Logsplitting
By: Jo Roberts
This seems a shame when on one hand we are being encouraged to burn firewood as it is a more environmentally friendly than most other heating methods.
We have, for the first time ever, had to buy in firewood last winter, which was a painful business. It is however much cheaper to buy firewood in as large rounds, and then split it yourself. Back when I lived alone I used to split all of my own firewood with an axe. Doing it that way you get warm twice as they say. Sometimes though the axe would get stuck in an awkward-shaped piece, big trunks with branches were the worst culprits for trapping axes. It was the most frustrating thing, and from time to time I would have to leave the axe where it was until I happened to have a visitor who had more muscle than me and who would deal with the offending piece of firewood. When I first starting dating my other half, he, in a show of strength, offered to split some wood for me, but after an hour of it he came up with the idea of making a tractor powered log-splitter. I’m not saying he’s lazy at all, but if he can make a machine to do a job for him than he will.
Even if it takes weeks to make that machine. There have been times when we’ve needed to dig a hole, and I’ve been prepared to dig it with a spade, but my other half would rather spend a half an hour getting a digger going in order to dig a hole that would have taken half an hour to dig by hand. I suppose he just likes tinkering with machines, whereas I’m more of an impatient type – I like machines well enough, but if they are misbehaving I haven’t got any time for them.
The log-splitter, I have to admit though, is brilliant for those knotty big hardwood rounds. I had visions of it being a rather scary implement to use, one has visions of roaring PTO shafts, blades slamming down, and pieces of timber ricocheting in all directions, but I was pleased to find that it was both steady and controllable to operate. Thankfully the blade acts more like a press than a swinging axe, which means that wood splits gently and falls away, rather than pinging out in all directions as it can when hit violently with an axe.
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