Hey Guys,
About a month and a half ago I ran across Steven Edholm's Skillcult.com blog and YT channel. He does a lot of stuff that really clicked with me, and one of the things was his Axe Cordwood Challenge. In the spring of 2016 he cut a cord of firewood solely with his axe. And he had a video essentially throwing down the gauntlet and challenging other folks to try it, to become more of an axe user vs axe "appreciator". There's a lot of folks online lately who hang a lot of axes, and own a ridiculous number of axes, and I do a bit of that myself. But there's a lot more videos of folks using axes very poorly on the web than folks using them well. If you fell, buck, and split a cord's worth of firewood with an axe, by the end of you know pretty well how to handle one properly or you've got a nifty new scar ( or fewer toes maybe)?
Here's Steven's video about the Challenge.
By the end of November I decided there were a bunch of reasons this was something I needed to do. So here are some things it has taught me,
I can chop left handed (I'm a righty). I can stand in one spot and cut the felling notch, then switch grips and chop the back cut lefthand to fell the tree. My left hand back cut isn't as pretty or efficient as I'd like, but it drops the tree where I want it.
I can buck an entire tree into firewood lengths in less than an hour. And I'm not saying that's world beating, I'm saying that it takes less time than you think. I cut eleven trees down to fill my cord, and it took me about a month's-worth of a couple hours here and there. It is not a gargantuan task that you think it is before you start.
I am 200 times more efficient at splitting wood now than before I started. Splitting is probably the thing that I was most concerned about, and I started out using a Y-crotch splitting block as detailed in Bernard Mason's book
Now I split as the wood falls, with the same axe I bucked it with. The stroke is essentially just like golf, except I square up with my foot behind the piece to be split in case it glances. Pretty much the way that Buckin' Billy Ray does in this video, except none my axe cut wood is ever standing up to split into the endgrain from above, and I don't use a double bit. If the wood is clear and I hit it right, it is usually one hit/one split on the size wood I've been cutting. If the axe sticks, which it does a lot because much of it is NOT clear, then the axe just turned itself into a pickaroon and you can move the piece into position to split into the endgrain. You just keep moving and swinging till all the wood is split, and then you bend over and start picking it up. It is mind blowing how much faster that is for me, considering that I was previously a maul and chopping block wood splitter. Splitting was almost a minor chore while I was doing the challenge.
Bucking the wood is what takes the time, and that's what builds your accuracy. As far as I'm concerned, accuracy is Moses and the Prophets in terms of skill with an axe. If you can make the axe go where you want it 99% of the time, you can do the work with far fewer swings of your axe.
Steven's got a pretty good post on his blog detailing the challenge for folks who wish to join, and I hope some guys from this forum will try it. Be warned that he's got some gory pictures of axe wounds for the tenderhearted.
I was hoping to add some pics, but for some reason Photobucket isn't uploading for me, it has been a while since I've use that account. In any case I made a video about my experiences chopping this cord, to prove I'm not blowing smoke.
I'm not calling myself an axeman, but I'm much closer now than before I did the challenge. I also have a much better idea about what I like in an axe, from a functional standpoint, and what I like in an axe handle for hours of chopping. There are things that I see people doing to their axes that won't hold up to serious work like this. Leather or paracord handle guards for one, not because they don't protect your handle, but because they are IN THE WAY. Once you get reasonably accurate your handle damage goes way down anyhow, and you don't attack the wood from the same angle that you do on the chopping block, so the handle isn't getting struck straight on by endgrain, its much more oblique angles when you do make handle contact.
I hope some folks will seriously consider doing this. I feel strongly that for all the "Axe is Back" stuff on the internet, there are a ton of guys talking about axes that are all hat and no cattle. Why is it so awesome to spend 12 hours polishing an axe head up to 10 billion grit till its optically perfect but its not worth the time to spend 12 hours in the woods making firewood with your axe? Is the axe only "back" as an item of wall decor for the man cave?
