chopping and spliting wood

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Frank01

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Sep 9, 2015
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It is easier to chop wood when stills wet, but what about spliting? easier dry or wet?

Thanks
 
Dry. Although really gnarly wood can be easier to split when green and frozen solid due to the way water expands when frozen.
 
Good question. I would presume dry because there is less 'give' to the wood by virtue of no longer being moisture laden. Most wood cutters don't make that choice though. When you gather firewood yourself you tend to split it up as you go for ease of lifting, handling and stacking, and if it's dead elms and ashes (such as are dime a dozen around here these days thanks to Dutch elm disease and Emerald ash borer) they tend to be mostly dry already. Elm isn't renowned for being easy to split either way unless you wait for 0 degrees F or colder. Most folks split wood green solely to speed up the drying process. Takes forever for a 2 foot diameter log to dry out whereas split into chunks it's ready to burn within a year!
 
300Six said:
Most folks split wood green solely to speed up the drying process. Takes forever for a 2 foot diameter log to dry out whereas split into chunks it's ready to burn within a year!
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That's your answer right there.
 
I definitely prefer to chop green wood especially if it's the oaks I'm usually cutting on my parents property. Dry oak will give you a workout. For splitting I prefer dry.
 
I have been splitting wood with axes and mauls for at least 40 years, and it has all been hardwood up here in Pennsylvania, Maple, Ash, Cherry and Apple and Beech. We always split it green and it splits very, very easily except where there is a bad knot, usually you can just split the wood from around the knot though as easily as clear wood if your aim is good.

And I am pretty sure it gets harder to split when it is dry. I was really surprised when I saw people here posting that dry wood is easier to split. Maybe they just have not done much of it, or maybe they are splitting some soft wood that we never had any use for up here.

I have done it many times, and I still can, split a nice big hardwood log in half with one hand and maybe even holding the handle of the maul with a few fingers as it comes down. If you do it right all that is needed is the weight of the head and it's inertia to split the log, you do not even have to swing hard. If things are just right you could let go of the handle and when all was done the log would be split and the maul will be laying bit-down on and in the ground. We are talking about someone with years of experience here, don't try it at home.....

We cut down a tree, knocked off the limbs with an axe or chainsaw, cut it into 16" lengths and split it immediately. Often a tree goes from standing to being split and piled in a rack or cord in one day. Only a fool would use an axe while a good maul is in arm's reach too.

I was the oldest son of three and we had wood stoves, plus in the 70s we sold many cords and racks of firewood out by the roadside to make extra money. We had no gasoline splitter, my father put a maul in my hand and I was it. I would split wood all day long until I tore the skin on my palms and my fingers. I had huge callouses on my hands for years.

Everything is easier when you are young. The wood was so easy to split I started doing splitting tricks to make it more interesting.

My siblings would go around and stand up the logs so I could just walk around and keep swinging, but after a while I would stack two on top of each other and split them both at once. Or after splitting a log in half I would stand one half up, and lay the other half on it flat and split them both at once. I could also easily swing the maul like a golf club and split a log or half a log in half that was just laying on the ground. I still can, I did it just a few weeks ago to some cherry and maple. I used to put dimes on top of logs and fold them in half at the same time I split a log. You had to be able to hit where you aimed so you could make logs into nice quarters or smaller evenly sized pieces. If the maul stuck in the log I would often just pick the entire thing up and swing it just as it was not there and hit it on the ground again and finish the job.

Very knotty logs broke the boredom for a young man, it was a challenge to find a weak spot in a log riddled with knots and hit it exactly where it needed to be to break it apart. Sometimes the maul would bounce off the top of the log like you were trying to split hard rubber, but a few blows with an axe in the same spot would usually open up a crack, and with good aim hitting it in the same spot over again would win the battle.

I never hit myself or injured myself in any way with any axe, hatchet or maul.

A few weeks ago when I was splitting wood for my 80-year old father with one of the same mauls I had used 40 years ago, he said he wanted to knock it apart so it would season more quickly. He has been managing his corner of Pennsylvania for over half a century and there are some nice damn straight hardwood trees back there now. Hopefully this year after the snow thaws we will be back there cutting and splitting some more wood, it is great exercise.

