How to Split Firewood For Beginners

okay I thought I'd do just a quick little video on how to split wood for beginners it's just I figure some people just might not know I know that most of us you know it's kind of common sense and there's not a lot to it and there's not but you know you never know when someone might not know something now this that I'm splitting is white oak and it was cut probably I'd say two months ago I just want to show the split them all real quick now this splitting maul I have used since I was 12 years old it's in kind of rough shape obviously it has no edge on it whatsoever totally blunt I mean you could you can hit that thing you can you know it's not not got an edge whatsoever so I just wanted to show that to let people know just about any triangular piece of metal can split wood you know it doesn't have to be a so-called Maul just anything heavy and pointy and that'll pretty much do it but I'm just going to go ahead and split one of these real quick it does help that it's been you know like in the single digits around here with splitting wood the colder it is outside for the longer period of time the better okay I'll bring in a little closer and show you what's going on okay with splitting wood you know most people will tell you follow the cracks follow the grain which is true that does make it easier you know if you were to split along this line it'd be easier than just going straight through and I think there's even a little knot over on this side now it's right here but you know any one of these lines it's fine you can pretty much hit this anywhere and it does depend on what type of what it is but a lot of people say you know follow the grains which is true for the most part that's a good thing to do but you don't have to if you hit the same spot on both sides over and over again it's got no choice but to split anywhere anywhere it'll split anywhere you know you just hit that side hit this side hit the middle you know and then if it still doesn't go just keep doing that and it'll eventually go but I mean as you can see there's pretty much lines everywhere you can just pick one and go with it all right now see that has followed that crack now the easiest way to do it is to just hit it right here again this side will just crack off but you can hit it right here now see that I was about a half inch off but it still will split it doesn't matter and then once you get it have that's just you know you don't even have to put that much effort into it now I'll show you this other piece it has a huge knot in it now what you want to do with a big knot is you don't try to split straight through the knot that will not happen I mean maybe if you kept working at it but it'll split around the knot so what I like to do is the knot is right here okay it's about this wide so it all do is I'll come to the edge of the knot and take it straight across that way the knot is up here in the corner and then when you quarter it that knot is just in one quarter casualty ah but as you can see that not split off right there in the quarter so you can just take it and split it down the middle then and that knowledge be on one side okay now as I was saying once you get it have then you're not is going to be to one side and then you can just split it down the middle and that knot will just be on one quarter and that takes care of that knot that's not too bad see this was kind of got a knot right in the right in the middle there but again it doesn't matter you just hit it hard enough and it'll do what you want it to do now it really helps with it being as cold as it is they just kind of bust apart because they're frozen then when you get the smaller pieces mostly I don't split a piece of wood unless it's bigger than eight inches a 6 inch piece why probably like this right here will fit most stuff but people tend to like split wood it makes a wood burn up a lot faster but with small stuff like that you can usually just kind of one-hit-wonder it now like I said this is not seasoned wood or anything this was just like you know two months ago and it's been you know it's the middle of January so it's not been and you know high heat or anything like that then you could always take these down smaller if you want you know it it all it'll do is just burn up your wood faster well I guess that'll about do it till next time

Channel: Backwoods Patriot

Views: 308,449

Keywords: building a house, house, how to build a house, framing, concrete, foundation, footer, block foundation, laying concrete block, homestead, homesteading, construction, chainsaw, sawmill, saw mill, chainsaw mill, milling lumber, lumber yards, safety, safety equipment, government, patriot, woods, forest, splitting firewood, splitting wood, firewood, splitting

Id: rmWbvmiM9gA

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 10 2015