I find nothing contrived in chopping wood using the initial tool this thread was about.
Not using an axe or other tool that you swing is fine with me. Most people tend to pick up bits of wood on the way back to the fire, generally its bad form to come back empty handed and there is no shame in just finding wood and picking it up - why is there now stigma about a certain type of splitting tool? Is that less shrafty than just finding some hanging dead wood?
From what I can see, the type of tool shown with a sliding weight is a good design as all the force is travelling in the right direction. As fast as someone can swing an axe, much of the force is wasted trying to pull the axe from the users hand, only some is directed into the object being hit.
So used for its intended task, it seems like a very good and effective tool that can be used by a wider range of people. Legal health and safety rantings aside, we're not all Dick Proenneke and we won't all be swinging mauls at lumps of knotty wood into our 80's. Tools like this enable the very young, the old, the handicapped and the novice to carry out a task they otherwise would be excluded from.
The huge processors look kinda funky and seem amazingly effective at processing wood but I wouldn't want one myself... I just don't need that much wood, you could probably process 12 months supply in a day with that bobcat mounted one.
