Firewood Splitting Tips

Reader Contribution by Staff
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If you live in the country, you may already know about keeping a woodpile stocked. But even many city neighbourhoods are more like forest villages than concrete jungles. These places, too, are great sources of black-out-proof, carbon-neutral home heating fuel.

Wherever trees die, break off in the wind, or outgrow their allotted space, you’ll find the potential for firewood. I say potential, because having trees (or friendly neighbours that do) is just the first and easiest part of the operation. Making that woodconveniently and effectively burnable in a woodstove or fireplace comes next. Sounds like work, and that’s because it is. But as usual, there are two ways to look at the job: It’s either drudgery you should avoid by stocking up on artificial wax fire logs, or a fitness regime that also warms your house. When it comes to making firewood, I see the glass as half full.

That’s why I’m happy to share what I’ve learned over 20+ years of heating my house with wood and elbow grease. There’s nothing like the security of a well-stacked wood pile.

The challenging part of making firewood is the splitting — cleaving sawn logs along the grain lengthwise. Why bother? Because most logs are too big to fit comfortably in a woodstove or fireplace, and splitting is the best way to make them thinner. And even if they aren’t too big, split wood burns better because it dries more thoroughly without a continuous wrapper of bark.

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