood we have here is cake to split. I don't touch that junk unless it fell in my yard though, almost worthless for use as a heat source.
I had a monster cottonwood in my yard that got hit by lightning 2 summers in a row, seven or so years back.

I had it taken down because it was a hazard to my house and garage. The first 22 feet of the trunk produced 96 2x4s for a cabin my neighbor was building on his property. I split the rest of the big stock and had around 5 cords of shoulder wood. I mixed it with my good wood while burning and finally got the last of it burned last season.
 

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Imagine having to deal with 2 cords of this. Needless to say I was hard up for wood at the time.

image_110-jpg.46351


Gum wood, pictures are worth a thousand threads.


I recognize that stuff, and the one time I had it I made a post and subsequently took it to the dump so as not to further interfere with my splitting pleasures.
 
I started a thread in this forum the day I brought that stuff home. I'd never split sycamore before, but I think my words were, "that stuff just looks tough to split!"
 
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Split? What is this activity "Split" that you speak of?

On the rare occasion I get something that is bigger than it SHOULD be for burning, and it worth the effort but difficult, it will be Sugar Maple.

Why anyone would waste the time and wear/tear on low BTU wood splitting is beyond me:(
 
Why anyone would waste the time and wear/tear on low BTU wood splitting is beyond me:(

Of which "low BTU" wood are you speaking? If sycamore, then the answer is, "because it was free, and I don't have a forrest of oak in my back yard."

Split? What is this activity "Split" that you speak of?

I've not learned of another way to dry a large mass of wood in 2 years or less.
 
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I'm surprised nobody has run into any curly yellow birch. We cross our fingers each time one goes on the splitter since it is a 50/50 chance up here.
 
Split? What is this activity "Split" that you speak of?

On the rare occasion I get something that is bigger than it SHOULD be for burning, and it worth the effort but difficult, it will be Sugar Maple.

Why anyone would waste the time and wear/tear on low BTU wood splitting is beyond me:(
Really?
 
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And people diss us westerners for our "softwoods". Almost nothing splits like Douglas Fir. I did 2.5 cord a couple weeks ago by hand in about 2 hours.

Problem is, you'll burn it almost as fast! j/k
 
Sweet gum , hardest ive ever dealt with like hitting a giant solid rubber ball. And if you get the wedge in the gum round just eats it for lunch.
 
When I was 18 a "friend" of the family hired me to split about a cord of Osage Orange that had been bucked up for a while. I don't know if it is typical of Osage, but it was hard as a rock and so grainy that I had cut the wedge free with a hatchet on multiple occasions. The guy who cut it even scored the faces of the round with a chainsaw when he cut it. Probably the hardest 25.00 I ever earned.

The grain was not as fine as the gum in the picture, it was like 14 gage romex.
 
When I was still splittin wood by hand I had some Ginko that actually laughed at me every time I hit it with a swingin axe.
 
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