log splitting - why?
 

I didn't grow up with cold weather or fireplaces. What's the purpose of splitting logs? Are they easier to handle and store with semicircular cross sections? Do they dry out more quickly with the interior exposed? Dunno but Grandpa used to do it?

Thanks,
Sixto
95 S420
87 300SDL

Unsplit logs don't burn as easy, they take up more space in the fireplace and drinking a beer on a cool fall afternoon while splitting is even more fun.

The other guess you had were correct, if you come visit I will give you an axe and let you split all day long, I'll supply the sloppy joes and beer and the chair for me to sit in and watch.

Your guesses are correct - but note also that many logs don't split into nice semi-circular sections. If you have a big log you may split it into quarters or fifths or whatever.

By exposing more interior wood they do dry out quicker when split. And they burn better as medmech says, because bark and the exterior layers don't burn as well.

Splitting wood is only "fun" as long as you don't HAVE to do it - as long as it's recreation, so to speak, it's ok. But it's dang hard work without a hydraulic splitter!

Rgds,
Chris W.

it warms you twice....1st when you split it, 2nd when you burn it.. :cool:

normally you split 4 ways or more if it's a big log..

i alway found it to be much harder work with one. Mull works great and it's easier, IMO

$90 a cord, split for you already :)

We grew up with a Nashua wood furnace, so we got to spend many Saturday mornings cutting dead trees for firewood. We split the wood for drying, stacking and better burning, as mentioned above.

My favorite tool was a Monster Maul, much more fun than a wedge, axe, or hydraulic splitter. Well, fun unless I wasn't careful and overreached so that the handle would hit the wood instead of the head; that was a real wake-me-up for the hands...

one of my favorites, Frost

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
The judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes

It's so you can build your own splitter :D

:idea: Good way to get rid of those pesky neighbor cats that won't stay off the Benz, too

Right there with you, Kuan :chef:

It's twice that a cord out here. :eek:

PaulC - Chips would burn way too fast. If you reduced the wood to a fine powder and aerated it, it would explode. At the other end of the spectrum, a big solid piece won't burn worth a darn. Has to do with the ratio between mass vs. suface area. If its important enough to anyone, I'll try to dig up a research paper that resides somewhere in my "fantasyland-type" filing system.
(Don't hold your breath, though. I've succeeded in hiding some stuff so well that I gave up trying to find it....)

Cheers,
Wes

Not if you have arthritis like I do in the shoulder.

Its was $300-$350 a cord here last year and thats dumped in your driveway so you have no idea how much they really dropped off till they are long gone.