Splitting with maul made easier

I've mentioned this method on this board a few times, but no one ever responded acknowledging how smart I am, so I though I'd post a picture :).

When splitting wood by hand, most of the work is bending over and standing pieces for the next wack of the maul. This method largely eliminates that. I tried to get a patten for this but I was told by the Patten office that an old piece of rope and a cinch knot is not a pattenable idea, go figure.

Note, it also works standing 3 to maybe 10 smaller logs side-by-side and tying together. With easy splitting wood, this is faster and easier than using my hydraulic splitter.

Try it!

That is a potential problem, the trick is to hold the end of the handle high so "neck" of the handle hits the closer billets at an angle. I only use wood handles and have not broken one yet, but it does "chew" at them.

I realize that, with hard splitting wood, to get full force, you need to pull the end of the handle toward the ground so it is more or less parallel to the ground when the maul head makes contact. In that case, holding the handle high would not be an option.

As I have said througout this thread, the rope trick is really only helpful with reasonably easy to split wood.

Was mostly elm around here - oh so fun to split.

--->Paul

That is red oak. A freind's, freind's mother had a handy man (supposedly a heroin adict) cut down a this huge, beautiful split trunk oak, by the looks of it, he had a saw with a 16-inch bar, it barely made it to the center of the fatter trunk. It was only about 40 feet from the house, luckly for them, the trees fell away from the house because that little cape would not have even slowed the trunk down on it's way to the ground.

Anyhow, he never came back to clean it up, so we ended up with the wood.

I certainly though it would make some nice boards, but it was not really my "deal" so it would have been a extra pain. Not to mention finding a mill that is willing to saw logs from peoples yard because of nails and hooks and such.

Thanks,
Aaron

Bet ScottP wishes he could have thought of it.

Besides his idea wont work on our black oak or maple.

This not as helpful when splitting stringy wood - hickory, some white oak, elm and such. It is great for straight-grained wood that usually splits through if you get the top few inches. Red oak and red maple (swamp maple)work great.

For stringy wood, you really need to see the pieces fly - with the rope technique you spend more time pulling the pieces apart after you "split" them.

The stringy stuff is why I bought the hydraulic splitter.

I like your tire idea, if I can find the right tire I'll give that a try!

I'll skip the splitting block though - never saw a need for one, the ground always seemed plenty hard to me, and my maul was never that sharp to begin with.

I'd rather bring the tire to the wood than the wood to the tire.