Best maul?

[gamblingbob99]

Fiskers 28" Maul

greetings I read many of the posts on the Fiskers Maul. Well I ordered one and received it yesterday. My initial concern was that the maul was too light 4 1/2 pounds . I am not sure how people can say this is a great maul when it will not touch my oak or the maple I have. The handle is way too short unless you are like 5' tall come on guys I was really excited about the comments on this maul. It is going back and I will continue to use my 8 pounder. Please do not waste your money on this maul it's simply to light to do any real splitting.

 

[slofr8]

greetings I read many of the posts on the Fiskers Maul. Well I ordered one and received it yesterday. My initial concern was that the maul was too light 4 1/2 pounds . I am not sure how people can say this is a great maul when it will not touch my oak or the maple I have. The handle is way too short unless you are like 5' tall come on guys I was really excited about the comments on this maul. It is going back and I will continue to use my 8 pounder. Please do not waste your money on this maul it's simply to light to do any real splitting.

It must depend on the individual and the situation because I love the Fiskars SS. I'm only 5'8" 160 LB.
I cut mostly Beech, Maple and Popple. I've tried an 8 Lb maul and find it to big. I used a 6 LBer for years and liked it. All the Fiskar hype got me curious so I bought one. I used to split every thing on the ground but with the SS and its sharp blade I use a block and tire. The handle and weight seem just right for me. If it doesn't go through it stays stuck in the wood a little more because of the sharper edges on the part that spreads the wood but I'll round those off a little on the grinder. Bottom line is I can get more done with less effort which is all I was hoping for.
Just goes to show I guess.
To bad it didn't work for you.
Dan.

 

[Iron Mike]

greetings I read many of the posts on the Fiskers Maul. Well I ordered one and received it yesterday. My initial concern was that the maul was too light 4 1/2 pounds . I am not sure how people can say this is a great maul when it will not touch my oak or the maple I have. The handle is way too short unless you are like 5' tall come on guys I was really excited about the comments on this maul. It is going back and I will continue to use my 8 pounder. Please do not waste your money on this maul it's simply to light to do any real splitting.

Well... some people need instructions to fart.

 

[howellhandmade]

I've used the Helko Tomahawk for several months, along with a standard 6-lb. maul that I've had for years. The Helko is nice to keep inside for splitting bigger pieces or making kindling, but if I could only have one maul I'd keep the 6-lb. The Helko is light and has a nice, crisp feel, like a well-struck 5-iron, when it encounters wood that it can split. But if the round is too tough, it bounces off with a punishing shock. And more pieces are too tough for it than for the 6-lb.

 

[howellhandmade]

I bought mine at Lowes and the same exact thing happened, the first block I split with it. I took it back and they gave me a new one.

It should be noted that what is shown is not a Fiskars Super Splitter, but a Chinese knockoff design that appears to be cast rather than forged, and not particularly well at that.

Jack

 

[chainsawaddict]

greetings I read many of the posts on the Fiskers Maul. Well I ordered one and received it yesterday. My initial concern was that the maul was too light 4 1/2 pounds . I am not sure how people can say this is a great maul when it will not touch my oak or the maple I have. The handle is way too short unless you are like 5' tall come on guys I was really excited about the comments on this maul. It is going back and I will continue to use my 8 pounder. Please do not waste your money on this maul it's simply to light to do any real splitting.

I love the fiskars personally, Im 6'3" and 190. It takes a little getting used to, but I have been successful splitting green ash, elm and burr oak with it. I thought the handle was too short when i first got it, but I just got a taller 'stump' to set the rounds on and it works damn well. The elm is the hardest to split, but it is working.

I am curious though how it works compared to the helko vario. that thing looks pretty sweet, and does have a heavier head and a longer handle...

Anybody think its worth the extra $$$ over the fiskars?

 

[Iron Mike]

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Good thing nobody told me that the Fiskars maul is junk before I bought one.

 

[chainsawaddict]

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Good thing nobody told me that the Fiskars maul is junk before I bought one.

i dont even know where my maul is now...opcorn:

 

[Brushwacker]

greetings I read many of the posts on the Fiskers Maul. Well I ordered one and received it yesterday. My initial concern was that the maul was too light 4 1/2 pounds . I am not sure how people can say this is a great maul when it will not touch my oak or the maple I have. The handle is way too short unless you are like 5' tall come on guys I was really excited about the comments on this maul. It is going back and I will continue to use my 8 pounder. Please do not waste your money on this maul it's simply to light to do any real splitting.