It is also athletic if you do it often and for a workday. You have to build up your muscles and callouses slowly at first so you don't hurt yourself. Leather gloves help a lot early in the season, and even late in the season because once you are in shape splitting hardwood all day long will still beat you and your equipment up.

When you are really good with an axe or maul it will last for many years because you are not missing and hitting the handle. Breaking a handle could mean a lost splitting-day so you are careful with it and treat it like a friend and take care of it.
 
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gben, that is a wonderful story. I mostly lurk here in the axes section, bit I am an avid ax and hatchet man. I'm 70 years old and try to split wood very day I can. You are correct: it is great exercise. After a heart attack several years ago and a few stents added since then, I find that it keeps me in shape. I asked my doctor about this recently since my wife and others were warning me of the dangers; he said it is great exercise if you pace yourself and rest when needed.
I might add, I don't do this just for the enjoyment; we burn several cords in a wood heater each year.
I, too, have found that dry wood here in the south is harder to split than green, freshly cut wood. Finding a good tree without knots and splitting it after felling it for me is easier than waiting for it to dry. I split mostly oak with a few ash on occasion. After splitting it this time of the year (winter) and stacking it under cover, I have found that it is ready for burning next fall/winter.
 
And I thought today was New Years day not April Fools day.

" after a while I would stack two on top of each other and split them both at once. Or after splitting a log in half I would stand one half up, and lay the other half on it flat and split them both at once"
Really?
 
Old Axeman said:
And I thought today was New Years day not April Fools day.

" after a while I would stack two on top of each other and split them both at once. Or after splitting a log in half I would stand one half up, and lay the other half on it flat and split them both at once"
Really?
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Well put Old Axeman, well put indeed.
 
I've done those tricks before but it only works with clean wood in shorter lengths in species that split easily. If the wood is stringy then your splitter of choice needs to be at least moderately sharp, too, so it can get through any strings on its way through.

Dry wood is easier to split because the wood is rendered less flexible and resistant to the shock and spreading force that breaks the lignin bonds that hold the wood fibers together. That doesn't mean that it's not possible to split green wood with ease--if it wasn't we'd all be using coppice wood instead of starting with logs. It's just easier. It's a different mode of matter separation than chopping is, and so different mechanisms apply.
 
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Man I'm with older guys if u split alot of wood I say split it when it's green I've done both for the most part the wood I burn has knots I'm assuming because trees have limbs at least most of them here in tennesse do :-) and I say unless you are using a gas powered machine I would bust oak and other hardwoods when they are green there is a huge difference between dry oak and green oak also try and split sycamore when it's dry without using a stick of dynamite :-)
 
Yep, I made the mistake of letting a big white oak that died one year stand and season till the next fall. Green oak splits like an acorn, dry, not so much..
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
I've done those tricks before but it only works with clean wood in shorter lengths in species that split easily. If the wood is stringy then your splitter of choice needs to be at least moderately sharp, too, so it can get through any strings on its way through.
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Anybody that has really split firewood knows that 16" is the standard. 16" x 4' x 8' is a rack, and three racks is a cord. That is how it is measured and sold. Some very small stoves do need shorter lengths, but it is not common. I suppose some people might have large fireplaces that might take longer than 16", but that too is uncommon.

I don't know what you mean by "stringy" wood. Naturally after a log is split there might be a few shards holding the two pieces together, but it is child's play to pull the two pieces apart or cut them apart with a swipe of the maul or axe.

All the wood I mentioned splits very easily green, Maple, Beech, Ash, Cherry and Apple. Of course it helps if it is free of knots, but one or two knots is no problem at all if you know what you are doing. Yes you do get some very knotty pieces, but a maul can pretty much knock anything apart with a little effort as long as someone with experience is holding it.

As far as tricks go, splitting more than one piece of wood etc., I am 6'3" tall and have weighed over 200 pounds for decades. When you couple that with experience and a nice heavy maul I suppose a lot of things are easier than they might be for short or small men, oh well.

Beech is the nicest splitting hard wood I know of, and Ash is second. Maple is easy if there are not a lot of knots. Cherry and Apple are dense woods that are a little harder to split, but not enough to worry about at all.

