What's the worst to split?

[Mkarlson]

Hackberry

A few years ago as a favor to a customer(agriculture) and to gain some felling exp.:bang: I took out a 40" dbh hackberry. Up till that time I had only cut the nice hackberries up to bout 16" dbh which are not too bad for splitting. Well the main trunk of this tree was only bout 20' tall before it branched out everywhere. I knew the 40" sections would be much heavier then I could lift cutting at 18-20" so I cut them only 12" long. Guess what I still couldnt lift them even with a friend safely so we split on site. Started with the wedges had three steel splitting wedge with me and managed to sink all three of them into the first piece and nothing happened. What seemed like one hundred swings with my maul I managed to pop it in half. Than of course the pieces from this large tree behaved nothing like the smaller hacks. These things were loaded with water and very stringy.

I lost track of the total man hours spent on this one tree, but like I said it was for a customer/friend who lets me hunt and cut firewood on all his farms so when all said and done we were both happy...kinda LOL I did this tree in I believe it was Septemberish and when I was done I had an amazing pile of wood and nothing to do with it. So I piled it in a corner of the pasture and well to make a long story short. In feb. the following year same friend ran across a guy looking for firewood and sent him myway. I told the man I had no intention of cutting firewood to sell had normally only cut a cord or two a year for camping and such and that I really didnt know how hackberry burnt in a wood stove. Well he was desperate and bought it all delivered it to him in my ton truck for $100 a load(about 1 cord) He liked the wood and me evidently and now I deliver to him bout 8 cords a year and whats nice is He will take it as I cut it. I fell and buck,splitter pulled behind my truck splits it then it delivered to him. Can do it at me leisure any time of the year.

Sorry for all the unneccassary information ...to me osage orange because of it being so crooked and string not to mention heavy as well as hackberry for being heavy and stringy are my least two favorite trees to split...easiest wood to me are nice straight pieces of cherry which as you can guess I do lots of when I can.

Mike

 

[BuschLover]

I had never split wood until this year. Bought a Jotul woodstove, and hooked up with a couple of buddies who have always burned wood. I have a skidloader so I made a splitter for it. I made it so I could use it as a manual splitter or rotate it 90 degrees and split from the cab. We dropped around 10 standing dead red elms and bucked them up. BTW, we bought 2 Dolmar 5100s based on info from this site and they scream. Anyway I start splitting with it and could not believe how tough that stuff is to split, stringy and frustrating. I can't imagine doing it with a maul. When we finished, a few days later, they informed me that it doesn't get any worse than that.

 

[ciscoguy01]

Yip

ELM

I hard a downed elm near the house big :censored: :censored: monster 36" diameter, it took me over a week (10 hours a day) to split 2 cords, I normally can split over a cord a day easy and have done 2 cords in a day with poplar

I hate :censored: Elm, and I have split Ironwood while it is hard it is not as stringy as Elm, even after you get it to split there tends to be strands that you need to still break to get the pieces apart.

just my 2 cents:greenchainsaw:

Preach on brotha. Ain't nothin like elm out there...