Its a differant tool. If you use an identical technique it will not work to well.
I'm 6'. Position your legs fairly wide apart putting you closer to the ground and your lower extremities a little farther from harms way in case your aim is off and the head glances off in the wrong direction. I swing mine straight in front of me , similar to the monster maul , only more speed but not as hard as I can, go for accuracy. I have had it bounce out of knots and come back at me close to my head that is why I stress accuracy and control verses maximum power in the swing. It doesn't matter to me how it rates using physical formulas. It is by far the most forgiving hand splitting tool I have used, to my body. I would say it has the best power to weight ratio of any I have used although a monster maul will split knots and stringy tough wood better but its much more strain on the body, which if you split a lot of wood for many years it will wear you out much faster. I've had many 6,8, and a 10 pound mauls. 10 wasn't bad, about all 6 was good for was easy stuff and the 8's I had hardly got used. My tool of choice was the monster maul until I tried the Fiskars super splitting axe. I'm sure if I had used it the last 25 years verses the monster maul my body parts would be in better condition today.

 

[KodiakKen]

almost scared to post here

all these high priced gransford bruks and fiskars..I did a tree job when in the military with a borrowed saw and a borrowed 8 pound maul. well the homeowner decided to grab the maul while I was bucking and 2 hits..thump..the head was on the ground. son of a *****...well he was my ncoic and was a cool guy but on a sunday we couldn't find a good store open except sears..couldn't find a regular sledge handle in there so he bought a 6 pound maul..I thought it looked ridiculous..skinny handle great big plastic collar in case you miss..I use it to this day..I am 6'3'' 270 pounds and honestly I split maybe one month a year..so I am not conditioned to the motion but nevertheless I can swing the 6 pounder all day. I bought a grasford 8 pounder because I am a Stihl nut and I hate it. not enough taper for a maul. if you give er hell and don't split it..it is buried. I have run my 6 pounder against a 12 pound monster maul and granted the kid couldn't aim and overshot about as much as he hit..he was winded long before me.. just my .02..find some like minded people close and use what they have and then go to garage sales or old auction houses and buy something like it made from good steel.. good luck

 

[Huge Salad Fork]

While I am not a physicist, I am an engineer. I see you point with the KE, however I am not sure if it applies to splitting wood as much as force, think about it when you buy a mechanical wood splitter do you buy it for its KE value or the force (tons) it applies to the wood. It is really force we are talking about here and if you are interested in KE and momentum then you can see that a heavier object at a much slower speed has a much higher KE then a small object at a very high speed. The basic example a ping pong ball going 300 mph or a 5 pound rock going 30 mph which rather you get hit by they have the same KE, but I rather take my chance with the ping pong ball.

And JamesJems, you can not swing an 8 lbs ax twice as fast as a 16 pound ax and there is no way you can swing an 8 pound ax 3 times as fast as a 16 pound ax. I get your point about the object not reaching terminal velocity of 32ft/sec/squared but gravity is working on both object and both objects will reach about the same speed due to gravity. Which in this case let say is 1/4 of the terminal velocity. In general, a speed of 50% of terminal velocity is reached after only about 3 seconds, while it takes 8 seconds to reach 90%, 15 seconds to reach 99% and so on. In general on earth under normal non-vacuum condition terminal velocity is around 120 mph or 175 feet per second so let say our ax/maul is moving at 1/4 of this or 40 ft/second or 30 mph due to gravity alone and both ax/mauls are moving at the same speed.

Now think about it how fast can you real swing your ax from the top of the swing to the time it takes to hit the wood, low long does it take, 1/2 a second,1/4 a second? Basically if you can swing an 8 pound ax in 1/4 a second does it really take you a full ½ a second to swing a 16 pound ax or could you swing a 4 pound ax in 1/8 of a second NO it is not psychically possible. This is why a 20 pound monster maul works, because even if you in part no effort to the swing just basically drop it (let gravity alone do all the work) it does not take 2.5 times longer for the maul to fall compared to how fast you can swing a lighter ax. So even if you have a quick swing and it takes 1/4 a second to swing an 8 pound ax, it does not take 0.625 of a second for the 20 pound maul to drop. Just try it for you self lift an object over you head and drop it, it takes less than ½ a second for it to hit the ground. Just for the record according to timber sports it takes a little more than ¼ of a second to swing an ax on average which mean even if you do put any effort in your swing you are imparting almost as much force with a 16 pound ax as you do full force swing with a 8 pound ax.

JamesJems bring up another issue how much force do you need for 10 inch round, yes a 16 pounder is a bit of over kill, and there are two parts of a swing the first part the lift, which is much quicker and easier with a smaller ax then with a monster ax and that your cycle time is faster even if your swing speed is about the same and with smaller wood you can split faster and with less effort with a small ax then with a big one, but if you split bigger wood like I do (16 in tend to be the minimum tree size and 20 inch or larger is common) more force is need and you can split much faster with a bigger ax.

