Newsgroups: misc.rural

You know fall is here when the annual 
firewood discussion heats up.

Splitting:

The wooden handled Collins 8lb spliting
maul has the best shape and weight of
any maul on the market.  Forget
the specialty mauls and work on
a fast, accurate swing.

Green wood is easier to saw and split.
(Wet oak will practically explode under
a maul because of the hydraulic action
of incompressible water.)

Observe wood as you split it so that
you learn to recognize spiral grain,
compressed grain, knots, crotches, etc.
Don't waste your time trying to split
these; set them aside for the chainsaw.

Look for straight grain and cracks
as lines to split along.

Wedges are useful for splitting large
diameter rounds, but don't expect them
to split through knotted grain.  I've
had to use as many as 5 to split 48"
rounds of 150 year old fir.  (My field
kit consists of 2 mauls, 5 wedges,
and a sledge hammer.  I prefer the
sledge for driving wedges over the
back end of the mauls.)

Breaking a maul handle or a dead 
chainsaw is rather inconvenient on a
trip to the woods so I generally
drag along two or three of each.  

Never buy a double bladed axe, these
are only useful for timber falling.

For home use buy a medium sized axe
and a small 4lb sledge or maul
for driving the axe when it gets
stuck.  With experience you will
learn what can/cannot be split
and will avoid getting your wedges,
axes, mauls buried in unsplitable wood.  

Kindling?  Come on now, next you'll
want us to tell you where babies come from!

Overnight Fires:

Assuming you have a decent, airtight stove
with a good insulated, free-flowing stove pipe.

Think of the stove as a car engine.  Keep it
running at a modest rate and don't over-rev it.
That is, too much small dry wood or too much
air will get the firebox overheated and it will
be difficult to throttle it down.  Keep your
fire burning at a modest rate all the time.

Near bedtime start throttling the stove down
to cool the firebox.  When you see a nice
bed of coals and maybe a few chunks of
partially burned wood add 3 big pieces 
of dry oak.  This new load of wood will
further slow down the burning rate.
Ideally, you will see few if any flames.

I can get eight to twelve hours burn time
in my non-catalytic Lopi LX with this method.
The key being to not let all surfaces of
the wood fire up at one.  Let me say this
another way: it's a mistake to have a
really hot fire at 10PM and then load
up your firebox with many small pieces
of wood.  The new load will catch
too quickly and burn out in a few hours.
Large chunks have less surface area and
more mass so they burn more slowly.  

Another tip for overnight fires is
to always leave a layer of ashes
in the firebox.  

Lastly, in an air-tight
stove there is no need for a damper.
They only serve to starve the fire
and generate loads of creosote and
other horrible carcinogens.  (Using
a damper is like slowing a car down
by sticking a potato up your 
exhaust pipe.)  After six cords of
wood there's only a light layer of
soot in my stove pipe.

For the really curious, there's a book
on Finnish masonary fireplaces that has
a great technical discussion of the
exact process that takes place when
a chunk of wood heats up, emits wood
gases, and burns.  I'll look up the
exact title tonight. 

-bill