The wood you fell, cut to length and split is usually stacked then left to sit a year before use. Green wood makes creosote buildup in the flue. Lots of people had chimney fires back in the 1970s when the first energy-crunch hit and wood stoves became trendy. These were mostly people that burned green or soft junk woods, and who did not let a new fire roar a few minutes each time with the damper wide open to keep the flue burned clean.
 
C'mon guys it is a new year after all. It's tough to look back on your enthusiastic/energetic youth and not embellish specific events, even a little bit. What I recall from the 1970s is tangling with American Elm trees (standing dead ones were everywhere and free for the taking, thanks to D.E.D.) to try to get my university colleague and his girlfriend through a winter in an uninsulated cottage without their having to spend a fortune (that they didn't have) on electric heat. You can really work up a sweat trying to split that G.D. stuff and it was a complete fluke that we discovered it was much easier to deal with when it was bitter cold outside. The added benefit of -20F was you were actually keen to stay warm via swinging that axe.
 
By stringy I mean wood that really wants to generate a large number of connective strings upon splitting. Ash and oak are big culprits for this, in my experience--at least the stuff here in Maine. It's trivial to cut through the strings, as you say, but some on here swear that you don't need a sharp splitter so I mention it as a situation where having one that's at least passably sharp is useful. A lot of folks in my area cut their own wood, and I get mine by way of an arborist who always has a significant amount of wood available for free, and it's cut close enough to stove length most of the time, but the length varies. As such I end up with pieces that are longer than others.
 
From an interesting book called "Splitting Firewood" by David Tresemer:

"To summarize, it is best to fell trees between late autumn and early spring, to limb and buck them at that time, to split them in a week or two when check lines appear, then to stack and cover until the following fall or winter." [page 75]


Steve Tall said:
A pdf file of the book "Splitting Firewood", by David Tresemer, can be found here:
http://www.fastonline.org/CD3WD_40/JF/425/20-477.pdf

It's a interesting read, including a MythBusters-style chapter that examines 6 common myths about splitting firewood, and evaluates whether they are true or not.

Example: "Myth Number 1: Split from the bottom, not from the top."

"To test which way would be best, I got together thirty-six pairs
of billets, all sixteen inches long, to be split for stovewood. Each
pair was matched for species, diameter, knottiness. and number
of splits. The splitting of each billet was timed..."

You can find the results in the book.
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I think again, if we revert back to the original question, and not get caught up in life lessons to be had, and how it was harder to walk to school up hill both ways 40-50 years ago......dry wood, on average is easier to split than green wood. Is that the case for every single piece? No. Is that the way most people do it(let all pieces dry before splitting) No. But overall, that is the truth. We burned about 12-20 cords of wood per year in good ole Pa, and it is, again on average, easier to split wood that has dried, over green wood. It just flippin is.
 
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Steve Tall said:
From an interesting book called "Splitting Firewood" by David Tresemer:

"To summarize, it is best to fell trees between late autumn and early spring, to limb and buck them at that time, to split them in a week or two when check lines appear, then to stack and cover until the following fall or winter." [page 75]
Click to expand...

That is usually how it worked when I was a kid, so the answer is both, dried on the ends and green in the middle! Seriously, some wood splits easier green, some bone dry. Some frozen solid. Some wood is not easy to split at all. We burned pretty much every part of the tree, so splitting was a part of it only.
 
Operator1975 said:
We burned about 12-20 cords of wood per year in good ole Pa, and it is, again on average, easier to split wood that has dried, over green wood.
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That's a lot of wood!. Either you lived in a castle at the time or collectively we need to standardize the definition of "cord". In Canada there are 'stove' cords (12" X 4' x 8'), 'face' cords (16" X 4' X 8'), 'full' or true cords ( 4' X 4' X 8') and 'bush' cords (4' X 4' X 8' of unsplit logs). Within all of the major Canadian cities "face" cord has become the standard of measurement for buying firewood, and newspaper ads only ever say "cord" anymore, without the prefix. But for the $75-125 cost of cut/split/hardwood these days guaranteed you will not be taking delivery of a 4 foot high pile stacked in a stepside long box domestic pickup truck box such as was done for many, many, years.
 
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