By some luck and some prospecting skill, I found a tree service guy who lives the next block over. He has more free bucked hardwood than he knows what to do with. He offered me the wood, said he filled up his wood-burning neighbors all the way until they cried uncle, so it's all free to a good home. It's all completely unseasoned, so it's not going to do me any good this year. Next year it might, and the year after I should be blazing away happily.
It was such a pretty picture tonight. We had a fresh inch of snow on everything. I walked out to the woodpile, busted up a couple splits to kindling and brought it inside, set up the wood stove and got it going, then added fuel to the fire. It's 19* outside and about 70 upstairs with just the basement wood stove going. A very comfortable 70, it seems so much warmer than the 70* I get out of the heat pump. Maybe it's the added humidity from a couple of tea kettles sitting on the wood stove. I don't know.
Sometimes I use a big Bowie or a Khukri to hack notches up the edge of a split to give it a little more surface area if my kindling isn't quite up to the job. Maybe it helps, I don't have any scientific expertise in this area. My cold steel trail hawk is absolutely useless for firewood. The spike hawk is mildly useful in dragging wood out of the hutch. The Bowie is useful for the aforementioned notching if that does any good, but I figure I'm just amusing myself by swinging a knife around. The Fiskars X25 is the workhorse of the group.
Also-ran is the $35 yellow 16-inch electric chainsaw I use to process load after load. I would trade all my blades from this one to that for my little $35 chainsaw as far as practical utility goes. If I couldn't have a chainsaw, I would not burn wood for heat. There's no way I would manually saw through all that material. Just the sawing alone would keep me warm enough all winter, I wouldn't need the fire! No way I would chop through it all with any kind of axe either.
There was a 12" thick 16" limb length I picked up last spring in a load of wood. Last spring, the blade of the Fiskars just boinged right off the face of it like it was made of some kind of super-rubber. Eight months later I took another couple swings at it. It was so saturated with water it was like burying it in a swamp. The wood didn't want to get out of the way of anything, just swallowed up the edge and spit a little water out either side. Now a year later, it was finally dry enough for me to get the blade into the wood a little. It took six or eight all-the-way swings to crack it through the middle. Rotated it 90* and the second full butt-dropping stroke blew half of it into two pieces. I felt like I dug a sliver of gold out of Scrooge McDuck's tightest pucker. Rotated it again and tried to bust up that last half, but it would have none of it. Stone faced as a convict facing down his third strike, that half round would not give up the goods. Back to the pile for summertime.
Everybody rolls over at some point.
So yeah, a Fiskars x25 is a pretty good axe.
It was such a pretty picture tonight. We had a fresh inch of snow on everything. I walked out to the woodpile, busted up a couple splits to kindling and brought it inside, set up the wood stove and got it going, then added fuel to the fire. It's 19* outside and about 70 upstairs with just the basement wood stove going. A very comfortable 70, it seems so much warmer than the 70* I get out of the heat pump. Maybe it's the added humidity from a couple of tea kettles sitting on the wood stove. I don't know.
Sometimes I use a big Bowie or a Khukri to hack notches up the edge of a split to give it a little more surface area if my kindling isn't quite up to the job. Maybe it helps, I don't have any scientific expertise in this area. My cold steel trail hawk is absolutely useless for firewood. The spike hawk is mildly useful in dragging wood out of the hutch. The Bowie is useful for the aforementioned notching if that does any good, but I figure I'm just amusing myself by swinging a knife around. The Fiskars X25 is the workhorse of the group.
Also-ran is the $35 yellow 16-inch electric chainsaw I use to process load after load. I would trade all my blades from this one to that for my little $35 chainsaw as far as practical utility goes. If I couldn't have a chainsaw, I would not burn wood for heat. There's no way I would manually saw through all that material. Just the sawing alone would keep me warm enough all winter, I wouldn't need the fire! No way I would chop through it all with any kind of axe either.
There was a 12" thick 16" limb length I picked up last spring in a load of wood. Last spring, the blade of the Fiskars just boinged right off the face of it like it was made of some kind of super-rubber. Eight months later I took another couple swings at it. It was so saturated with water it was like burying it in a swamp. The wood didn't want to get out of the way of anything, just swallowed up the edge and spit a little water out either side. Now a year later, it was finally dry enough for me to get the blade into the wood a little. It took six or eight all-the-way swings to crack it through the middle. Rotated it 90* and the second full butt-dropping stroke blew half of it into two pieces. I felt like I dug a sliver of gold out of Scrooge McDuck's tightest pucker. Rotated it again and tried to bust up that last half, but it would have none of it. Stone faced as a convict facing down his third strike, that half round would not give up the goods. Back to the pile for summertime.
Everybody rolls over at some point.
So yeah, a Fiskars x25 is a pretty good axe.
I'd really prefer to hang on to my prejudices, thank you.
