No carrying water, but yesterday I did split wood. Know what? Splitting wood is hard. Sounds like a no-brainer, doesn't it? And I'm not totally stupid: I was expecting hard work. But it's not like on TV, where every log splits perfectly with a single swing of the axe. Actually, it might be like that for a man who's a foot taller and around 75 lb larger than me. Which seems like a more likely profile for a person splitting wood than my 5'1" and *ahem*lb.
I have two disadvantages: first, I don't have the strength to comfortably hold the 15 pound maul1 back over my shoulder and swing it all the way around. I had to hold it up in the air and let it more or less fall on the wedge. So the arc traversed by the maul is shortened. Even if I could swing it all the way, the arc would still be short because my arms are shorter than those of my imaginary typicall wood-splitting tall guy. I'm not sure if I would do better with a lighter sledgehammer that I could swing further, or if I'm better off just letting gravity do its thing with this maul.2
So instead of perfectly split wood piling up around me with every swing, I have to fit the wedge into a crack in the log and whack it with the maul, over and over. I got 3 logs split in 45 minutes before I gave up, totally exhausted. Which sounds pathetic, and maybe is pathetic. But then again, those were pretty big logs, enough for a fire to last a whole night. If I could split 3 logs twice a week, we'd be fine for the whole winter.3
Needless to say I'm really sore today. I was expecting soreness in my shoulders but it's all around the torso too. I guess all those muscles are needed to stabilize the body while swinging that maul around. I can say with certainty that splitting wood for 45 minutes is a better upper-body workout than I ever got in the weight room. On the other hand, I was too sore to do the planting I had wanted to do today, which was a bummer. But then again you're really not supposed to work soil while it's wet. I would have done it anyway if I could have made my back obey, so maybe the soreness is a good thing.
In other news, despite his promises the tree guy did not show up during the long periods of no rain yesterday or today. Nor did he return my phone messages yesterday or today. I'm mildly irked, but all contractors are like this. Besides, we're not expecting any more hurricanes so a few days' delay is no big deal. If Jeanne were still heading for us I would have been more energetic about hassling the guy into coming out here right away.
We'll be ready for him when he comes, thanks to Georg's great work clearing away a bunch of brush and fallen wood that was blocking access to the tree. We didn't bother raking everything up neatly, since we're about to fell a tree right there, but already it makes the back yard look twice as big. It kind of makes me wonder how much we need the landscapers for the backyard. If he could make that much difference in one evening, how much could we do in a few weeks of concerted effort?
1 A maul is like a sledgehammer with a wedge-shaped thing on the end. In theory you can use it to split wood without the wedge. That doesn't work for me because I can never manage to hit exactly the same spot, so I use the maul to make a hole to fit the wedge into, then hit the wedge with the flat side of the maul.
2 This is what happens when geeks chop wood. But hey, I had to think about something while I worked.
3 I just found out that Textile does formatting for footnotes. Isn't that cool?
3 Comments
The tree guy just called and offered to come tomorrow! I'm surprised that he's willing to work on a Sunday, but that's great for me. I'm not holding my breath that he actually shows up, but it would be nice to have it taken care of.
i have a very good fiskars axe that you are welcome to borrow. i think once a log gets down to about 1/2 of a full log you can use an axe to get smaller pieces-- that's what i did when i lived out in mebane.
this is an axe i bought for my grandfather to help him continue to be able to chop wood as he aged. the story he told me of using it for the first time was classic-- it's so much more efficient than his traditional axe that it actually split not only the log but his chopping block clean in half on the first swing!
do you have a chopping block? I have found that that makes a huge difference, for me, but our heights are different enough that i'm not sure what effect it would have for you.
my main problem with splitting logs was always my aim. i wore old steel-toed army boots whenever i split wood because my aim was *that bad* :)
without a chopping block i can't really do any splitting so i've not used the fancy axe since i inherited it back from my grandfather.
Which tree guy?