Splitter? which ones and why

[TimD]

OK. Someone with too little knowledge here (at least I recognise this).
Going to the father in laws farm for a couple of weeks and I know (because it comes up every summer) that he'll have a mountain of wood from fallen trees from the farm that wants sawing and splitting for the stove.

He's free to play with the chainsaw normally and I get left splitting the resultant rounds. Normally using a pneumatic splitter!
I've done this for the last two years and its damned boring so am thinking of trying to split some of them by hand (axe). I'm aware that my fitness levels won't allow me to do the lot by hand but there really is quite an array of splitting axes from mauls to splitting axes (big and small) with wooden handles, synthetic and the list goes on.

Are any particularly better than the others and if so why?

Can't see the point of shelling out a large amount of cash if something much cheaper will do the job just as well.

Thanks,
Tim

 

[spandit]

I've got a cheap maul with a fibreglass handle and it does the job well - for the abuse it gets I wouldn't want a wooden one

Father-in-law has an axe with little hinged "ears" that fly out to break the wood but have never used it so don't know how effective it is

 

[swright81076]

A good splitting maul and maybe a wood grenade would do the trick.
I've heard good things about the roughneck brand. Screwfix have these in stock

sent from my Jelly Bean'd galaxy nexus.

 

[abominable_scouse_monster]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LOG-BOMB-...denEquipment_HandTools_SM&hash=item589457db2e

 

[British Red]

Wood grenades are amusing - but they won't split big stuff. Nor will a maul.

When its big (3' rounds) or nasty stuff like poplar, there is only one way to do it - 10" steel wedges and a sledge hammer.


12) Fitting a wedge by British Red, on Flickr

I cut and split about 10 tonnes of firewood a year. An eight pound sledge and 3 to 4 wedges will split stuff that even a 7 tonne hydraulic spliiter won't touch. But its sweaty, hard work.

For splitting work I use

An 8lb sledge hammer and 4 of 10" wedges
A 6lb narrow beaked splitting maul (thank you Cegga)
A 3lb felling axe for sub splitting

Oh and a hydraulic splitter!

Don't spend too much on them - after a year or two you will mushroom the wedges by pounding on them. A slack belt sander or the like will put an edge back on the maul and axe.

Break up the largest rounds with the "sledge & wedge"

Split the middle sized (18") logs with a maul

Next. get an old tyre, mount it on two bits of fence rail on top of a stump. Stack all the smaller logs and sections you want to split inside the tyre and sub split with the axe - they will stay on place and you won't break your back collecting them up hundreds of times.

Don't waste money on:

Log grenades
Gransfors Bruks splitting range (they are pretty toys but actually rubbish at processing large amounts of domestic firewood)
Pounding a knotty stump for an hour - just chop it up with a chainsaw!

Red

 

[spandit]

I bought a grenade and it is pretty useless and requires an accurate hit