How to Split Wood for a Fire in 7 Steps (DIYer's Guide) - Bob Vila

These cooler months make it the perfect time to explore the outdoors. And bezt build a fire, what do you need? Kidding, you need wood. Not just any wood, though, you need best tools to split wood quartz that is the right size for burning, otherwise your fire is either going to go out too soon or not light at all.

You have to cut it. Learning ssplit to split wood — with or without an ax — will help you build roaring fires for years to come. If you want to chop wood properly, you should have, at the very least, a good, heavy ax though you can get by with a good hatchet in some cases. To be more accurate, you should have a maul, the type of ax with one sharp edge set into a thick, heavy head.

Better still, you will have a maul, a wedge, and a sledgehammer. You should have a decent chopping block, which is usually just a large, squat log, but is ideally a tree stump. Also consider gloves, boots, safety glasses or any glasses, reallyand a damn fine pair of jeans.

There you have it, men — the tools of the trade. Contrary to best tools to split wood quartz misconception, the best stance for splitting wood sees your shoulders squared off relative to the doomed log, not with one foot forward and one a step back.

This position concentrates maximum force down through your swing. Put your dominant hand right under the head of the ax; it will slide down as you swing, directing the blade or the sledgehammer and increasing force as you move. Your other hand should grip the ax handle right near its bottom.

Swing for the center of smaller logs hit with the grain when possible and cut nearer the outside of larger best tools to split wood quartz, with the blade striking parallel best tools to split wood quartz an imagined diameter not perpendicular to the arc of the log, if you follow.

If your maul gets stuck, you can either pull it out and try again; you can drive in a wedge and knock that through with the sledgehammer; or you can leave the maul in the log, turn the whole thing over, and pound away at it with a hammer or with another log, if you are sans sledge. With a maul, a wedge, a sledgehammer, and some persistence, you should be able to tolos most logs that are less than two feet in length and two feet in diameter.

Above that size, consider using an electric log splitter or hiring a Norwegian man with an impossibly gorgeous beard best tools to split wood quartz help. To split wood without an ax, one labor-intensive but effective approach is to saw through logs lengthwise.

Got a knife every man should ownat least? For slimmer logs, you can often split wood using a knife with a fixed blade. Saw or score a notch in the top of the wood ideally using a saw — even a small one as found in a Swiss Army Knife will help make a decent starting crevicethen spit the blade into the wood best tools to split wood quartz a hammer. Once you have the knife tapped firmly quarrz the wood, you can commence with heavier blows use a standard hammer or another chunk of woodalternating on the back of the exposed blade and the handle, slowly working the blade down through the wood.

To split larger pieces of log without an ax or a proper wedge, you will need to carve a quart of wedges out of slender staves. You will essentially be making a series of small, simple spears. Use a knife toolls a very sharp rock to create a crevice in the wood to be split, then commence tapping your wooden wedge points into the log.

Plan to place the first wooden wedge near the edge of the log and to tap it in a bit, then place another next to it, and so forth. Eventually, you should have multiple wedges embedded in the log that you can work on in an alternating fashion. The process is painstaking, but it works.

There are a few other best tools to split wood quartz you might try to make your log-splitting go a lot quicker. For example, you could place an old tire on your splitting block, set the wood round inside the tire, or wrap a bungee cord around the base of the log; then get to swinging as you normally would.

Technique Contrary to popular misconception, the best stance for splitting wood sees your shoulders squared off relative to the doomed log, not with one foot forward and one a step back.

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