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If this triggers your interest in IRL firewood splitting it’s a very meditative and satisfying yard job. Also great mild to moderate workout between the splitti
by sklargh 3mo ago
If this triggers your interest in IRL firewood splitting it’s a very meditative and satisfying yard job. Also great mild to moderate workout between the splitting and stacking, especially on a crisp Fall afternoon.
- PyWoody 3mo agoIf you're chopping wood in the Fall, I sure hope it's for next year's winter.
- codemonkey-zeta 3mo agoNope, splitting green wood is much more difficult than splitting dried logs, so I often cut a tree in the spring, stack the rounds, then split those rounds in the fall. People overestimate how dry wood needs to be to burn correctly. Just have some ultra-dry kindling (seasoned for 2+ years) and you won't have any problems. On the contrary, I know some folks who let all their wood dry too far, and it burned way too hot and ruined their stove (and almost burned their house down).
- cluckindan 3mo agoIt’s an equation. If you have dry firewood, you need less of it at once. Some folks don’t understand that. More water in the wood means less efficient combustion, more smoke and harsher smoke, which may irritate your neighbors downwind, or everyone around on still days.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- greenbit 3mo agoNot to mention a cooler stack temperature and the increased creosote condensation that brings. Or that it's just pain heavier to lug into the house.
- dylan604 3mo agoSomething every pit master learns along the way. People can tell you, you can read about it, but until you actually try using wood of different dryness, they are just words.
- PyWoody 3mo agoYikes. I hope you got your chimney swept annually. Seasoned firewood will burn cleaner, longer, and more efficiently.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- crimsonnoodle58 3mo agoGood workout and satisfying, I totally agree. I actually really enjoy it. But the long term effects on your joints, even if you think you have perfect technique, its better to just get a wood splitter. We can do a whole winters wood in less than a day now, with minimal effort.
- MatthiasWandel 3mo agoGotta agree with you there, log splitters rule. We got a little 4 ton electric one for my mom, and on some pieces it would stall. I thought, what a wimpy thing, but then hitting those pieces it wouldn't split with an axe, I realized, those were really hard to split pieces. Just growing up in the 80s we didn't have one cause my dad didn't believe in them.
- delichon 3mo agoI have a lot of splitting to do right now, and you're welcome to it. I'll only charge a low nominal fee. But let me know before September, because that's when I usually go rent a hydraulic splitter from the local hardware store. Then I spend a very long day splitting so that I can return it the next day. I've spent a lot of time splitting with a big maul, but for me it's harder that it looks. I've broken two mauls by striking to far. And even with "soft" wood, I have stacks of green rounds that I couldn't split at all, the maul just bounces off. But I'm glad that you enjoy the process, I'd probably enjoy watching you work.
- bee_rider 3mo agoIf the hydraulic splitter could be electric, so it would not be so loud, I could see that task being meditative. Preferably if the rounds could on a raised platform, so they could just be rolled onto the thing. Next request, the wood could stack itself somehow.
- mauvehaus 3mo agoVertical splitters are better since the splitter comes down to ground level where your rounds already are. Much less lifting. I'm not super quick with a maul, but I can pretty easily keep up with the hydraulic splitter I've used. The hydraulic splitter is nice for the ones that have really gnarly, interlocked grain.
- bluGill 3mo agoUntil you get a log so tough, it just stalls up when you draw a splitter. Happened more than once. Usually the log is stuck so far in the wedge you can't get it off either.
- mauvehaus 3mo agoYikes. That sounds like the kind of lesson one tries to learn secondhand, or at most once. Like the time I stalled out a tow-behind wood chipper (the kind tree services use). It was a smaller one, and the process for getting the log out involved taking the jack off the trailer tongue and hooking it up to the feed roller springs assembly to spread the rollers far enough to pull the log out.
- astura 3mo agoDon't listen to this noise; it fucking sucks, it's kinda dangerous, and it's not at all meditative. It's the exact opposite of meditative. My parents made me do it because they certainly didn't want to, because it sucks. I'm so glad I don't have to split firewood ever again. If you're looking for a meditative exercise try yoga.
- klibertp 3mo agoWell, it's the kind of "meditative" you get when training martial arts forms. It gets good after a few years of preparation; before that, it's not as fun as spars and way less useful than general conditioning. Coming from a kendo background, when I had to chop firewood for a few years while living in the countryside, I generally focused on accuracy. The swing is completely different than with a sword, and getting the chop to land at the exact spot (I drew lines with a marker) tens of times in a row was very satisfying, but required a lot of conscious effort to get there. It's not trivial to land a chop at the exact spot you want, and it's also quite hard to ensure the axe travels at its fastest exactly at the moment of impact. It can be fun, but you need to be into things like that in the first place; plus, having to do it no matter the weather and all the other things you need to do can kill all the joy instantly.
- bee_rider 3mo agoIt’s also astonishing how much wood needs to be split, to heat even a moderately sized house. Depends on the climate though, I guess.
- dredmorbius 3mo agoAnd the fireplace / stove. Most open-hearth fireplaces are tremendously inefficient, not only sending most of the heat up the chimney, but drawing in additional cold air in doing so. A masonry stove with an external air draw should be far more efficient, and burn much more cleanly to boot. The pollution factor from woodstoves is another major consideration, and means wood-burning is limited in many areas.
- 3mo ago
- nickstinemates 3mo agoTaking a few minutes out of the day to to split some logs to hear your house for your family feels incredibly rewarding and satisfying.
- 1dontnkow_ 3mo agoThis reminded me when we I was a kid we had to split the wood for the whole winter and that was actually a huge job all day or few days and way harder than just a moderate workout. I hated it then but actually now I miss the time I spend with my father and brother.
- Loughla 3mo agoI hated cutting wood, stacking wood, splitting wood, all of it. We ran a potbelly stove in the living room when I was a kid for heat. I hated the stove too. The only thing I don't miss is rolling a piece of piss elm over to my city living "tough" cousins after two or three pieces of oak and watching the maul just bounce off. Always funny.
- AngryData 3mo agoI absolutely hated it as a kid, but once I got into my late 20s I started loving it. A great workout and you can go at your own pace as long as you don't wait until the last minute to get it done.
- Jgrubb 3mo ago[dead]