Before and After

Before:



After:



It has been about 25 years since I split wood. It was such great exercise..I can't wait to get my hands on some more log rounds!

Don't they make hydraulic splitters?

DackerDan wrote

Don't they make hydraulic splitters?

Yup, they do. For that amount of wood it is quicker, easier, cheaper and way more fun to split by hand.

I spent Saturday doing the same thing. I've only got an after shot.

Some of this is pretty ugly because it is the remains of a cord I bought 2 seasons ago.  Still a lot of heat in it.



Those rounds look primo.   Since a lot of our wood is deadfall, my challenge is to see how much the knotty stuff I can split up, so we can use as much of the "free" stuff as possible.

Yeah, knots are killer.  It's amazing that even if the rounds are smooth there can still be knots inside!  They do make hydraulic splitters, a contractor I know has one, but as SBR said, it was only a bit shy of a 1/2 of a cord and it's so fun and such awesome exercise.

Upper Body workout !!!! Wooo hooo

Marcski wrote

Yeah, knots are killer.  It's amazing that even if the rounds are smooth there can still be knots inside!  They do make hydraulic splitters, a contractor I know has one, but as SBR said, it was only a bit shy of a 1/2 of a cord and it's so fun and such awesome exercise.

FUN????

My family heated with wood until I went to college, I thought my name was "get wood" until I was 17.

I'm here to say THERE IS NOTHING FUN ABOUT SPLITTING AND HAULING WOOD

I agree with the not fun part of wood heat. We lived in an old farm house with a stove off the kitchen and one in the living room.  My daughters job was to keep the wood boxes full after school. My job was to cut haul split wood each year for the next season. Not fun. Now I have a smaller better insulated house with a nice Vermont Castings Resolute stove for when I want to have a fire. Life is good.

Liking wood heat might be somewhat of a flatlander thing. I have a cord that is going to be 3 years old.  For me the biggest pain is the first night when we arrive, and the girls want to settle in, but it takes a couple hours to heat up.

People who are actually "heating" with wood - well it is a hell of a lot of work.  Wood heat is only really fun as an option or alternative source of heat.

Even with our little VC Intrepid, I like having a space heater. If I heated with wood the night before and the cabin is at 50 degrees when I come back from skiing, a small heater means I don't have to have a fire.

If it's not 20 below for a week, I can let the fire go out to clean out the ash.

For me, down in the flatlands as Harv says, the fireplace is almost solely aesthetic. My wife, the girls and I do fightbover who gets to lie on the floor directly in front of the fireplace.