Earlier quoted context omitted.
What bizarro world HN are you reading? I'd like the link, please.
Looking at the front page right now, only about 8 out of 30 are about AI.
Only?
Firewood Splitting Simulator
261–270 of 302 posts
Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
When those work well they're fine but be very careful. It's not uncommon of for smoke to go out what you think is the in intake and often those aren't correctly built as a chimney and so you can burn your house down.
Knowing how ours were built, I don't even know what you describe could happen. The intake vents are on the floor with a standard height raised hearth (12"???) while the exit vents are about 6' off the floor. Not really sure how smoke is any where near the intake. The smoke is contained within the chimney. I'm at a loss at how to design something so poorly that the smoke is near any vents. Then again, I've grown up ar…
Maybe I misunderstand your description. I'm referring to the fresh air inlet for the fire, not additional HVAC pipes. It is common for attempts to put a fresh air inlet in a fireplace to instead have smoke go out that fresh air inlet.
Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vertical 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.
Until 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.
Yikes. 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.
Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had to take down two absolutely enormous Douglas Fir trees on my property (> 36" base), and asked them to leave the wood rounds for me. I knew it was going to be a lot of wood, but even then, I was not prepared. I spent about a fair bit of my free time over the next 1-2 months just out there slowly working my way through the pile, and you're absolutely right - you get substantially better at it. For me, it looked s…
I don't burn softwood because hardwood is a much better fuel as a primary heat source, especially when you live in a mixed forest. Sugar maple, red oak, birch, and beech. Beech is the best: straight grain, good density, but less common where I live. The trick to splitting hardwood, other than avoiding burls and knots, is to shave off chords around the outside of the buck. If you tried radial cuts or splitting on the…
Between yours and the parent comment, I'm just surprised how LONG splitting wood takes. A year for a season's wood feels much longer than I would have imagined.
Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator
#265Earlier 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 :)
Are you trying to split it with an axe? You need a sledgehammer and a few splitting wedges. The sledge lets you apply a lot more force than an axe and striking the wedge focuses that force onto a small area. The first wedge will open a crack, then you use additional wedges to expand that crack until she splits. Source: grew up in a wood burning family, helped split many stubborn hardwood trees (all by hand).
The dude in the comments above suggested a maul, which seems nice (kinda like an axe and a sledge built into one tool)
Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had to take down two absolutely enormous Douglas Fir trees on my property (> 36" base), and asked them to leave the wood rounds for me. I knew it was going to be a lot of wood, but even then, I was not prepared. I spent about a fair bit of my free time over the next 1-2 months just out there slowly working my way through the pile, and you're absolutely right - you get substantially better at it. For me, it looked s…
I don't burn softwood because hardwood is a much better fuel as a primary heat source, especially when you live in a mixed forest. Sugar maple, red oak, birch, and beech. Beech is the best: straight grain, good density, but less common where I live. The trick to splitting hardwood, other than avoiding burls and knots, is to shave off chords around the outside of the buck. If you tried radial cuts or splitting on the…
Advice I would add: use a tire when splitting firewood to hold the logs together. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMv6-SYzv-Q
Wood no longer goes flying. Much easier to chop quickly.
Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until 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.
Yikes. 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.
When I was a kid Dutch Elm disease was killing all the elm trees around me so that is what everyone was heating with. An elm log that is just large enough you need to split it can stall out a wood splitter (not every time, but you will get several in a day of splitting). When splitting by hand it is common to have the handle of the maul sticking out of the log and you can't see it from the top where it went in, you just keep beating it hoping it eventually goes.
Then we got a large oak tree once, logs you couldn't even life split clean when you barely did more than blow on them.
Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator
#268It seems they chose the Fiskars Axe, good choice I own five of them.
Yeah, I recognized that too. Probably the popular X27 :)
Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator
#269Fun game.
But please don't leave it on in the background while moving on to other tasks.
Pretty much killed my venerable i7 mac.
Re: Firewood Splitting Simulator
#270This is kinda fun, but doesn't match most of my experience splitting firewood. The wood barely moves after it's split. If you split it perfectly, the two halves will almost certainly both fall to each side (they're pushed outwards by the axe). You can't just randomly split it across the grain into slices like you're slicing bread. I guess mostly: it's not tiring, which sort of sucks when you're doing it for real, but…
For players who are new to the game, there should be a 1/4 chance you go to bed proud of an honest day's work with your hands, and wake up the next morning having strained a muscle you didn't even know you had, and you can't chop wood for the next couple weeks.
As someone who recently did some hand splitting of firewood I can directly relate to this.