There's a surprising amount of technique and knowledge that goes into splitting firewood. It isn't rocket science, but I know a 75 year old who can chop wood faster than any young guy who works out at the gym.
Stage 1: At first, I could chop essentially nothing, probably 60+ minutes per round as I mostly puzzled about how to make progress and got lucky from time to time with a round that split easily (fortunately, I had a nice splitting axe)
Stage 2: Then I bought some splitting wedges, and I used a handheld sledgehammer to drive them in to what I thought were the weak spots, and then ultimately pried open the log, to pieces that I could split more readily.
Stage 3: I bought a massive demolition sledge hammer (essentially a two-handed battle hammer) and used that to drive the wedges in after getting them started, and made a bit more progress on actually splitting the rounds.
Stage 4: After doing this countless times, you just a knack for reading the wood, and where it will / won't split. I reverted back to using just the splitting axe, since if you hit the wood in the right spots, it really just splits on its own.
Here's where I ended up, if it helps any of you:
- Start by establishing the fracture line that will be used to split the round in half. I would eyeball any existing line on the round towards the center, and use the axe head to mark a line, away from any knots , from the center to the edge. These two center-to-edge didn't necessarily need to be inline. They could be slightly offset, like hands on a clock.
- With moderate force, just repeatedly strike that line, working from the center outwards. You'd be shocked out how quickly repeated strikes widen the line, and eventually the wood's own weight almost causes it to fall apart.
- Recursively do this with the two halves: Draw the line from (what was the center), radially out to the edge. Repeatedly strike until these pieces have been halved.
- Continue this process until you have proper pizza wedges. At this point, it's pretty trivial to just chop the pizza wedge, from the wedge to the base, into 4 or 5 smaller firewood-sized logs.
I know y'all probably didn't care to read this, but this was quite honestly weeks of my life in learning this, and I couldn't find a great guide on YouTube or anything, especially for rounds this big.
The trick to splitting hardwood, other than avoiding burls and knots, is to shave off chords around the outside of the buck. If you tried radial cuts or splitting on the diameter, well, best of luck with getting a season's wood split in one year. Chords around the circumference for about 50% of the buck, thenif you're lucky the core will split on the diameter.
Also, use a maul with fat cheeks and no edge rather than an axe. It's the right tool for the job.
We don’t split the, into very small pieces, some logs we don’t even split as they fit into the fireplace in one piece. We don’t look for the highest girth, but for what’s more practical, yearly fires kill enough trees for that.
But that 100 hours is using a hydraulic splitter. Hand-splitting using a maul takes several hours longer. But it keeps you twice as warm: it heats you once when you split it and once when you burn it.
Wood no longer goes flying. Much easier to chop quickly.
When the days you have to break the ice on the dog's water bowl in the morning come, you will quickly learn what kinds of wood there are and what you want to burn for heat.
For example, if you choose a lot of paper birch (it splits easily, lights easily, and smells nice while burning) you will quickly get to know all the local firefighters after all your chimney fires.
IE when you get a load of firewood for the winter, you want it to be hardwood. The person you buy the wood from may mix in softwood depending on their trustworthiness...
Why prefer hardwood? Hardwood density means it will burn for ages. So you have to mess with the fire less and it'll still have at least hot coals in the morning if you put a log on before bed.
If you want hot coals in the morning, throw in a log or two of river gum / softer ashy woods before bedtime and the Jarrah coals will not burn out and disappear while the house sleeps but get buried in ash and stay hot but smothered.
Stir and throw in light kindling at dawn and it'll be roaring by the time you get back to the house for breakfast.
Current plan is just to leave them there until either they start drying/rotting enough to split, or I find someone who wants to take them off my hands.
Source: grew up in a wood burning family, helped split many stubborn hardwood trees (all by hand).
Big rounds are the most fun.