Firewood

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Cory you brought that hornet back to life so you could give it a proper death correct? I could be wrong but I’m assuming a bald faced bastid. Those are shown no mercy.
 
They be good pollinators afaik!

Um, yeah, you had to ask. It was your basic regular yellow and black hornet. He was doing well, motoring slowly around, chilling a lot too. So I was observing him off and on for a couple hours while keeping busy with other stuff. So that led to my losing track of him and I put my clipboard down on him by accident. Smh. Being tough as spring steel and whale bone, it didn't kill him immediately but it was a mortal injury. About like getting a mafia block getting dropped on a human. I kept him around for a few days and then put him outside for other critters to utilize.
 
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Every so often a frozen hornet emerges from a piece of wood brought into the house and is discovered the next day flying around the kitchen or living room. They are for all intents frozen solid -20 deg C, utterly motionless, and then thaw out. At least they can't sting you when you're handling the wood.
 
I'm gonna have to get firewood this year to prepare for next season. This is the first time since 2018 I had to think about it. I /think/ I have enough for one more season, but it'll be cutting it close. I also want to regulate my storage. It's currently haphazard stacks cause I was putting it where I had room, but I want to make pallet boxes in an orderly fashion, and keep rain off the wood.
 
It's always something that has me chasing my tail .Hydraulics on the Jeep froze up ,Had to raise the blade with a cable come along .Will thaw out in the garage then replace the fluid with the kind with anti freeze in it .Starter went funky on the tractor .used parts of three starters to fix that .Then evidently the condenser on the ignition gave up the ghost .Found another I think is okay .Then evidently a down draft tripped the "flame spread "safety switch on the brand new propane furnace .I had to Google that one plus call a person .So now I need to install a double 90 ell on the exhaust to prevent that .I still have to haul firewood because we have a massive storm coming at us with prediction of 8 to 12 inches of snow .I've got 600 feet of driveway so I need that Jeep that was brand new in1965 . Then again I was brand new in 1948 and I'm still kicking .
 
In other news I got everything ready for the snow .Around 3/4 of a cord on the trailer and the Ranger which might get me through Feb .I have pile of logs though if I run out I just don't want to dig them out under a foot of snow ..Between what I have in another stack plus the 1/2 cord I keep on the patio for the for the fire ring which is right out my back door I just might make it .Long story but I was really behind the 8 ball this year .
 
Yeah it sucks :lol: I'm crawling by too, throwing the back out put me behind so I'm gonna have to do some winter wonderland shit in a week or so :lol: a smart man would have foreseen the wife randomly wanting an insert in the fall and would have wood all ready to go, but I'm not a smart man :D. I did finally weld a longer handle on the monster maul i got, i don't know what umpa loompa designed that thing but it actually works really good once you can use it standing up and shape it a bit with a grinder.

I swapped gaskets on the carb on my dolmar 7910, but it's still not right so I'll be going deeper. Fired up the backhoe to move stuff around and it died, so I'll be doing that next, they're calling for a foot of snow so it would be nice to be able to hit everything, or at least where the wife and kids go. I just got a set of the destination mt2 tires on the truck so that's about as good as it gets so i usually don't hit my driveway much :lol:
 
Kyle, do you have photos of your handle extension on the monster maul? I always thought the same thing that they are too short stock. I don't weld but could probably find someone here to do the same.
 
No but i will, it took literally 1 rod. I think i just used 1 1/4" pipe, which fits over 1 inch pipe pretty well (the handle is 1" heavy wall pipe, i think it's more than 80 but I'll have to mic it). I'm thinking i might drop the handle part back down to 1", the 1.25 is a bit much swinging but i do ok. I was also thinking of doing an oval/ hammered flat a bit so you could feel the head better than just setting it by weight before the swing. Even welding some all thread or rebar would do it, but would let you use a far lighter grip which helps with the vibration since it's all metal
 
Those so called monster mauls will split just about anything ---if you can swing them .If memory serves the first ones weighed 18 pounds . Now 40 years ago I could give it half dozen mighty swings but those days are long gone ..The same company made barrel stove kits . I made several .One was two barrels welded end for end my buddy used to heat his mortar sand . Burned old rail road ties in it and the smoke just rolled .
 
How plans change....was going to block logs then split, until the forecast for a big arse snow "event" started.
No way did I want a big pile of wood buried in snow and frozen together (rain before snow).
Dad has plenty of wood, so l said screw it, just leave the logs piled.
The weather reports nailed it. 6 hours of light rain topped off with 10" of snow.

Logs will be there when it melts...

Ed
 
Tree09 said:
No but i will, it took literally 1 rod. I think i just used 1 1/4" pipe, which fits over 1 inch pipe pretty well (the handle is 1" heavy wall pipe, i think it's more than 80 but I'll have to mic it). I'm thinking i might drop the handle part back down to 1", the 1.25 is a bit much swinging but i do ok. I was also thinking of doing an oval/ hammered flat a bit so you could feel the head better than just setting it by weight before the swing. Even welding some all thread or rebar would do it, but would let you use a far lighter grip which helps with the vibration since it's all metal
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'm not even sure the whole monster maul thing is actually "good" for the joints. That heavy fiskers splitter might be a bit easier on most stuff?
 
That company was Stoz Sotz or something like that .During the hey day of wood stoves they made a lot of things .I think one of them was a screw splitter you bolted on the rear wheel of a car .I have one but it's been decades since I 've used it and have no plans of ever using it again .I used it on the power take off of a tractor and it would crack anything you put in it .My dad used an old Jeep rear end and transmission powered from an Allis Chalmers model B PTO circa 1938 with a screw .It worked a lot better than a 5 pound axe .
 
My father in law had one of those for his tractor. He decided that a hydraulic splitter was the way to go when his son started helping him split
 
That's why this kind of splitter is forbiden now. OK on an excavator or a skidder but no more with hand feeding. The latest manual ones had some features to improove the safety, like anti-rotating and anti-jamming devices though, but the old screw alone style (like the one mounted on a car's axle or at the tractor's back) were really dangerous.
I had a customer who went flying at 10' when the log he was fighting against jammed on the screw, tractor driven. After that, curiously, he changed for an hydraulic ram.
The first time I heard of an injury with this style of splitter was in my youth with a farmer near my hollyday's house. His son was helping to split at the tractor's back and wanted to clear the wood and bark chunks accumulated under the screw. With his foot, of course, so convenient and the screw was still rotating to not waste time. One of the two pins holding the screw on the shaft was protruding. It caught the top of his foot and chewed his ankle pretty badly.

Re the mess on logs, I agree. The screw shreds the fibers with the friction and gives a nasty spot on the log's edges.
 
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The one i have is a 12 pounder, and was recently made, so it's likely around 15 pounds with the longer handle. It's crude but is what i have, so it'll do. If i was so inclined one of my best friends lives next door and has an awesome splitter with a 4 way wedge, i just haven't had the need yet. I'm also right under 6 foot tall and 210 pounds, so I'm big enough to move that kinda weight with some conviction. Having said that I've noticed that although it will do the bigger rounds it's dramatically easier and probably quicker to break them down a bit with a wedge first, maybe even with scoring lines where i would like them to crack with a saw first. Then use the maul for further reduction.
 
I'm a little ambivalent regarding splitting mauls/axes. They're nice when they work, but more often than not, I have weird wood that takes some finagling to get apart. I use them, but if I could only have one system, I'll take my maul+wedges. 8# maul on an 18" handle is just about perfect. Can easily swing it one or two handed.
 
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