Got my christmas present from my mom early as she is going visit my sister in New Mexico for the holidays. Well I had to give it a try, went out and grabbed a couple rounds from the pile. Pretty impresseed so far, one of the peices was one that I had set aside when I was splitting with the "fake fiskars", after hitting it 7-8 times and was getting nowhere. Splitter grunted for a split second and it popped right open. Now, the wood is now frozen, and was fresh cut and the temp was in the 40's when hand splitting, but still. Obviously it will be slower on the easy to split stuff, but still quite a bit easier ;-) . Now I have got to build or buy some type of work table.