About a month and a half ago I ran across Steven Edholm's Skillcult.com blog and YT channel. He does a lot of stuff that really clicked with me, and one of the things was his Axe Cordwood Challenge. In the spring of 2016 he cut a cord of firewood solely with his axe. And he had a video essentially throwing down the gauntlet and challenging other folks to try it, to become more of an axe user vs axe "appreciator". There's a lot of folks online lately who hang a lot of axes, and own a ridiculous number of axes, and I do a bit of that myself. But there's a lot more videos of folks using axes very poorly on the web than folks using them well. If you fell, buck, and split a cord's worth of firewood with an axe, by the end of you know pretty well how to handle one properly or you've got a nifty new scar ( or fewer toes maybe)?
Here's Steven's video about the Challenge.
By the end of November I decided there were a bunch of reasons this was something I needed to do. So here are some things it has taught me,
I can chop left handed (I'm a righty). I can stand in one spot and cut the felling notch, then switch grips and chop the back cut lefthand to fell the tree. My left hand back cut isn't as pretty or efficient as I'd like, but it drops the tree where I want it.
I can buck an entire tree into firewood lengths in less than an hour. And I'm not saying that's world beating, I'm saying that it takes less time than you think. I cut eleven trees down to fill my cord, and it took me about a month's-worth of a couple hours here and there. It is not a gargantuan task that you think it is before you start.
I am 200 times more efficient at splitting wood now than before I started. Splitting is probably the thing that I was most concerned about, and I started out using a Y-crotch splitting block as detailed in Bernard Mason's book
Now I split as the wood falls, with the same axe I bucked it with. The stroke is essentially just like golf, except I square up with my foot behind the piece to be split in case it glances. Pretty much the way that Buckin' Billy Ray does in this video, except none my axe cut wood is ever standing up to split into the endgrain from above, and I don't use a double bit. If the wood is clear and I hit it right, it is usually one hit/one split on the size wood I've been cutting. If the axe sticks, which it does a lot because much of it is NOT clear, then the axe just turned itself into a pickaroon and you can move the piece into position to split into the endgrain. You just keep moving and swinging till all the wood is split, and then you bend over and start picking it up. It is mind blowing how much faster that is for me, considering that I was previously a maul and chopping block wood splitter. Splitting was almost a minor chore while I was doing the challenge.
Bucking the wood is what takes the time, and that's what builds your accuracy. As far as I'm concerned, accuracy is Moses and the Prophets in terms of skill with an axe. If you can make the axe go where you want it 99% of the time, you can do the work with far fewer swings of your axe.
Steven's got a pretty good post on his blog detailing the challenge for folks who wish to join, and I hope some guys from this forum will try it. Be warned that he's got some gory pictures of axe wounds for the tenderhearted.
I was hoping to add some pics, but for some reason Photobucket isn't uploading for me, it has been a while since I've use that account. In any case I made a video about my experiences chopping this cord, to prove I'm not blowing smoke.
I'm not calling myself an axeman, but I'm much closer now than before I did the challenge. I also have a much better idea about what I like in an axe, from a functional standpoint, and what I like in an axe handle for hours of chopping. There are things that I see people doing to their axes that won't hold up to serious work like this. Leather or paracord handle guards for one, not because they don't protect your handle, but because they are IN THE WAY. Once you get reasonably accurate your handle damage goes way down anyhow, and you don't attack the wood from the same angle that you do on the chopping block, so the handle isn't getting struck straight on by endgrain, its much more oblique angles when you do make handle contact.
I hope some folks will seriously consider doing this. I feel strongly that for all the "Axe is Back" stuff on the internet, there are a ton of guys talking about axes that are all hat and no cattle. Why is it so awesome to spend 12 hours polishing an axe head up to 10 billion grit till its optically perfect but its not worth the time to spend 12 hours in the woods making firewood with your axe? Is the axe only "back" as an item of wall decor for the man cave?
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