Fresh wood my axe won't even sink into?

[joefrompa]

Hi all,

Neighbor had a tree company come out and take down an elm tree (I believe; can't confirm that). The wood has been down for about 1.5 weeks.

Anyway, they left some MASSIVE rounds which i offered to take off his hands

Since I'm not 6'6" and 300 pounds of solid muscle, I attempted to cut them down to size. Having only a 14" chainsaw, it wasn't cutting it (hehehe).

So I decided to take my new-this-season Fiskar's Super Splitting Axe to it.

Whack whack whack whack whack....

It BOUNCES right off. It barely leaves a notable mark on the wood, let alone sinking into it or producing cracks.

Now, the chainsaw doesn't go right through it but it does cut. This isn't petrified rock here.

I go back to my property and I'm splitting hard ash and other stuff no problem, even in fairly large rounds.

So what's the deal? Does it just need to dry out? Will I be able to chop into this in 6 months?

My back-up plan is that I'm getting a wood blaster wedge (http://www.amazon.com/Wood-Blaster-Log-Splitter-Wedge/dp/B0000AX12D/ref=pd_sim_ol_1) and will sledge that into the middle or off to one side and see if it does anything.

I've never before encountered a chunk of wood that I could slam an axe into the cut-face of it and not have ANY result anywhere on the face.

Joe

 

[joefrompa]

Somehow I missed this thread on elm: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/60953/

Guess it's the wood itself. I'm not getting a log splitter and I'll chainsaw this stuff down from 24" thick rounds to 12" thick and then it sounds like I should just let it season for 6 months in the open air and then use a combination of wedge + fiskar's to get it usable.

Sounds like it'll burn well, and I've got ROUGHLY 2000 pounds of it sitting on my driveway right now....so, might as well

Joe

 

[elijah]

I don't think you'll be disappointed with this wood, if it is in fact elm. Others have mentioned their disappointment but in my experience it burns very long. Sounds like a good plan, let it season a while and then split it. Even if you were to get it to start splitting, it's a mess when it's being split while still wet, real stringy, etc.

 

[Singed Eyebrows]

I don't think you'll be disappointed with this wood, if it is in fact elm. Others have mentioned their disappointment but in my experience it burns very long. Sounds like a good plan, let it season a while and then split it. Even if you were to get it to start splitting, it's a mess when it's being split while still wet, real stringy, etc.

Absolutly! This is one of my favorite woods to burn. 6" rounds last a long time. We have a lot of Chinese elm around here & this is ok. American elm burns a lot longer though. FYI, you don't want to put a 24" wet American elm round on a 4 ton Ryobi splitter, ask me how I know, Randy

 

[elijah]

LOL, I don't even like putting a 24" round of that stuff on my 25 ton hydraulic It's just so hard to split while still wet.

 

[joefrompa]

Ok, making me feel better. I'm guessing I have about .75 cord of this stuff; that's probably a month's worth of heating for me. If it's going to give me a nice long slow burn, then I'm willing to put in the elbow grease.

Luckily for me too that it's split into nice (albeit thick) rounds now, so I know it's starting to season. I'll give it a few whacks with the axe/wedge in a month or so, see if I can drive some cracks into it to give it more surface area to dry out...

 

[the_dude]

I'm not near your size, but I bounced my fiskars off of a couple of rounds of elm not long ago. I remember thinking, "man a guy twice my size couldn't split this crap." Thank you for confiming that.

I ended up getting my FIL's 25 ton splitter, and the larger rounds gave that thing everything it could handle. This was a standing dead elm that was down and bucked for over 6 months. I wish you the best of luck, my friend.

 

[joefrompa]

I have a good friend that will wholeheartedly support me in drilling a hole and putting black powder into it, if all else fails.

He's the type of guy who would bail me out, or sit there with me and talk about how we'd do it all over again. The type of guy that gladly brings over his truck and chains to rip out small shrubs, because its just more fun that way...

He might be needed for this job....

P.s. I'm 5'10 and 180 pounds, but I can swing an axe with the wrath of God

 

[burntime]

I use the 22 ton speeco. It is the only wood that will almost always make it kick into the second stage!

 

[Flatbedford]

I dump Elm in the woods to rot.

