Split Those Logs

[kevin_standlee]

In between bands of rain showers and occasional hail this afternoon, I went to work splitting some of the cedar tree. For being green wood, it split surprisingly easily. The only problem is that cedar will burn too hot. Lisa points out that when and if we ever burn this stuff, we'll have to turn the damper way down or we'll burn up the stove. I also split a few pieces of the maple tree we cut last year to see if the wood was still sound. Aside from a layer of mud on the outside and a few bits of fungus growing from them, the wood seemed okay.

We have two splitting mauls and a few wedges. While working on a particularly knotty (literally) piece of wood, the head came off of the smaller maul. At that point, Lisa said it was time to quit, and we went over to the hardware store before it closed so we could buy a new maul, since they didn't have any handles that fit the existing head. Even if we can't fix the head that came off, we can use it as an additional wedge.

We hauled three cart-loads of wood to the wood shed. Based on a cord of wood being 128 cubic feet, it should take 19 loads to make one cord.

If I were going to be here all summer and if I split wood every afternoon, I might possibly get it all split by the end of August.