Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire First third of the two maple trees cut split and stacked

I gather that the maple trees are on your property in Oregon. For a minute there I thought you might be cutting down some of the trees that DANNYL uses to make his superb maple syrup. That would have been a hanging offense!

Here is a great splitting wedge. The Wood Grenade. Costs about 20 bucks not hard to find. Works much better than a regular triangle shaped wedge.





And this is the real bad ass. The Ochsenkopf aluminum wedge. Cost 52 bucks at Bailey's. Made in Germany.
This thing has a 45 degree twist to it, so as you whack it with the 10 pound hammer it screws into the wood.
"Ochsenkopf" means "Ox head" and few sticks of wood can withstand the mighty German Ox Head.


My Monster Maul is the best maul I have ever used and I have used lots of 'em.
If the Monster Maul is not man enough for the job I get out the Wood Grenade or the Ochsenkopf and the ten pound hammer.
By the way that stick that the Wood Grenade is stuck in is hickory. A little 12 inch diameter hickory piece, it gave the monster maul an ass whipping.
And it gave the Wood Grenade all it could handle but it split it. That's why I bought the Ochsenkopf.
I will be leaving hickory alone from now on. Very high firewood value but too hard to split.

My 1st thought when I saw this pic was a house we looked at near Cave Jct, OR a few years ago. There was a 3' wide tree stump in the yard, about 10' from the house. Inside, the living room floor was high in the center and the wall facing the yard was bowed up with all the windows at an angle. A large root had lifted the foundation about 3 or 4". I doubt it could have been repaired for under $50k. We had a good laugh but declined to buy. It's probably still for sale if anyone is interested.

In that case, the wad is far from the foundation, farther than it looks. But there's a much bigger fir on the other side of the shop that I worry could damage the foundation in that way if it blew over. That would SUCK. I'm pretty attached to that fir, though. It shades the shop big time in the summer.

That pine that hit the roof actually went through the plywood, but luckily it's between trusses and didn't do structural damage that I can see. It even punched a branch through the sheetrock ceiling inside. I was planning on re-roofing with metal this summer anyway, so right now it's got the famous western Oregon "blue tarp" treatment going. I am nothing, if not high class.

Real wood boilers don't need split wood ...up to 19inchs thru and 38" long....in they go WHOLE ! One of them and 2 6" ERS on either side ...and im good and warm for 20 hours all 4400 sq feet 😀😀

Friend has one of the Scandinavian soapstone stoves that is built right into the house itself... they are like $20k I believe... supposedly one big armload of wood and he is cozy all day. They do it through thermal mass and a labyrinth chimney that scrubs all the heat.... I put a LOT of heat out my stovepipe.

Haven't even burned in several days though! How about this weather?

Like this? This is a Finnish fireplace made by Tulikivi in Finland. This is the most efficient wood stove made.
Like he said, burn for 30 minutes and heat the house for 12 hours. Burns very very hot and reduces a big armload of wood into a few tablespoons of ash.
Since you aren't interested in coals, pine is as good as oak.

I wanted badly to build one in my new log cabin 20 years ago, had all the brochures etc. but finally figured that, ironically, it was just too hot for the NC mountains.
I think you need to be up in South Dakota or Minnesota to fully enjoy the Finnish fireplace.

That's the one! Or very similar. Gorgeous things.

We love our Jotul. It's our "furnace".

When I built our house over these last 18 months, per the architect's request, whom I was sleeping with like a bunny in heat at the time, and wanted to make happy, I built the master bedroom with scissors trusses to give a vaulted ceiling. It's got huge windows and French doors onto a deck; in the summer when it's all opened up its like sleeping outside. Love it. Anyway, to meet code I put a Cadet in the wall which we use very little, but what I really want in there, is one of these:



Or a variation; point being, a small hanging wood stove.

Pile of cottonwood. Not super hard to split but mother of GOD, that is some heavy wood!

Damn Jeff that is wild. I thought I had seen, if not used just about every wood stove that exists.
Never heard of a hanging wood stove.
It looks cool but it is pretty small.

There's a number of them; that was the first I found I could grab a pic of. I don't like how thick the pipe looks on that one. Some are more of a hanging potbelly thing.

Small is good for where I want it; don't want to overpower the room.

I use a monester maul exactly like the one pictured. If something wants to be too tough for that, Husky 372, round layed horizontal. Nothing is hard to split that way. Gather up the "noodles" and keep them dry, nothing makes a better fire starter, they light with a match and will get kindling going quick.

All right, dillon. Another Monster Maul user.
I have never used a better one and I have used lots.
Made by the Sotz company. Unfortunately they went out of business in 1990 and nobody has made an identical replacement.
You can still find them on craiglist for a hundred bucks.

Today the dog and I are burning slash. Splitting on hold for a day.

Every special thing we've tried on post oak fails around here... standard wedges and sledge

You can forget even trying to split wood with those wedge type ax type splitters too. Unless you wait until its dry, really dry and even then its a carp shoot.

Carolyn and I spent Easter weekend splitting a post oak that was appx 48 inches at the base. Had to spit the cuts into quarters to be able to roll them to the tractor splitter and work with em.

After lots of other thigns but enough time we put up the one tree. Another on the ground ready to split, and about 7 more need to go, but only 4 of those on the ground, not cut yet. And one large live oak...

Calcd the wood in the barn from the one tree so far, there is about 16 cords in there, but the one tree is mostly responsible for about 8 of those cords....

Start on the next one Sunday.

Holy crap, Jeff! What use do you have for all that in your climate?

Steve........... you've got my Lucy there, reincarnated!

He, Tyee, just walked up a laid right next to the fire. He was about two feet from the coals. Stayed there until the smoke moved into him.

Slash pile gone from a about 140cft to about 3cft except for this big ass stump the old owner left.

"You can forget even trying to split wood with those wedge type ax type splitters too. Unless you wait until its dry, really dry and even then its a carp shoot."

Earth to rost: Wood splits better when it is green.