 

[northernontario]

I had the same issue this summer with the Fiskars and a variety of wood. Some it would split right through, some it would just bounce off. Yellow birch, various species of maple, oak... some it cuts right though... some it just bounces off.

 

[CTYank]

You can always cheat a little, with elm you can cheat a lot: use a chainsaw to rip or "noodle" (across cut face or along grain) a groove into the wood to serve as a starting line for the split. Then sledge and wedges.
Some like to use the saw all the way through, but that converts lots of wood into chips.

 

[elijah]

You can always cheat a little, with elm you can cheat a lot: use a chainsaw to rip or "noodle" (across cut face or along grain) a groove into the wood to serve as a starting line for the split. Then sledge and wedges.
Some like to use the saw all the way through, but that converts lots of wood into chips.

Good point. I had forgotten I had done this with success.

 

[raybonz]

Elm is the firewood from hell! I ended up ripping it with a chainsaw.. If someone were to offer me elm again I'd turn it down..

Ray

 

[CarbonNeutral]

With wood that bounces my supersplitter, I ususally find that two or three more hits in the same place opens up a nice crack. But it certainly looks like it's doing nothing the first few times

 

[firefighterjake]

I don't think you'll be disappointed with this wood, if it is in fact elm. Others have mentioned their disappointment but in my experience it burns very long. Sounds like a good plan, let it season a while and then split it. Even if you were to get it to start splitting, it's a mess when it's being split while still wet, real stringy, etc.

Absolutly! This is one of my favorite woods to burn. 6" rounds last a long time. We have a lot of Chinese elm around here & this is ok. American elm burns a lot longer though. FYI, you don't want to put a 24" wet American elm round on a 4 ton Ryobi splitter, ask me how I know, Randy

+1 to both comments . . . elm helped me get through my first year of burning . . . and while it still splits up stringy even with my hydraulic splitter to me it's worth the work as it burns and coals up nicely.

That said . . . are you sure this is elm and not some other wood?

 

[dreezon]

Elm is unbelievably hard to split, but what I don't understand is why. Anyone know? It's a relatively soft wood. Does it have an interlocking grain structure? Sometimes I think the softness is the problem. It just absorbs the energy. But you don't have that problem with cherry and other woods that are in the same ballpark density wise. Any physicists out there who cane explain this?

 

[joefrompa]

I think it has to do with the graining. The force is not distributed along "fault lines" like other wood, and is instead absorbed by the overall structure.

Wonder if elm is much less likely to fall?

 

[firefighterjake]

Elm is unbelievably hard to split, but what I don't understand is why. Anyone know? It's a relatively soft wood. Does it have an interlocking grain structure? Sometimes I think the softness is the problem. It just absorbs the energy. But you don't have that problem with cherry and other woods that are in the same ballpark density wise. Any physicists out there who cane explain this?

I think it was Battenkiller that explains that elm is heliotrophic . . . meaning that it tends to follow the sun as it grows . . . which could explain the twisted grain of the wood. It tends to split with lots of fibers . . .

 

[OhioBurner©]

I've heard elm is the worse... However I am having the same issue with my last load of wood...

A few weeks ago, last time I was cutting in the woods, my BIL told me there were several standing dead black locust tree. I hadnt ever heard of black locust before so a quick check here revealed it was one of the best hardwoods (is this true?) so I said sure lets go. So I brought back probably 3/4 cord on my 350 with the tall bed rails. That stuff weighed so much I could lift some of the bigger chunks - they were only about 18" rounds (~22" long) but dang. I was pretty tired though by that point... sawing through some of them with less than brand new chain was difficult. It was getting to the point I wondered like you, 'is it worth it'? A few times I had the bar smoking... buying a better sharpener now.

Anyhow, got back home, couldnt split any of the bigger ones! My maul would just bounce right off making a nice dent mark with no signs of any splitting! Well I got some of the smaller shorter limb peices, maybe 8" rounds that my BIL was cutting rather short, maybe 14-16" and with a few hits I could split those. Those ones were very dry, maybe black locust is much harder to split when dry? They were reading like 18% I think it was. Shoudl burn great... if I can get it spit. Think I'll just stock up on rounds over winter (I'll probably go to the woods a couple times when the snow is down) then in spring when I get a whole days worth saved up I'll just rent a splitter.