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Firewood Splitting Simulator

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Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator

#201

Post by greenbit »

tclancy wrote: post #196
apercu wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only like splitting perfectly seasoned wood ( I do about a face cord every summer/fall). Otherwise it’s just too much work. Got any tips in to tooling? I use a maul.

I have a couple diamond/ grenade wedges, a rescue wedge and a traditional wedge I barely ever use. I have the big Fiskars maul and that is great for a lot of stuff. Bigger things, whole rounds I use two wedges near each other and hit them in concert with the sledge side of the maul. Most wood is easier to split when dry/ aged, but I recently learned that does not apply to elm and a few others, so it’s worth checking.…

Elm is awful even at burning. Cold, smoky stuff.

Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator

#202

Post by NuclearPM »

smackeyacky wrote: post #200
helterskelter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a surprising amount of technique and knowledge that goes into splitting firewood. It isn't rocket science, but I know a 75 year old who can chop wood faster than any young guy who works out at the gym.

My grandfather was like this, and not with soft wood. We try to burn Australian hardwoods and that takes quite a bit of force to split. He could pound through it like a knife through butter. There’s a definite art to hardwood, looking where the slightest fault might be. You can’t just smash it in the middle, your block splitter (preferred) or axe just bounces off it.

Try to burn hardwoods? What does that mean?

Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator

#203

Post by greenbit »

MatthiasWandel wrote: post #40

Looks like its coded by someone who has never split firewood. The challenge is not deciding where to split, its executing the split. Like hitting the same gap if it doesn't split, deciding orientation to aoid knots, figuring out how to put it on end if it wasn't cut straight. And some of the cuts it allowed me would hit the ax handle on another part, the shock from that damages the ax handle and is painful on the han…

Well, what about when you get into a piece of apple wood, and as soon as you hit it, carpenter ants boil out of it, all over your chopping block, up the handle of your axe, and you don't even realize 3 or 4 of them got up your pant-legs until suddenly your shins feel like they've been hit with white phosphorous rounds?

That would be pretty hard to simulate. Guess they had to stop somewhere

Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator

#204

Post by binoct »

sowbug wrote: post #175
binoct wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here here. This was a joy to wake up to and wish I hadn’t stumbled into the comments.

Then you're really going to love this. The proper term is a shortened form of "hear him, hear him," which was necessary because British Parliament didn't allow clapping or cheering. Instead, if you wanted to show agreement with a speaker's point, you'd shout out that everyone else should "hear" him. Not to be confused with "hear ye," which evolved from the French "oyez," which is the imperative form of "to listen," w…

Thanks, that was interesting to learn, I’d never thought about how odd the phrase sounds as-is.

There’s a fascinating complexity to what constitutes constructive feedback, criticism, or dismissal. And to when it’s okay to provide one, the other, or none at all.

Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator

#205

Post by cpncrunch »

helterskelter wrote: post #189
cpncrunch wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a combination of technique and the type of wood. Even with perfect technique, some wood is simply too hard to split. I've got the bottom 5 or 6 rounds of a bigleaf maple sitting in my yard that I simply can't make a dent in. You're welcome to take it if you can split it :)

If it came from the base of the tree the wood grain will probably be squirrelly and practically unsplittable. Get a chainsaw or hydraulic woodsplitter, or throw them in a bonfire. Alternatively, use them in a woodworking project or innoculate them with your favorite mushroom spores.

Well they're about 4ft diameter and not really even possible to move. My electric chainsaw would just burn up trying to cut them, and the cost of a hydraulic woodsplitter wouldn't be cost-effective.

Current plan is just to leave them there until either they start drying/rotting enough to split, or I find someone who wants to take them off my hands.

Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator

#206

Post by greenbit »

JackFr wrote: post #121
embedding-shape wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had to ruin one perfectly good axe handle before I learned how to swing. Is it really that difficult? Maybe my memory is vague, but chopping wood in autumn/fall for the winter just took a bunch of time, and wasn't very fun, but wasn't that bad, especially compared to other things like harvesting veggies stuff where you have to be on the ground. I'm not sure how you'd manage to ruin a axe handle before understandi…

I spent a summer chopping a whole bunch of wood with a steel handled 10 lb maul. Many was the evening where my hand was numb until the morning, but by the end of the summer my shoulders were ripped. You quickly learn the differences between locust, pine, maple, oak or, god forbid, cherry.

Could add beech, yellow birch, black locust to that god-forbid list

Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator

#207

Post by dwd »

Used to watch the competitive wood chopping at my local agricultural show all the time.

The highlight was always the tree felling competition. Each competitor has an axe and four springer boards, and it's a race to basically chop the top off a standing telegraph pole.

That would make a better game.

Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator

#208

Post by greenbit »

cluckindan wrote: post #67
codemonkey-zeta wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, 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…

It’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.

Not 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.

Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator

#209

Post by smackeyacky »

NuclearPM wrote: post #202
smackeyacky wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandfather was like this, and not with soft wood. We try to burn Australian hardwoods and that takes quite a bit of force to split. He could pound through it like a knife through butter. There’s a definite art to hardwood, looking where the slightest fault might be. You can’t just smash it in the middle, your block splitter (preferred) or axe just bounces off it.

Try to burn hardwoods? What does that mean?

It’s wood. You put it in your fireplace and set fire to it for heat

Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator

#210

Post by greenbit »

yardshop wrote: post #27

The pieces look like they retain the shapes I cut them in when stacked. I started cutting them as pie slices, but then tried a few as parallel chops, and they get stacked in those shapes. Also interesting is the shadows of leaves that stay consistent on the scene as the pile grows, but they don't appear on the splitting area itself. Lots of engine noise too, I guess that's the ambience in this person's back yard! Pro…

After the first cord or two, the ground around the block should be covered in chips and splinters. That might be easy to add to the sim. Otoh, it's a fun little sim as is.
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