Red Maple hates me

[hareball]

Seems every time I get red maple it's always twisted and gnarly and really hard to split. Is this common? I love that it seasons quickly and being hard to split I usually end up with some large splits that I get good long burns from in the shoulder seasons.
A neighbor dropped around 1/3 cord that I bucked a month ago and out of the rounds I had about 3 that popped on the first hit from the maul but still needed another one or two to split. All the others either kicked the maul back out or sunk it in and had to wrestle it out.
Today I ended up getting out the sledge and antique wedges. I was amused how the round would make faint cracking noises for a minute or 2 once the wedges were sunk in deep enough.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

If it is twisted and gnarly and really hard to split, it is not red maple! Red maple can be split quite easily with only an axe. With the hydraulic splitter most will split as soon as the wedge hits the log! I rarely have to push the wedge more than an inch or two. It is also very easy to split for kindling wood.

 

[hareball]

Could it be silver maple? I will get some pics soon

 

[firefighterjake]

Seems to me I've had a bunch of red maple that tends to be a bit twisty when split . . . not so gnarly . . . but definitely has a twist in the grain . . . often I find this from the red maple I harvest from wet or swampy areas.

 

[maplewood]

I burn mostly red maple. Sometimes it is nasty to split (by hand).
I was told, by an old pro, that when it is twisty and gnarly, it came from a very windy area. That's what made the grain unparallel, and hard to split.

$0.02

 

[JustWood]

I burn mostly red maple. Sometimes it is nasty to split (by hand).
I was told, by an old pro, that when it is twisty and gnarly, it came from a very windy area. That's what made the grain unparallel, and hard to split.

$0.02

and/or grown in the open .
+1

 

[Wood Duck]

I have cut more Red Maple than anything else, and I have found both easily split and gnarly rounds from the same tree. Straight Red Maple is one of the easier woods to split around here, but crotches, big knots, and the lower few feet of most trees are tough. I am currently using a Red Maple round as my splitting block, and it has lasted about 8 cords without splitting. I tend to hammer right through small splits and the block takes a beating. Most of the Red Maples I am cutting are growing at the edges of the woods, so there are plenty of lower branches and Ys in the trees. I bet farther back in the woods, where there are tall, branchless Red Maples, it would be different. I am quite certain these are Red Maple, Acer rubrum.

 

[hareball]

This was from a lone tree in a front yard so had all the wind and room to branch out that it wanted.

 

[Thistle]

That looks identical to 2 loads of gnarly Silver Maple I split last May-June.Some of those big rounds the 5 lb wedge would pop right out unless I either split off plates of the perimeter first or quartered the logs.Most all the SM I've split over the years was growing in the open & was quite large,up to 4ft diameter.Never had any of the easy to split stuff that grows back in the woods.

 

[woodchip]

My wedge tends not to pop out, the design keeps it going in, not got it stuck in yet

 

[Thistle]

My wedge tends not to pop out, the design keeps it going in, not got it stuck in yet

Ah the trusty ol' wood grenade.... I had a couple of those some yrs back.Buried one in a snowy muddy bank,other one I loaned out like a fool,never got it back. Gonna pickup another one in a few weeks.Do they still work as good as I remember?

And is that european ash? Cant see the pores/grain pattern real well,color of heart & sapwood looks similar though.Looking at it again,another guess is Apple from an old full-sized orchard tree.

 

[DiscoInferno]

Big ol' "front yard" red maples here in the burbs can definitely be a real pain to split due to twisted grain. Much different than a straight pole in dense woods. I've noodled many a stubborn round.

 

[woodchip]

My wood grenade beats my wedge any day, and yes, they are brilliant, having the point means you can tap them in exactly where you want, then you can bash away to your hearts content......

And it is silver birch, to be honest it isn't that difficult to split anyway but I just wanted to make life easy so the grenade came out

 

[WOODBUTCHER]

I've seen my share of twisted, ugly, no good for nothing red maple trunks in my lifetime...................
Bounce, bounce goes the maul........try a hand full of sand or dirt with you wedge or wood grenade.............

WoodButcher

 

[woodchip]

If the maul is bouncing, cut a small notch where you want the wood to split, place the maul in, and give it decent hammering.

 

[Thistle]

That always works for me.