Using either kinetics (force analysis) or energy methods produce the SAME RESULTS. Choosing whether to do a force analysis or energy analysis is all about which is easier and which is more appropriate. You should know this as an engineer.

It seems like you don't trust the energy methods and part of the reason is because of your fuzzy math. To have equal kinetic energy to a 5lb rock going 30mph a ping pong ball (2.7g = 0.00123lb) would have to be going 1914mph! That's over half a mile a second. I don't think any of us can really fathom a speed like that. Finally this isn't particle mechanics. You are comparing a rock which is not very deformable to a ping pong ball which is. This might be appropriate to illustrate the importance of deformability, but everyone is comparing mauls. They are all made of steel.

To properly use Kinetics to compare mauls you need to look at it this way: Force applied to the wood = mass of the maul head * the DECELERATION of the head going from max velocity just before hitting the wood to stopped after it hits (or a much slower velocity after it splits it). Even this is a simplification as the axe is not a particle, it is mostly a rotating body. All of this talk of gravity, the force you are applying to the head and terminal velocity is mostly irrelevant. There are forces you are applying to the head that lead to an acceleration, that is combined with gravitational acceleration, that leads to a velocity. All the results of such an analysis simply lead you to the velocity of the head before it strikes the wood.

I think energy methods are much easier for mauls, mass is known and velocity can be understood relatively (we all know we can swing a helko faster than a monster). However kinetics can be used to determine where the energy goes once the head strikes the wood. Some goes to penetration, some to prying it in twain, some is lost to friction (the secret to the fiskars).

For log splitters kinetics are much easier because you are using a controlled pressure applied by well understood hydraulics. This and the fact that most people have no bearing on quantities of kinetic energy are why they are rated in force.

 

[howellhandmade]

Using either kinetics (force analysis) or energy methods produce the SAME RESULTS. Choosing whether to do a force analysis or energy analysis is all about which is easier and which is more appropriate. You should know this as an engineer.

It seems like you don't trust the energy methods and part of the reason is because of your fuzzy math. To have equal kinetic energy to a 5lb rock going 30mph a ping pong ball (2.7g = 0.00123lb) would have to be going 1914mph! That's over half a mile a second. I don't think any of us can really fathom a speed like that. Finally this isn't particle mechanics. You are comparing a rock which is not very deformable to a ping pong ball which is. This might be appropriate to illustrate the importance of deformability, but everyone is comparing mauls. They are all made of steel.

To properly use Kinetics to compare mauls you need to look at it this way: Force applied to the wood = mass of the maul head * the DECELERATION of the head going from max velocity just before hitting the wood to stopped after it hits (or a much slower velocity after it splits it). Even this is a simplification as the axe is not a particle, it is mostly a rotating body. All of this talk of gravity, the force you are applying to the head and terminal velocity is mostly irrelevant. There are forces you are applying to the head that lead to an acceleration, that is combined with gravitational acceleration, that leads to a velocity. All the results of such an analysis simply lead you to the velocity of the head before it strikes the wood.

I think energy methods are much easier for mauls, mass is known and velocity can be understood relatively (we all know we can swing a helko faster than a monster). However kinetics can be used to determine where the energy goes once the head strikes the wood. Some goes to penetration, some to prying it in twain, some is lost to friction (the secret to the fiskars).

For log splitters kinetics are much easier because you are using a controlled pressure applied by well understood hydraulics. This and the fact that most people have no bearing on quantities of kinetic energy are why they are rated in force.

One of the higher quality first posts.

For anybody who wants to try a Helko Tomahawk, and also has a Fiskars and thinks it is junk, I'll trade straight across, assuming the Fiskars is in decent shape.

For the guys having trouble splitting with the Fiskars, I'd say that if it has a weakness it's dealing with wet, spongy wood that is capable of deforming and absorbing the energy of the blow without cleaving. Maple can be one of these, but I love mine for oak and locust.

Should add, even with spongy wood, good results can be obtained with the Fiskars by splitting shakes off the outside of the log rather than burying the maul in the center.

Jack

 

[thefeckerwest]

No one uses the Chopper 1?

<BR>

I've used several different mauls/axes over the years, & this thing outperforms anything I have ever used, hands down! The "split-assist" action of the small "spreader" lever wedges works like a dream.

 

[thefeckerwest]

No one uses the Chopper 1?

<BR>

I've used several different mauls/axes over the years, & this thing outperforms anything I have ever used, hands down! The "split-assist" action of the small "spreader" lever wedges works like a dream.

That maul head in on the wrong way round.