Good Maul

[jyoutz]

Yes, one side only. It's a really nice tool to use. 6 lb. is about right for me. If you know your wood, splitting by hand is pretty easy. Our local white oak and bigleaf maple split best when they are green. Madrone checks so badly it almost splits itself, so I stack it and wait for it to dry before splitting. The only time I have ever wished for a power splitter was when I got stuck with a bunch of 3' maple rounds. I had to split shakes off the outside to get it small enough to split through. Horsing them to the splitter would have been a task, though.

I don't burn soft woods in the stove because I don't want to deal with the creosote. Cedar and fir are good in the outdoor fire pit, as long as they are dry enough to not spit a lot of sparks.

When I used to heat exclusively with wood, I would burn both hardwoods and softwoods. The key to reducing creosote problems is how you burn the wood. I used to start the fire with split pine, then burn pine and fir to get the fire roaring to heat up the house quickly. If you burn hot with full open air vent and damper open, the softwoods don’t produce creosote and nothing heats the house quicker than pine/fir. Then I let them burn down to coals, and add the hardwood logs. Once they are burning good, I close down the air/damper to slow the burn for overnight. I have never had creosote problems by burning this way. But if you try to burn softwoods slow overnight, that’s when the creosote starts forming in the chimney.

 

[ernemats]

I bought a monster maul about 55 years ago. It was triangle shaped with metal handle welded on and no rubber grip and it was 16 pounds I believe it would split a lot that a 8 pound maul would not. My grandson and son now have it and use it not too often, they usually use a Fiskar splitter or my hydraulic log splitter.

 

[Peace]

Window shopping the HF 10 ton Hydraulic splitter……comments/concerns anyone?

If this is the one your looking at, I bought one last year. Ive split about 1 cord of hard Mesquite for bbq cooking and about another 1/2 cord of miscellaneous hard/soft woods for fire pit use. It recently stopped working. The ram has become very weak and won’t hardly split anything now. I don’t see any hydraulic leaks. I haven’t checked anything beyond that. Maybe it is low on fluid from the factory? Its quite a bit slower than hand splitting with axe/maul, but way easier on my back.
I only split a small amount of wood for cooking and the family fire pit. Although when there is alot of ’fire-pit’ wood available, a lot seems to get used. The kids have burned over a cord in a weekend when camping.
If I can’t cheaply fix the manual hydraulic, I’m thinking about going with a small electric with a stand. Bending over is too tough on my back. Didn’t mean to be so long winded or veer off topic.

 

[fishman]

When I was a teenager, we heated our old uninsulated farm house with wood, ran two wood stoves in fact. 15-25 pickup loads a year as I recall. We had a monster maul, and I really didn't like it, too much hand shock. My preferred splitter is the one I still have, and axe-eye 6 lb maul that uses ash handles. Because they are oval, you always know your maul orientation. Even the best ash handle would eventually break, because clingy wood remnants would strike the handle and gouge it as it went through the piece. I got a bit more life out of them by wrapping them with a piece of sheet metal and stapling it on the back side, but still 2-3 years at best. I really don't like the fiberglass round mauls because they have no "feel" and don't seem to transmit the power as well as a good ash handle.

Of course this is all academic now, since I rarely split wood. But I am happy to say that it is like a bicycle. Once you've split 10,000 pieces of wood, it becomes muscle memory and you can't forget.

 

[Peace]

How do you keep from breaking the handle? I've had several mauls and a couple sledge hammers over the years, and they always seem to crack and lose the heads. Finding a wooden replacement handle is like lookjng for the Holy Grail, while a replacement fiberglass handle costs nearly as much as a new maul.

Finally got my Fisker axe today. it has a hollow plastic handle.
It had a sticker attached that said ”lifetime warranty for the handle”.
It also has a cool plastic blade cover.