Comment by JackFr
1 day ago
I spent a summer chopping a whole bunch of wood with a steel handled 10 lb maul. Many was the evening where my hand was numb until the morning, but by the end of the summer my shoulders were ripped.
You quickly learn the differences between locust, pine, maple, oak or, god forbid, cherry.
I see a lot of people that split infrequently use mauls. But personally I think an axe works better once you get a bit of practice. The trick with the axe a lot of people miss at first is to focus on the swing speed, and not as much as delivering force and mass behind the blow. Some species the maul can work better, but 90% of the time I feel like an axe is just a bit less effort and a bit quicker.
Splitting Eucalyptus and big madrone by hand will test a man.
I have a few black wattle rounds that have been sitting around for years. I have a go at them whenever I feel like I need to be humbled. There's also a fallen tree at the bottom of our property that blunts chainsaws. It's been there for years and nothing seems to eat it. I harvest what I can from it, and a good sized chunk will burn through the night.
Could add beech, yellow birch, black locust to that god-forbid list